First woman to climb all 8,000-m mountains without supplementary oxygen (legacy)

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (Austria) summited K2 on 23 August 2011 – her seventh attempt at the second-highest mountain on Earth – and in doing so secured her fourteenth "8,000-er" climbed without supplemental oxygen. The 8,000-ers are the 14 mountains situated beyond 8,000 m (26,247 ft) above sea level, all of which are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia. Kaltenbrunner is only the second woman confirmed to have conquered all 8,000-ers, but is the first to do so without the benefit of bottled oxygen.

Kaltenbrunner reached the 8,611-m (28,251-ft) summit of K2 at 6:18 pm local time, tackling the peak from the Chinese north side. She lost the race to become the first ever woman to conquer the 8,000-ers when Spain's Edurne Pasaban Lizarribar reached the top of Shisha Pangma in Tibet in May 2010. The Austrian alpinist began her mission to climb the 8,000-ers without supplemental oxygen back in 1998, when she successfully tackled Cho Oyu on the Nepal-Tibet border.

Kaltenbrunner's 8,000-er summits: 1998: Cho Oyu 2001: Makalu 2002: Manaslu 2003: Nanga Parbat 2004: Annapurna I 2004: Gasherbrum I 2005: Shisha Pangma 2005: Gasherbrum II 2006: Kangchenjunga 2007: Broad Peak 2008: Dhaulagiri 2009: Lhotse 2010: Mount Everest 2011: K2