The spring climbing season in Nepal has only just begun when the first summit success is already being reported. The commercial Nepalese expedition operator Xtreme Climbers has announced that a four-person team has made the first ascent of the 6,433-meter-high Sharphu IV not far from the eight-thousander Kangchenjunga in eastern Nepal.
The guides Lhakpa Chhiri Sherpa and Ngada Sherpa as well as the Nepalese Purnima Shrestha and the Chilean Hernan Leal had reached the highest point at 3 p.m. local time on Tuesday, it said.
Lhakpa Chhiri (Sonam) Sherpa, born in 1974 in the village of Pangboche in the Khumbu, is very experienced. He has scaled Mount Everest twelve times. Purnima Shrestha made headlines in spring 2024 when she reached the summit of Everest three times in 13 days – with bottled oxygen and Sherpa assistance.
Confusion about mountain names
It is still unclear whether this is really the first ascent of Sharphu IV. According to German Himalayan expert Günter Seyfferth, there has always been confusion in the past about the names of the six Sharphu peaks, which were officially opened for climbing only in 2002. However, there had apparently already been summit successes there in the 1960s.
The chronicle Himalayan Database attributes the first ascent of Sharphu IV to the Japanese Takayuki Tsubaki and the Nepalese Chotare Sherpa: on 20 May 1962. The height of the mountain is given there as 6,172 meters. According to the chronicle, Sharphu I is 6433 meters high – which corresponds to the height of the Sharphu IV summit that has now been climbed. However, according to the Himalayan Database, this mountain was also successfully first climbed by a Japanese expedition in the fall of 1963.
