Babu Chhiri Sherpa: 25 Years On, the Mountain Still Holds His Record

On April 29, 2001, at around four in the afternoon, Babu Chhiri Sherpa told the people at Camp II that he was going to take some photographs nearby. He had climbed Everest ten times. He held two world records on the mountain. He was 35 years old, with six daughters at home in Kathmandu and a school he had fought to build in his home village finally standing in the hills of Solukhumbu.

He walked out toward the Western Cwm with his camera.

When he had not returned by nine that evening, his brother Dawa went looking. By midnight, expedition leader Willi Benegas and head Sherpa Pemba Gyalzen had joined the search. They found Babu’s footprints in the snow, leading to a crevasse its surface concealed by fresh snowfall, visible only because of the hole where someone had fallen through. Benegas descended ten metres into the ice. He found the body. He confirmed what no one wanted to confirm.

His death was reported in the media around the world and tributes poured in. King Birendra of Nepal sent a message of condolence declaring that Babu’s demise had caused irreparable loss to the nation and to the mountaineering fraternity.

Twenty-five years later, on April 30, 2026, members of the Everest Climbers’ Association, the Babu Chhiri Sherpa Foundation, family members, and fellow mountaineers gathered at his memorial statue at Tilganga, Gaushala in Kathmandu. Prayers were offered following Buddhist rituals. Garlands were laid. Lamps were lit. His name was spoken aloud by people who loved him, worked alongside him, and were shaped by him and by the generation of Nepali mountaineers who came after, who knew him only through the records he left on the mountain.

The records are still there. The mountain still holds them. So does the memory.

A Boy from Solukhumbu Who Had No School

Babu Chhiri Sherpa was born on June 22, 1966, in Chhilemu, a remote village in Taksindu, Solukhumbu District, in eastern Nepal. His parents, Lhakpa Sherpa and Pasi Sherpa, lived the traditional life of mountain people moving with their cattle between higher elevations in summer and lower areas in winter. There was no school in his village, so Babu never received formal education as a child. This lack of schooling would trouble him throughout his life, but it also gave him the determination to ensure other children would have opportunities he never had.

He began working as a trekking porter at fifteen. Not unusual for a Sherpa boy from Solukhumbu the mountains provided work, the mountains provided income, and in the 1980s the trekking industry was growing fast enough to employ everyone who wanted to carry a load up a hill. He progressed rapidly from porter to cook boy, and then to a high-altitude climbing Sherpa, making his first Everest summit on October 6, 1990, with French mountaineer Marc Batard.

What happened between that first summit in 1990 and his death in 2001 is one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of mountaineering and one of the least told outside Nepal.

Ten Summits. Two World Records. No Supplemental Oxygen.

Babu Chhiri is considered one of the greatest mountaineers ever. He summited Mount Everest ten times and is recognised as one of the strongest climbers in the Himalayas. He set two world records on Everest during the spring season: spending more than 21 hours on the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen still a record and climbing Everest from the south side in the fastest time ever recorded: 16 hours and 56 minutes.

But the numbers understate the reality. Most Everest climbers spend less than thirty minutes at the summit just long enough to take a photograph, confirm the view, and begin the far more dangerous process of descent. At 8,848 metres, the air contains roughly one-third of the oxygen available at sea level. The human body at the summit is operating under conditions that begin killing it within minutes if it stops moving.

Babu Chhiri stayed for twenty-one hours.

In 1999, Babu embarked on a mission to prove that a person could spend the night on the summit of Everest without the use of oxygen tanks. Mountain Hardware specially designed a tent, sleeping bag, and mattress to withstand the extreme conditions. Battling fierce 60mph winds and snowfall, he reached the summit with the help of two other Sherpas who assisted him in setting up the tent before leaving. Most climbers spend less than 30 minutes at the top, but Babu stayed active throughout the frigid night, chatting on the walkie-talkie and singing songs to stay awake. Doctors had warned him that falling asleep in the low-oxygen environment would be fatal. After enduring 21 hours alone on the summit, he packed up his gear and descended, setting an endurance record that still stands.

After returning to base camp, he made another complete ascent later in the same month and in May 1995, he became the first person ever to make two ascents of the mountain in the same month.

The speed record tells a different kind of story. While most climbers require two to three days to ascend from base camp to summit establishing high camps, acclimatising, waiting for weather windows Babu Chhiri covered the same distance in under seventeen hours. The mountain that humbles the world’s most prepared climbers, he moved through like weather.

The Record He Corrected Himself

Among all the details of Babu Chhiri’s career, one tells you the most about the man.

