Briton Kenton Cool makes 20th Everest ascent, most by a foreigner

KATHMANDU – A British climber improved his own Mount Everest record on May 22 and notched his 20th ascent of the world’s highest peak, as the season’s death toll on the mountain increased to four.

Mr Kenton Cool, 52, climbed the 8,849m peak before dawn and was descending to lower camps, said Mr Ishwori Poudel of the expedition organising company Himalayan Guides.

An Indian climber died at Everest Camp II on May 22, Department of Tourism official Nisha Thapa Rawat said without giving details. With this, the death toll on Everest during the current season ending in May rose to four.

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, and still making it look like just another walk in the hills. Absolute legend,” Mr Furtenbach said from the base camp.

Mr Cool climbed with one of Mr Furtenbach’s teams.

Mr Cool, who first climbed Everest in 2004 and has since repeated the feat every year except some years when the authorities closed the mountain due to various reasons, said scaling the height of Everest was not routine.

“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,” he said in a statement.

“I rely on every bit of experience I have to move safely in this environment,” said Mr Cool. “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, Mr 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. REUTERS