Gangaamaa Badamgarav: Mongolia’s first 7 summiteer

Gangaamaa Badamgarav was the first Mongolian to complete the 7 summits, on Vinson in December 2016, and in July 2018 she became the first Mongolian on top of K2. Mongolia has put her on a postage stamp and a silver coin since. She guides for a living, and runs her own expedition company in Ulaanbaatar.

A herding family in Zavkhan, and Otgontenger

She was born in Tosontsengel, in Zavkhan province in the north-west of Mongolia, the seventh of eleven children in a herding family. Her first mountain was Otgontenger, the highest peak of the Khangai range. In 1989 a group of climbers from Ulaanbaatar came to Zavkhan to climb it. She asked the leader if she could join, he asked whether she could climb, and she said she could. She reached the top.

She trained as a microbiologist and worked for nine years at the inspection agency of Orkhon province, climbing whenever she could. She became a Master of Sports in 1997 and an International Master of Sports in 2006. In 2017 she added a second degree, as a sports coach, at the Mongolian National University of Education.

Everest at the second attempt

In 2006 she organised and led the first Mongolian women's expedition to Everest. Her teammate Dorjpalam Erdenetogtokh came closest, 168 m551 ft below the summit. Gangaamaa went back on her own and stood on top on 21 May 2011, the first Mongolian woman to do so. A presidential decree made her a State Honored Athlete of Mongolia the same year.

The 7 summits in seven years

Everest was the second of the seven. Elbrus had come first, in 2010, and Kilimanjaro followed in 2012. Denali took three attempts before she summited in 2015, and she has called it her hardest climb after Everest.

On Aconcagua she was guiding a client from Hong Kong. They waited more than a week through storms with winds of 70 to 90 km/h, and her client went home. Gangaamaa stayed, and when the wind dropped to about 50 km/h she went up alone, reaching the summit on 13 January 2016. Before Carstensz Pyramid she joked that the Mongol khans had never won a war at sea, so Oceania was hers to take. She climbed it on 8 July 2016, Kosciuszko nine days later, and Vinson in December, which completed both versions of the list.

K2, five years apart

Her first K2 expedition, in 2013, coincided with the loss of three Iranian climbers she knew on neighbouring Broad Peak. She stopped her own climb there at 6,200 m20,341 ft to help search for them. On K2 an avalanche swept the route, and she turned round at 6,300 m20,669 ft. "No peak is worth a human life," she said afterwards.

She went back in 2018. Bad weather above the fourth camp nearly sent every team down, and when the leader asked who wanted to go on, she answered first that she wanted the summit. She reached it at 11:00 Ulaanbaatar time on 21 July 2018, the first Mongolian on K2 after two earlier Mongolian attempts.

A stamp, a coin and a book

In March 2018 Mongol Post issued a 1,500 tögrög souvenir sheet in her honour, with paintings of all eight peaks around the words "The first Mongolian seven summiteer". The first-day cover is dated 19 March 2018.

In 2022 the Bank of Mongolia followed with a coin for K2. It is 500 tögrög, one ounce of .999 silver, struck as a proof in an edition of 300, with her portrait in front of the mountain.

She wrote her memoir, Амола (Amola), at home during the 2020 lockdown, and it came out in Mongolian early in 2021. It covers 30 years in the mountains, from Zavkhan to the summits of Everest and K2.

Her other honours

She holds the Order of the Polar Star, a high state award, and the Golden Star of both the Mongolian National Olympic Committee and the state sports agency. She won the Börte Chono award as athlete of the year for 2011 and the Mongolian National Mountaineering Federation's Golden Hammer in 2018. The Mongolian Youth Federation gave her its Glory of Courage, and Zavkhan made her an honorary citizen.

Guiding at home and abroad

She has guided since 2002, from 2006 for Mongolia Expeditions on Khüiten, at 4,374 m14,350 ft the highest peak in Mongolia, which she has climbed more than fifty times. She also led international teams up two unclimbed Mongolian peaks. One is now called Gangaa Peak; the other, Mount Zuchi, is named after Jochi, the eldest son of Chinggis Khaan.

Today she runs Gangaamaa Expeditions, which began in 1997 as the Ganga-Everest Foundation. It takes Mongolian and foreign climbers to Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro and Elbrus as well as into the Altai, and she sits on the board of the Mongolian National Mountaineering Federation.