Eight-thousander

Cho Oyu, Lhotse, Makalu and Mount Everest as seen from the International Space Station

Flight over Khumbu-region; six eight-thousanders and some seven-thousanders (three identified) are visible

Graph of the 30 highest peaks with more than 500 m prominence

The eight-thousanders are the 14 independent^[1] mountains on Earth that are more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) high above sea level. All eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia. They are the mountains whose summits are in the death zone.

The first recorded attempt on an eight-thousander was when Albert F. Mummery and J. Norman Collie tried to climb Pakistan's Nanga Parbat in 1895. The attempt failed when Mummery and two Gurkhas, Ragobir and Goman Singh, were killed by an avalanche.^[2]

The first recorded successful ascent of an eight-thousander was by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, who reached the summit of Annapurna on June 3, 1950.^[3]

The first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders was Reinhold Messner, who completed this task on October 16, 1986. A year later, in 1987, Jerzy Kukuczka became the second climber to accomplish this feat. Messner had summitted each of the 14 peaks without the aid of supplemental oxygen. This feat was not repeated until nine years later by Erhard Loretan in 1995. Phurba Tashi of Nepal has completed the most climbs of the eight-thousanders, with 30 ascents between 1998 and 2011.^[4] Juanito Oiarzabal has completed the second most, with a total of 25 times between 1985 and 2011.^[5]

The countries with the highest number of climbers that have climbed all 14 eight-thousanders are Italy and South Korea, with five climbers each, followed by Spain, with four climbers. Kazakhstan, Poland have three climbers each that completed the "Crown of the Himalaya". The first woman who claimed to have summited all 14 eight-thousanders was Oh Eun-Sun of South Korea, stating she completed the set by summiting Annapurna on April 27, 2010.^[6] Doubts about this claim have been raised by several parties and an inquiry by the Korean Alpine Federation (KAF) declared her summit claim for Kangchenjunga 2009 "unlikely". Their doubts add to those previously brought forward by rival Edurne Pasaban, which moved Himalayan chronicler Elizabeth Hawley in the spring of 2010 to tag the summit as "disputed".^[7] Later in 2010, Edurne Pasaban was declared the first woman to climb all 14 eight-thousanders.^[8]

In August 2011, Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to climb the 14 eight-thousanders without the use of supplementary oxygen.^[9][10]

List of Eight-thousanders

Peak	Height [11]	Location [11]	First ascent [11]	First summiter(s) [11]	First ascent in winter	First summiter(s) in winter	Ascents [12]	Deaths [12]	Death rate [12]	Death rate before 1990[13] graph	Death rate 1990–2003 [13] graph change
Everest	8848 m (29,029 ft)	Nepal/  China	29 May 1953	Edmund Hillary  Tenzing Norgay	17 Feb 1980	Krzysztof Wielicki Leszek Cichy	5656	223	3.9%	37%	4.4%
K2	8611 m (28,251 ft)	Pakistan/ China[14]	31 Jul 1954	Achille Compagnoni Lino Lacedelli			306	81	26.5%	41%	19.7%
Kangchenjunga	8586 m (28,169 ft)	Nepal/ India[15]	25 May 1955	George Band Joe Brown	11 Jan 1986	Krzysztof Wielicki Jerzy Kukuczka	283	40	14.1%	21%	22%
Lhotse	8516 m (27,940 ft)	Nepal/  China	18 May 1956	Fritz Luchsinger Ernst Reiss	31 Dec 1988	Krzysztof Wielicki	461	13	2.8%	14%	2%
Makalu	8485 m (27,838 ft)	Nepal/  China	15 May 1955	Jean Couzy Lionel Terray	9 Feb 2009	Simone Moro Denis Urubko	361	31	8.6%	16%	8.5%
Cho Oyu	8201 m (26,906 ft)	Nepal/  China	19 Oct 1954	Joseph Joechler Pasang Dawa Lama Herbert Tichy	12 Feb 1985	Maciej Berbeka Maciej Pawlikowski	3138	44	1.4%
Dhaulagiri I	8167 m (26,795 ft)	Nepal	13 May 1960	Kurt Diemberger Peter Diener Nawang Dorje Nima Dorje Ernst Forrer Albin Schelbert	21 Jan 1985	Andrzej Czok Jerzy Kukuczka	448	69	15.4%	31%	11%
Manaslu	8163 m (26,781 ft)	Nepal	9 May 1956	Toshio Imanishi Gyalzen Norbu	12 Jan 1984	Maciej Berbeka Ryszard Gajewski	661	65	9.8%	35.16%	13.42%
Nanga Parbat	8126 m (26,660 ft)	Pakistan	3 Jul 1953	Hermann Buhl			335	68	20.30%	77%	5.5%
Annapurna I	8091 m (26,545 ft)	Nepal	3 Jun 1950	Maurice Herzog Louis Lachenal	3 Feb 1987	Jerzy Kukuczka Artur Hajzer	191	61	32%	66%	19.7%
Gasherbrum I (Hidden Peak)	8080 m (26,444 ft)	Pakistan/  China	5 Jul 1958	Andrew Kauffman Pete Schoening	9 Mar 2012	Adam Bielecki Janusz Gołąb	334	29	8.7%	15.5%	8.75%
Broad Peak	8051 m (26,414 ft)	Pakistan/  China	09 Jun 1957	Fritz Wintersteller Marcus Schmuck Kurt Diemberger Hermann Buhl	5 Mar 2013	Maciej Berbeka Adam Bielecki Tomasz Kowalski Artur Małek	404	21	5.2%	5%	8.6%
Gasherbrum II	8035 m (26,362 ft)	Pakistan/  China	7 Jul 1956	Fritz Moravec Josef Larch Hans Willenpart	2 Feb 2011	Simone Moro Denis Urubko Cory Richards	930	21	2.3%	7.8%	0.44%
Shishapangma	8027 m (26,335 ft)	China	2 May 1964	Hsu Ching Chang Chun-yen Wang Fuzhou Chen San Cheng Tien-liang Wu Tsung-yue Sodnam Doji Migmar Trashi Doji Yonten	14 Jan 2005	Piotr Morawski Simone Moro	302	25	8.3%	2%	16.8%

Climbers with Verified Ascents of All 14 Eight-thousanders

Field O₂ lists people who have climbed all 14 without bottled oxygen.

