Kami Rita Sherpa, 55, reached the summit of the tallest mountain in the world for a record 31st time on Tuesday. He broke his own record of most climbs to the top of Everest. 

The famed Sherpa guide made it to Everest's 8,849-metre peak while leading a team of 22 Indian-army members and 27 fellow Sherpas. Since his first climb in 1994, Kami Rita has summitted Everest nearly every year, guiding foreign climbers in the gruelling, and often dangerous, trek up to the top of the world. 

In the decades since Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to receive credit for summitting Everest in 1953, more than 8,000 people have made the climb. Around 700 to 1,000 people attempt to scale the mountain every year with success rates ranging from 60 to 70 per cent. 

Kami Rita's monumental summit reflects the crucial role of the Sherpas — an ethnic group indigenous to the Himalayan region — in keeping foreign climbers safe during the often weeks-long journey to the peak. 

Sherpas have long been associated with Everest, known for their ability to withstand high altitudes due to physiological adaptations. As wealthy foreigners flocked to the Himalayan region looking to check the iconic summit off their bucket lists, an industry began to grow, providing a new source of income in a country that has historically been poverty stricken. 

David Morton, a climber and a co-founder of the Juniper Fund, an organization that supports high-altitude Sherpa workers in the event of an accidental death on the job, said that while things have changed in the last 15 to 20 years, many Sherpas still work as porters, ferrying the equipment of foreign climbers up and down the mountain. 

Morton, who personally knows Kami Rita, said that more Sherpas have been able to find better paying work as guides in recent years — establishing camps and fixing routes as opposed to just functioning as load-bearers. But there are still many "inadequacies" in how the work is compensated, especially when a worker dies during a climb, he said. 

He said the families of Sherpa workers who have died during a climb only receive up to $15,000 US in compensation from the Nepali government. 

According to the Himalayan Database, an archive of all Himalayan summit expeditions and attempts over the past century, approximately 340 people have died trying to climb Mount Everest. Nearly one-third of those deaths were Sherpa workers. 

In the 2025 season alone, which began in early April, four climbers have died so far, two of them being Sherpa workers, according to a report from Outside Magazine. 

Morton said Kami Rita and his brother Lakpa Rita Sherpa, who is also a Sherpa guide and has scaled Mount Everest 17 times, have been able to support their small community of Thame in Nepal through the global recognition they've received from setting and breaking climbing records, and continue to do so through the access they've gained to foreigners.