Eight-thousander
The eight-thousanders are the 14 independent mountains on Earth that are more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) high above sea level. They are all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia.
The first recorded attempt on an eight-thousander took place on the expedition by Albert F. Mummery, and J. Norman Collie to Nanga Parbat in the territory of Kashmir (in present day Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan) in 1895; this attempt failed as Mummery and two Gurkhas, Ragobir and Goman Singh, were killed by an avalanche.
The first recorded successful ascent of an eight-thousander was by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, who reached the summit of Annapurna on June 3, 1950.
The first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders was Reinhold Messner, who completed this task on October 16, 1986. A year later, in 1987, Jerzy Kukuczka became the second climber to accomplish this feat. Messner had summitted each of the 14 peaks without the aid of supplemental oxygen. This feat was not repeated until nine years later by Erhard Loretan in 1995. As of 2011, a total of 26 people have summitted all 14 peaks undisputedly. This is an extremely hazardous feat; at least four people have died while in pursuit of this goal. Phurba Tashi of Nepal has completed the most climbs of the eight-thousanders, with 26 ascents between 1998 and 2011. Juanito Oiarzabal has completed the second most, with a total of 25 times from 1985 to 2011.
The country with the highest number of climbers that have climbed all 14 eight-thousanders is Italy, with 5 climbers, followed by South Korea, with 4 climbers. Kazakhstan, Poland and Spain have 3 climbers each that completed the "Crown of the Himalaya". The first woman who claimed to have summited all 14 eight-thousanders was Oh Eun-Sun of South Korea, stating she completed the set by summiting Annapurna on April 27, 2010. Doubts about this claim have been raised by several parties and an inquiry by the Korean Alpine Federation (KAF) declared her summit claim for Kangchenjunga 2009 "unlikely". Their doubts add to those previously brought forward by rival Edurne Pasaban, which moved Himalayan chronicler Elizabeth Hawley in the spring of 2010 to tag the summit as "disputed". Later in 2010, Edurne Pasaban was declared the first woman to climb all 14 eight-thousanders.
In August 2011, Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to climb the 14 eight-thousanders without the use of supplementary oxygen.
Read more about Eight-thousander: List of Eight-thousanders, Verified Climbers Who Have Reached The Summit of All 14 Eight-thousanders, Gallery