An 18-year-old high school student from Melbourne became the youngest Australian to climb to the top of Mount Everest on Wednesday.
According to her Garmin data and a post on Instagram, Bianca Adler reached the 8,849 metre summit at nearly 6.30am Melbourne time, and nearly 2.30am Nepal time, with her guides, Pemba and Ngdu.
Adler was accompanied for part of the journey by her parents, Paul and Fiona, who are also keen mountain climbers.
In videos posted on a blog set up for Adler’s trip, Adler told her father over a radio call that when she reached the summit she was feeling “really good but the weather is really bad”.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email“It’s amazing what you’ve done and so much hard work – it’s amazing,” her father told her.
“Thanks Dad,” Adler replied. “I feel really good up here. Physically I feel really great.”
Later on Adler said it was tougher coming down from the summit, according to a post on her Instagram account, which included a selfie of her at camp 4.
“I felt like I needed to be so much more cautious and it was a lot of work clipping around people,” she said in a post on the family’s site. “Also the part from the South Summit to the summit is really technical at parts – much more than the rocks before the South Summit.”
Adler said there were large queues with about a dozen people at the time, “so it was pretty tough getting around them while staying clipped in”.
Nepal’s department of mountaineering reported 410 foreign climbers had been issued with permits to attempt to climb the Mount Everest summit in the spring season, which will end this month. The fee to climb Mount Everest is US$15,000.
Adler was resting at camp 4 as of Wednesday afternoon, and plans to start climbing down to camp 2.
It was Adler’s second attempt, after turning back 400 metres from the summit in May last year due to strong winds. At the time, Adler said on Instagram it was an “extremely tough” but devastating decision.
“But I always want to choose life over a potential summit.”
Paul Adler climbed Mount Everest in 2007, while Fiona climbed the summit in 2006. The couple received a letter from then prime minister John Howard congratulating them as they were reaching the summit.
Her father told the ABC on Wednesday Adler’s parents were “extremely proud” of her, and her next goal once returning to Melbourne would be getting through Year 12.
