Register
everest — Mount Everest 3D Map by Tom Patterson, with Spanish annotation, based on data from the US National Snow and Ice Da…

everest

The 7 summits

How many people have climbed Everest?

← All FAQs

By the end of 2025 the Himalayan Database held 13,737 ascents of Everest by 7,563 different people. Spring 2026 added about 1,008 more, a record for one season, all of them from Nepal because China kept the Tibetan side closed. That takes the running total past 14,700 ascents, until the database publishes its own count for 2026.

Ascents and people

Just over half of all ascents, 7,081, were made by hired climbers, nearly all of them Sherpas, many of whom summit several times in a season. Kami Rita Sherpa reached the top for the 32nd time in May 2026, more than anyone else. The climbers who hire them, called members in the database, account for the other 6,656. Women members have made 1,047 of those ascents.

Nepal or Tibet

Most ascents are from Nepal: 9,887 by the South Col route and its variants, against 3,850 from Tibet, to the end of 2025. That is 72% from Nepal and 28% from Tibet, and the gap keeps growing. In 2000 Nepal had 62% of the climbers on the mountain and in 2007 59%, but China closed its side in 2008 for the Olympic torch relay to the summit, and to foreign climbers from 2020 to 2023, and many operators moved to Nepal for good. China also caps the north side at around 300 permits a season, while Nepal sets no limit. By 2019 Nepal had about 75% of the traffic, and in spring 2026 every ascent came from Nepal. How the two routes compare, from the approach to the evacuation options, is in our guide: choosing your route, with the Nepal route and the Tibet route described camp by camp.

Of everyone who has set out for the top, 43% reached it, and 339 people have died on the mountain: 229 on the Nepal side and 110 on the Tibet side. Per 100 summits the two sides are almost level, 1.07 deaths against 1.05.

The other routes

The two standard routes, the Southeast Ridge from Nepal and the Northeast Ridge from Tibet, carry 98.6% of all ascents. Only 187 ascents, 1.4%, have come by any other line, yet those routes account for 70 of the 339 deaths, about one in five. The best known:

  • West Ridge, 1963: Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, who went down by the South Col and made the first traverse of the mountain.

  • Southwest Face, 1975: Dougal Haston and Doug Scott, on Chris Bonington's British expedition.

  • North Face, 1980: Reinhold Messner, alone and without bottled oxygen, during the monsoon.

  • East (Kangshung) Face, 1983: an American expedition.

  • Southwest Face, 2009: a new line by a Korean team, the last new route to the summit so far.

The seasons

Everest is a spring mountain. To the end of 2024, 12,573 of 12,884 summits, 97.5%, were made in spring, against 287 in autumn and only nine in summer. The window opens in May, when the jet stream that blasts the summit all winter moves away ahead of the monsoon: 81.5% of all summits fell between 15 and 27 May, and 23 May alone has seen 12% of them. Since 2000 more than 99% of summits have been in spring. Autumn, after the monsoon, brings deeper snow and colder, shorter days. Winter is rarer still; the first winter ascent was by Leszek Cichy and Krzysztof Wielicki of Poland on 17 February 1980.

Our own records say the same. Of the 834 Everest ascents in our finisher records with a known month, 786 (94%) were in May, 18 in June and 25 in September or October. The month by month count for every peak is on our statistics page.

The first ascent

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on 29 May 1953, from Nepal. Everest is one of the 7 summits, so every climber on the finisher lists has been there too. The story from the first surveys to today is in our guide: history of the mountain.

Where the numbers come from

← Back to all FAQs