50-year-old is first US woman to climb all world's tallest mountains

A woman has become the first from America to reach the summit of all 14 of the world’s tallest mountains. Tracee Metcalfe, 50, from Vail, Colorado, completed the feat on Friday by climbing 26,335ft / 8,027m-tall Shisha Pangma in Tibet.

The 14 highest peaks in the world all tower over 8,000m (26,246ft). Also known as the "eight-thousanders", the mountains are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram  ranges and spread across the regions of Nepal, Tibet (China) and Pakistan.

The list, in height order, is: Everest ( recently adjusted to be 8,849m tall ), K2 (8,611m), Kanchenjunga (8,586m), Lhotse (8,516m), Makalu (8,463m), Cho Oyu (8,201m), Dhaulagiri (8,167m), Manaslu (8,163m), Nanga Parbat (8,125m), Annapurna I (8,091m), Gasherbrum I (8,068m), Broad Peak (8,047m), Gasherbrum II (8,035m) and Shishapangma (8,012m).

Climbing to the summit of all 14 eight-thousanders is regarded as a huge mountaineering challenge and as of last year fewer than 50 people had done so.

In May 2016, Tracy reached the top of the world on Everest and earlier this year, she revealed on her website , that she had just five more 8,000m mountains to summit.

Tracee’s achievement is  bittersweet, however, after a double tragedy in 2023 when two other US women lost their lives in separate avalanches as they bid to become the first to complete the list of 8,000m mountains. Gina Rzucidlo and Anna Gutu died on the same day on Shisha Pangma .

At the time of the deaths, Tracee, a doctor who grew up in southern California, had also been planning to ascend the same mountain but decided not to. She was reported as saying: “I climb for the joy of climbing and have never been interested in records.”

Her second attempt on Shisha Pangma this month proved successful and placed her in the US record books.

Her Instagram page perhaps sums up her achievement, saying: “Mostly I fly under the radar, but once in a while, I get to soar.”

History made on world's tallest peaks

Tracee’s expedition last week also saw Mingma G make history as the first Nepalese mountaineer to conquer all 14 of the 8,000m peaks without supplemental oxygen, while Naoki Ishikawa became the first from Japan and Sirbaz Khan the first from Pakistan to tick off all of the world's tallest peaks. Dawa Gyalje Sherpa also fulfilled his dream to reach all 14 mountain summits.

It is more than 14 years since the first woman completed all 14 eight-thousanders . On May 17, 2010, Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban achieved the feat. Some 24 years earlier, on October 16, 1986, Reinhold Messner, from Italy, became the first person to climb all of the eight-thousanders .