Order accomplished [16]	All without O2 (order)	Name	Period	Born	Age	Nationality
1	1	Reinhold Messner	1970–1986	1944	42	Italian
2		Jerzy Kukuczka	1979–1987 (deceased)	1948	39	Polish
3	2	Erhard Loretan	1982–1995 (deceased)	1959	36	Swiss
4	[17]	Carlos Carsolio	1985–1996	1962	33	Mexican
5		Krzysztof Wielicki	1980–1996	1950	46	Polish
6	3	Juanito Oiarzabal	1985–1999	1956	43	Spanish
7		Sergio Martini	1983–2000	1949	51	Italian
8		Young-Seok Park	1993–2001 (deceased)[18]	1963	38	Korean
9		Hong-Gil Um	1988–2001	1960[19]	40	Korean
10	4	Alberto Iñurrategi	1991-2002[20]	1968	33	Spanish
11		Wang-Yong Han	1994–2003	1966	37	Korean
12	5[21]	Ed Viesturs	1989–2005	1959	46	American
13	6[22][23][24]	Silvio Mondinelli	1993–2007	1958	49	Italian
14	7[25]	Ivan Vallejo	1997–2008	1959	49	Ecuador
15	8[26]	Denis Urubko	2000–2009	1973	35	Kazakhstan
16		Ralf Dujmovits	1990–2009	1961[27]	47	German
17	9	Veikka Gustafsson	1993–2009	1968	41	Finnish
18[28]		Andrew Lock	1993–2009	1961[29]	48	Australian
19	10	João Garcia	1993–2010	1967	43	Portuguese
20[30]		Piotr Pustelnik	1990–2010	1951	58	Polish
21[31]		Edurne Pasaban	2001–2010	1973	36	Spanish
22[32]		Abele Blanc	1992–2011[33][34]	1954	56	Italian
23		Mingma Sherpa	2000–2011[33]	1978	33	Nepal
24	11	Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner	1998–2011[33]	1970	40	Austria
25		Vassily Pivtsov	2001–2011[33]	1975	36	Kazakhstan
26	12	Maxut Zhumayev	2001–2011[33]	1977	34	Kazakhstan
27		Jae-Soo Kim	2000–2011[33]	1961	50	Korean
28[35]	13	Mario Panzeri	1988–2012	1964	48	Italian
29[36]		Hirotaka Takeuchi	1995–2012[36]	1971	41	Japanese
30		Chhang Dawa Sherpa	2001–2013[33]	1982	30	Nepal
31	14	Kim Chang-Ho	2005–2013[33]	1970	43	Korean
32		Jorge Egocheaga	2002–2014[37]	1968	45	Spanish
33	15	Radek Jaroš	1998–2014[33]	1964	50	Czech

Disputed

Claims in which not enough evidence was provided to verify the ascents of all 14 peaks. The disputed ascent in each claim is shown in parentheses.

Name	Period	Born	Age	Nationality
Fausto De Stefani (Lhotse 1997)[38]	1983–1998	1952	46	Italy
Alan Hinkes (Cho Oyu 1990)[39][40]	1987–2005	1954	53	British
Vladislav Terzyul (Shishapangma 2000)[41][42]	1993–2002 (deceased)	1953	49	Ukrainian
Eun-Sun Oh (Kangchenjunga 2009)[43][44][45][46]	1997–2010	1966	44	Korean
Carlos Pauner (Shishapangma 2012)[47]	2001–2013	1963	50	Spanish

Gallery

• 

  No. 1 – Everest

• 

  No. 2 – K2

• 

  No. 3 – Kangchenjunga

• 

  No. 4 – Lhotse

• 

  No. 5 – Makalu

• 

  No. 6 – Cho Oyu

• 

  No. 7 – Dhaulagiri

• 

  No. 8 – Manaslu

• 

  No. 9 – Nanga Parbat

• 

  No. 10 – Annapurna

• 

  No. 11 – Gasherbrum I

• 

  No. 12 – Broad Peak

• 

  No. 13 – Gasherbrum II

• 

  No. 14 – Shishapangma

Comparison of the heights of the Eight-thousanders (red triangles) with the Seven Summits and Seven Second Summits.

See also

• Explorers Grand Slam, also known as The Adventurers Grand Slam
• List of deaths on eight-thousanders
• List of highest mountains
• List of Mount Everest summiters by number of times to the summit
• List of ski descents of Eight-Thousanders
• Seven Second Summits
• Seven Summits
• Three Poles Challenge
• Volcanic Seven Summits

References

External links

• Site dedicated to the 8000m peaks and mountaineers
• Pictures of 8'000 meter peaks
• Map in GeoFinder.ch showing the locations of the main summits
• The Eight-Thousanders
• Map in MapsCamp showing the locations of the main summits