Three Pakistani climbers scale world’s 11th highest peak

KARACHI: By summiting world’s 11th highest peak Gasherbrum-1 (18,080m), three Pakistani climbers — Shehroze Kashif, Sirbaz Ali and Naila Kiani — have made distinctive records.

Twenty-year-old Sheh­roze became the youngest-ever climber to scale 10 peaks of over 8,000m while Naila Kiani became the first Pakistani woman to summit three peaks of over 8,000m.

Sirbaz, who is aiming to become the first Pakistani to summit all 14 peaks of over 8,000m, reached on top of his 12th peak, without use of supplementary oxygen.

Kashif Salman, father of 20-year-old Shehroze Kashif, told this correspondent that Shehroze reached the summit of Gasherbrum-1 at 4:09am PKT on Friday morning. Shehroze also completed the feat of scaling all five 8-thousanders in Pakistan as the youngest mountaineer.

He surpassed Britain’s 21-year-old Adriana Brownlee’s record of scaling 10 peaks of 8,000m just after 12 days of her achieving the feat.

With 10 peaks already to his credit, Shehroze is now eyeing to summit the world’s 6th highest mountain Cho Oyu (8,188m), 7th highest mountain Dhaulagiri-1 (8,167m) and 14th highest peak Shishapangma (8,027m) this year before going to Annapurna-1 in March next year.

Shehroze is also known as “The Broad Boy”, a title he got after scaling world’s 12th highest mountain The Broad Peak in 2019 at the age at the age of 17.

Dubai-based Pakistani mountaineer Naila Kiani became the first Pakistani woman to scale three peaks of over 8,000m when she reached the top of G-1 at around 7:45am Pakistan time.

“Summit, Alhamdulilah,” she texted via her satellite device. “Unbelievable, only three weeks after K2. It was harder than K2. No rope on most technical sections,” she added. This is her third peak of over 8,000m, all inside Pakistan, making her first Pakistani woman to summit three of 14 such peaks in the world.

Naila, mother of two, had summited 8,034m world’s 13th highest mountain Gasherbrum-1 in 2021 before summiting 8,611m K2, the second tallest mountain in the world last month. She had reached the top of K2 moments after Samina Baig – the first Pakistani woman to summit K2 – and became the second to achieve the feat.

Naila is also first Pakistani woman having achieved a feat of double-header by summiting K2 and Gasherbrum-1 in span of 20 days. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s acclaimed mountaineer Sirbaz Ali Khan got one step closer to his target of becoming the first Pakistani to summit all fourteen 8-thousanders in the world when he took his tally to 12, He has now only Shishapingma and Cho-Oyu to summit to complete his mission summit 14.

His summit manager Saad Munawar confirmed on his social media account that Sirbaz had reached the top at around 7:30am PKT and summitted the mountain without supplementary oxygen.

“Alhamdulilah, another historic achievement as Sirbaz Khan raises the green flag on a record 12th 8,000-meter summit as he summited Gasherbrum-1, today at 7.30am (local time). Sirbaz summited the mountain without using supplementary oxygen. With this summit, Sirbaz has now summited all 8,000-meter peaks in Pakistan and Nepal,” he said.

“Sirbaz also led a three-member Pakistani team that saw Sohail Sakhi achieved his first 8,000m summit without using supplementary oxygen,” Saad added.

Sirbaz kicked off his excursion “Summit 14” by scaling Nanga Parbat in autumn of 2017 then he moved to climb K2 in summer of 2018. In 2019, he scaled Lhotse, Broad Peak, Manaslu.

The Covid-19 pandemic did not allow Sirbaz to opt for any summit in 2020 but he returned to mountains in 2021 and reached the top of Mt. Annapurna, the same season he summited Everest before returning to Pakistan and summit Gasherbrum-2 in summer of 2021.

Earlier this year, Sirbaz had scaled Makalu (8,463m) and Kanchenjunga (8,586m). “Mission Summit 14 might have started as a personal goal but now there is so much more attached to it and I am fully committed to winning honor and pride for my country, my people, and especially the underprivileged mountaineering community of Pakistan,” said Sirbaz earlier this year. Meanwhile, Sajid Sadpara and Imtiaz Sadpara have also summited Gasherbrum-1 on Friday. Both Sajid and Imtiaz achieved the feat without the use of supplementary oxygen.