Renowned mountain guide expected to make successful bid for summit on February 13th and will be the first Sherpa to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents

When Lakpa Rita Sherpa flies from Seattle on February 7th, 2009, bound for Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, he goes knowing he has the privilege to do what no Sherpa has done before—climb the Seven Summits—the highest peaks on every continent. The 43-year old man, from Shoreline, Washington, expects to summit the 19,340-foot peak on February 13th. The six-day climb will be the last and perhaps easiest of the Seven Summits for the experienced mountain guide. Leavenworth, Washington alpinist Joe Puryear will accompany Lakpa Rita Sherpa and will photograph and blog about the climb at clilmbafrica.blogspot.com. Sherpa Adventure Gear (sherpaadventuregear.com), a manufacturer of apparel and gear for mountain adventures, is sponsoring the climb of Kilimanjaro.

“I have been thinking to complete the Seven Summits for a long, long time,” said Lakpa Rita Sherpa, who is a professional mountain guide for Alpine Ascents International (alpineascents.com). “No Sherpa has had the opportunity to do this, and I am lucky to have the chance.” His effort to climb the Seven Summits over the years has been supported by Sherpa Adventure Gear, Alpine Ascents International, and Hafsa Al Ulama, a client and the United Arab Emirate’s best-known woman mountain climber.

Lakpa Rita Sherpa never imagined climbing the Seven Summits until he came to the United States in 2000. “Before I immigrated here, I didn’t even know the meaning of the Seven Summits,” he explained. The term and challenge was popularized in the mid-1980s; approximately 200 people are known to have stood atop the world’s highest peaks.

Lakpa Rita Sherpa, who has been climbing since 1984, knows many of those notable mountains intimately, especially Mount Everest. He first climbed the world’s tallest mountain in October 1990 and has since reached its top eleven times, always working as a guide.

Nearly ten years would pass before he would ascend to the top of Alaska’s Mount McKinley (Denali) in June 2000. Just fifteen days later, he stood atop the summit again.

Next, he traveled to South America’s Aconcagua in Argentina for his first climb, in December 2001. He spent six years there guiding aspiring summiteers to the top of the 22,841-foot peak, and during that period, reached the top 22 times.

January 2004 took Lakpa Rita Sherpa to Antarctica’s Vinson Massif, where he guided two trips to the summit. It’s a trip he knows is prohibitive for other Nepalese climbers due to the sheer expense of reaching the far-flung continent.