To the program of the Cuneo Montagna Festival – Tuesday 14 May, Sunday 19 May – after the great climber Tommy Caldwell, another international guest is added: on Saturday 18 May, in fact, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, the first Nepalese woman, will arrive at the festival from Nepal to obtain the mountain guide licence.
Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita was also the first woman to climb Nangpai Gosum II, a very difficult mountain on the border between Nepal and China, whose peak reaches 7300 metres. During the 2015 earthquake you offered all possible help to the populations affected by the earthquake and are doing your utmost to create a center for women’s education in Nepal.
In Cuneo – Saturday 18 May at the Cinema Monviso at 9.00 pm – Pasang will reflect on her personal successes, on her personal commitment to the mountains, and will let the public discover how much the mountains have meant to her. With an always clear ideal in mind: “Everyone has the right to follow their dreams”.
The biography
Akita was the first woman to climb Nangpai Gosum II, in 2006. In 2007, she climbed Mount Everest, 14 years after another climber of the same name, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, became the first Nepalese woman to climb l ‘Everest but died on the way down. Akita climbed K2 in 2014 as part of a three-woman team, the first team of Nepalese women to climb the mountain. Climbing with Akita were Maya Sherpa and Dawa Yangzum Sherpa; they were part of a larger expedition that also included other (male) Sherpas and climbers. The climb was dedicated to climate change awareness and took place on the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of K2. She has also climbed Yala Peak, Ama Dablam, Lobuche, Imja Tse, and Aconcagua. In addition to mountaineering in Nepal, she has led mountaineering expeditions in the United States, Argentina, France, and Pakistan.
Activism
Akita joined the Nomads Clinic, a medical service for remote regions of the Himalayas, in 2013. After the Nepal earthquake in April 2015, she worked in relief operations, distributing blankets, helping to create shelters for people left homeless by the earthquake, organizing temporary medical facilities, coordinating relief convoys and preventing human trafficking. She is also developing a foundation to assist women’s education in Nepal.
