Growing up in the remote village of Makalu in eastern Nepal, Lhakpa Sherpa could see Mount Everest every day. But while the world’s highest peak stood before her, the path to it seemed impossible.
Born in 1973 into a family of yak herders, Lhakpa was one of 11 children. In her village, girls were not sent to school, so while her brothers received an education, she spent her childhood tending yaks and helping her family survive.
Her mother believed climbing mountains was no place for a girl and often called her a “tomboy.” Yet whenever her father worked as a porter for mountaineering expeditions, young Lhakpa would accompany him, quietly learning the mountains long before she ever dreamed of conquering them.
With no formal mountaineering training, Lhakpa learned the only way she could—by working.
She began as a porter, carrying heavy loads through the Himalayas, observing experienced Sherpas, understanding changing weather, mastering high-altitude terrain and building extraordinary endurance with every expedition. The mountains became her classroom.
Her breakthrough came in 2000, when she became the first Nepali woman to summit Mount Everest and return safely. What followed was a career that rewrote mountaineering history. Over the years, she kept returning to Everest, not for fame but because the mountains were where she felt most alive. In 2026, she completed her 11th successful ascent of Mount Everest, extending her own world record as the woman with the most Everest summits in history. She has also successfully climbed K2, the world’s second-highest and one of its most dangerous mountains.
During one of her Everest expeditions, Lhakpa met Romanian-American climber Gheorghe Dijmărescu, and the two eventually married and moved to the United States. But life away from the mountains proved far more difficult than life on them.
Despite becoming a world-record mountaineer, she found herself working ordinary jobs—including cleaning homes and later at Whole Foods—to support her family and fund her expeditions. Behind the scenes, she endured years of physical and emotional abuse before making the courageous decision to leave the marriage and raise her daughters as a single mother. Even as she continued breaking records on Everest, few people around her knew they were living alongside one of the greatest mountaineers in history.
Her remarkable journey has earned global recognition. In 2016, she was named among the BBC 100 Women, celebrating the world’s most inspiring and influential women. She was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 2022, and her life became the subject of the acclaimed Netflix documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which went on to win a Peabody Award in 2024.
For most people, climbing Mount Everest once is the achievement of a lifetime. Lhakpa Sherpa climbed it eleven times. Yet perhaps her greatest ascent wasn’t to the top of the world’s highest mountain—it was rising above poverty, prejudice, violence and invisibility, carrying her dreams higher each time the world expected her to stop.
References:
https://www.hikingwithlhakpa.com/