During his speed ascent in 2000, the plan was to reach the summit in 16 hours. After he completed the climb, media reports incorrectly stated that he had finished in 15 hours and 56 minutes. Later, after returning to base camp, Babu surprised everyone by correcting the record himself. He announced that he had actually taken 16 hours and 56 minutes not the faster time the media had reported. This honesty could have cost him an even greater record, but Babu valued truth over glory. His climbing partner Apa Sherpa remembered the incident clearly: “If he had stayed silent, his record would have seemed even greater. That shows his honesty.”

A man who had carried other people’s gear up the highest mountain on earth for years, who had been overlooked and underestimated and paid a fraction of what the climbers he guided received when he was given an accidental extra four minutes of glory, he gave them back.

More Than a Climber: The School and the Dream

Babu Chhiri did not think of himself primarily as a record-setter. He thought of himself as a Sherpa who had been lucky enough to see beyond the valley where he was born and who believed, deeply and practically, that education was the thing that could change what came next for the children of Solukhumbu.

He believed that Sherpas should not be limited to being servants to foreign climbers but could become leaders and entrepreneurs in their own right. He understood that education was the key to giving young Sherpas choices beyond the dangerous work of high-altitude climbing. Despite having no formal education himself, Babu Chhiri recognised that education was important for the future of his community. He was saddened that as a child there was no school in his village, and he was determined that other children would not face the same limitation.

He worked to have a school built in his home village of Taksindu. The school was completed before his death. He saw it standing. He knew the children of his village would walk through its doors.

After his death, the Babu Chhiri Sherpa Foundation was established to continue what he had started funding education, health, and the upliftment of Himalayan communities in his name. At the 25th memorial gathering in Kathmandu on Wednesday, speakers highlighted these ongoing social initiatives and the Foundation’s work attracting the younger generation to mountaineering while promoting safe climbing practices.

The school stands. The Foundation works. The records remain.

What the Mountain Took, and What It Left

Babu Chhiri Sherpa’s extraordinary achievements played a pivotal role in shifting global perceptions of Sherpas from mere porters to elite mountaineers capable of unparalleled feats. His success challenged longstanding stereotypes, demonstrating that Sherpas possessed not only endurance but also strategic climbing prowess, which inspired a new generation of Sherpa youth to pursue guiding and high-altitude climbing as professional vocations.

This is the legacy that is easy to measure: a shift in how the world saw the people who make Himalayan mountaineering possible. Before Babu Chhiri, the word “Sherpa” was still being used as a generic job description by much of the world’s mountaineering press. After him after a man who stayed twenty-one hours on the summit of Everest alone, in the dark, singing to stay alive that usage became harder to sustain. He was not background to someone else’s story. He was the story.

The legacy that is harder to measure is what happened at Tilganga, Gaushala on Wednesday morning. An ESA president who said his determination and dedication always inspired her. A Foundation vice president carrying forward work Babu started. Family members lighting lamps at a stone statue in Kathmandu, twenty-five years after the mountain took him.

He had six daughters. He corrected his own speed record. He built a school before he died. He sang on the summit of Everest to stay awake through the night.

Babu Chiri was a fine person “a gentleman,” as one frequent American Everest summiteer called him.

The records stand at 8,849 metres, where the air is thin and the cold is absolute and no one spends the night anymore. The mountain still holds them. It always will.

Babu Chhiri Sherpa: A Life in Numbers

The 25th Memorial: Wednesday, April 30, 2026

At Tilganga, Gaushala, where Babu Chhiri’s statue stands beside his memorial site, the gathering on Wednesday brought together people from every corner of Nepal’s mountaineering community.

Everest Climbers’ Association President Maya Sherpa, Senior Vice President Diwas Pokhrel, Alpine Sports Association Inc. USA President Nawang Ngima Sherpa, and Babu Chhiri Sherpa Foundation Vice President Pemba Gyaljen Sherpa attended, among others. Garlands were offered. Lamps were lit. Buddhist rituals were observed. His name was spoken by people who had known him and by people who had only known what he left behind.

Speakers recalled his contribution to promoting Nepal globally through mountaineering. They spoke of the Foundation’s education programmes, the health initiatives, and the work being done to bring a younger generation of Nepali climbers into the sport he loved with the safety awareness and professional training he wished had existed for his generation.

Twenty-five years is a long time. The records he set on Everest are older than many of the trekkers who walk past his stone memorial at Thukla Pass on the way to Base Camp, not knowing whose name is carved there.

Now they can know.

The Explore All About Nepal team is based in Kathmandu. We cover Nepal’s mountain culture, people, and history from the ground. Read our full feature on the Sherpa people their history, culture, and the world they built in the Himalayan valleys linked below.