A 73-year-old
Japanese woman climbed to Mount Everest's peak Saturday, smashing her
own record to again become the oldest woman to scale the world's highest
mountain.
Tamae Watanabe reached Everest's 8,850-meter-high (29,035-foot-high)
summit from the northern side of the mountain in Tibet on Saturday
morning with four other team members, said Ang Tshering of the China
Tibet Mountaineering Association in Nepal.
Watanabe had climbed Everest in 2002 at the age of 63 to
become the oldest woman to scale the mountain. She had retained the
title until she topped herself a decade later.
Tshering said Watanabe and the other team members are in good condition and are on their way back to the base of the mountain.
Watanabe and her team left the last high altitude camp located at
8,300 meters (27,225 feet) Friday night and climbed all night before
reaching the summit Saturday morning.
Weather conditions have improved on the mountains this week.
Teams have begun reaching the summit even from the Nepalese side in
the southern of the mountain, according to Nepal's mountaineering
department.
The first teams from the Nepalese side reached the summit on Friday, and many more reached the summit on Saturday morning.
Weather conditions on the mountain have been challenging this year,
prompting several expeditions to cancel their plans to try to reach the
summit.
May
is considered the best month to climb Everest, when climbers get about
two windows of good weather for their bid for the summit.
The oldest person to climb Everest is a Nepalese man, Min Bahadur Sherchan, who climbed Everest in 2008 at the age of 76.