British climber extends his own Everest record with 20th ascent
British climber extends his own Everest record with 20th ascent
Gopal SharmaFri, May 22, 2026 at 4:11 AM UTC
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A British climber improved his own Everest record on Friday and notched his 20th ascent of the world’s highest mountain, hiking officials said.
Kenton Cool, 52, climbed the 8,849m peak before dawn and was descending to lower camps, said Ishwori Poudel of the expedition organising company Himalayan Guides.
Mr Cool is “quietly rewriting the record books”, said four-time Everest climber and expedition organiser Lukas Furtenbach of the Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures company.
“More Everest summits than any non-Sherpa ever," Mr Furtenbach told Reuters from the base camp, “and still making it look like just another walk in the hills. Absolute legend.”
Mr Cool climbed with one of Mr Furtenbach's teams.
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Mr Cool first climbed Everest in 2004 and has since repeated the feat every year except some years when authorities closed the mountain due to various reasons. He said scaling the height of Everest was not routine.
File. Kami Rita, who has climbed Mount Everest 32 times, more than anyone else in the world, poses for a picture at the base camp in Solukhumbu, Nepal, on 29 April 2026 (Reuters)
“It never gets any easier or any less frightening. It’s the tallest mountain in the world and with it comes an incredible sense of majesty,” Mr Cool said in a statement.
“I rely on every bit of experience I have to move safely in this environment. Standing on the summit for the twentieth time is incredibly special.”
The record for the highest number of summits at Everest is held by a Nepali Sherpa, Kami Rita, at 32.
Everest has been climbed by more than 8,000 people, many of them multiple times, since it was first scaled by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
Source: “AOL Sports”
