Pakistani climber Sirbaz Khan scales Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen
Pakistan's Sirbaz Khan scaled the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, without using any supplementary oxygen.
Sirbaz Khan, an ace mountaineer from Pakistan, achieved yet another feat when he scaled Mount Everest without any supplementary oxygen, reported local media platform Geo TV.
Sirbaz Khan reached the top of the world's highest mountain at 12:30 pm local time, and became the only second Pakistani to scale the mountain without using oxygen.
Khan had previously scaled the 8849-metre peak using bottled oxygen. The only other person in Pakistan to achieve this feat is mountaineer Sajid Sidpara.
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With another feather in his cap, Sirbaz Khan also became the first Pakistani to climb 11 peaks of over 8,000m without using oxygen support. In totality, Khan has climbed 13 peaks of 8,000 metres. Out of these 13 peaks, he only climbed Annapurna and Kangchenjunga with oxygen support.
Sirbaz earlier this year delayed his plans to summit the Shishapangma peak - his 14th and final eight-thousander - as the authorities in China refused to open up the mountain for climbing this season.
Earlier this month, Sirbaz Khan became the first Pakistani to climb over 10 of the 14 tallest summits in the world. The Alpine Club of Pakistan, the country's state-run mountaineering body, said in a statement, “Khan stood atop the summit of 8,586-m (28,169-ft) Kunchenjunga (Kangchenjunga), the world’s third-highest peak, at 7 am (local time) on Saturday (0115GMT) with other members of a team.”
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32-year-old Khan, who hails from the Hunza valley of the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, started his journey as a mountaineer in 2016 at the age of just 24. Three years later, he became the first Pakistani to summit Mount Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world, standing at a height of 8,516 m (27,940 ft). He was the first Pakistani to summit the peak without using supplementary oxygen.
Khan hopes to become the first Pakistani to climb all 14 of the highest mountains in the world, standing at over 8,000 meters. He aims to complete this by climbing Mount Makalu (on the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet region) and Gasherbrum-1 (Kashmir).