Babu Chiri Sherpa, born in Nepal in 1965, became a Himalayan trekking porter when he was just 15 years old and he died in 2001 while taking pictures and falling into a crevasse on his 11th climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
Although he earned very little money as a porter, he never gave up and worked hard to climb the ranks. At the age of 23, he finally had his big break when he was selected as a climbing Sherpa for an expedition to Kangchenjunga, the third-highest peak in the world. To everyone’s surprise, he reached the summit without the use of oxygen tanks, all the while assisting his fellow climbers. Anatoli Boukreev, a renowned climber, joined him on this remarkable journey.
Babu Chiri Sherpa is the only Sherpa mountaineer to spend 21 hours on the top of Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen. It’s a tremendous achievement in Everest history that still stands today. In addition, he achieved history by scaling Everest in 16 hours and 56 minutes, despite the fact that this record has previously been broken by Pemba Dorje Sherpa.
During his climbing career, he climbs Everest ten times. Babu Chirri was an environmentalist and humanitarian in addition to climbing. He worked to get a school established in his hometown, and it was eventually erected. In Kathmandu, the then-Royal Government of Nepal, headed by the Crown Prince, inaugurated the Babu Chiri Memorial Museum and built a statue of Babu Chiri.
