SHE CLIMBS PAST FEAR

For Lhakpa Sherpa, the only woman to have summited Mount Everest ten times, the real ascent has been finding peace, purpose and power in a world that once overlooked her

- By Chong Seow Wei. Photography by Zed Leets

In the death zone, over 8,000m above sea level, where air thins dangerously and the human body begins to shut down, Lhakpa Sherpa keeps climbing.

The Nepali mountaineer has stood atop Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak at 8,849m, ten times—more than any other woman in history. Her greatest summits, though, may not be those of snow and ice, but of survival, resilience and willpower, as well as an unshakable belief that the mountain is both teacher and healer.

“Everest fix my soul—it is my doctor, my big boss,” she says, in her personal dialect of English, which her friends have affectionately termed “Lhakpa-lese”. “Children go to school and say they love their teacher. I say, I love my Everest.”

We are having this conversation in Singapore, which she is visiting for the first time. She arrived with characteristic enthusiasm, immediately scanning the skyline for peaks that weren't there. “I love Singapore, very clean and very natural. And beautiful people,” she says, though she admits to being slightly disappointed that the only “mountain” is really just a hill 94m high.

It's a telling moment that captures something essential about extreme athleticism—the profound psychological relationship with pushing beyond perceived limits. Even on a brief three-day visit to speak at the Tatler Ball Asia 2025 and receive the Tatler Impact Award for Sports, accompanied by her youngest child, Shiny, Sherpa's mind turns instinctively towards the vertical.

Born in 1973 in a cave in Balakharka, in Nepal's Makalu region, Sherpa's path to becoming an extreme athlete began with ambition. Growing up in a village without electricity southeast of Mount Everest, she was denied a formal education, which was reserved for boys at the time. At 15, she began working as a porter, disguising herself to secure employment in a male-dominated field.