American endurance athlete and mountaineer Tyler Andrews, a 36-year-old cancer survivor, became the first non-Sherpa climber to hold Mount Everest’s South Base Camp speed record after climbing from Nepal’s 5,364m Base Camp to the 8,848.86m summit in 9 hrs 55 mins on Thursday, completing the ascent after four failed attempts across two climbing seasons — the last less than a week ago. Andrews broke the 23-year-old benchmark of 10 hrs 56 mins set by Nepali climber Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa in 2003, a record that endured through two decades of increasingly commercialised Everest expeditions.
At the age of six, Andrews was diagnosed with aplastic anaemia, a cancer that prevents the body from producing enough blood cells, and underwent several rounds of chemotherapy before recovering. In recent years, he established speed records on Manaslu and Ama Dablam in Nepal, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Aconcagua in Argentina, Ojos del Salado in Chile and Cotopaxi in Ecuador.
