A British climber has improved his own Everest record and notched his 20th ascent of the world's highest mountain, hiking officials say.
Kenton Cool, 52, climbed the 8,849m peak and was descending to lower camps, said Ishwori Poudel of the expedition organising company Himalayan Guides.
Cool is "quietly rewriting the record books," said four-time Everest climber and expedition organiser Lukas Furtenbach of the Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures company.
"More Everest summits than any non-Sherpa ever, and still making it look like just another walk in the hills. Absolute legend," Furtenbach said from the base camp.
Cool climbed with one of Furtenbach's teams.
Cool, who first climbed Everest in 2004 and has since repeated the feat every year except some years when the authorities closed the mountain due to various reasons, said scaling Everest was not routine.
"It never gets any easier or any less frightening. It's the tallest mountain in the world and with it comes an incredible sense of majesty," he said in a statement.
"I rely on every bit of experience I have to move safely in this environment," he said. "Standing on the summit for the twentieth time is incredibly special."
Everest has been climbed by more than 8000 people, many of them multiple times, since it was first scaled by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
with Reuters
