Renowned Spanish alpinist Alex Txikon and six Nepali climbers on Friday reached the summit of Mt Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world. The mountain had never been summited in winter since 1983.

The Nepali climbers who reached the 8,163 metres summit are Tenjen Sherpa (Lama), Pasang Nurbu Sherpa, Mingtemba Sherpa, Chhepal Sherpa, Pemba Tasi Sherpa and Gyalu Sherpa.

The Post couldn’t independently verify whether Txikon climbed Manaslu with or without the use of bottled oxygen.

“The team reached the summit on Friday at 8:40 am,” said Mingma Sherpa, managing director of Seven Summit Treks, the agency handling the expedition.

“It’s a rare ascent. It’s a proud moment for the mountaineering fraternity.”

According to him, the team had started the summit push from Camp 3 at 11 pm on Thursday.

Manaslu has been climbed every year, but barring the 1983 summit, climbers had only reached the fore-summit in the winter, just below the main summit, until Friday.

According to the mountaineering fraternity, the main summit is 6-7 metres higher than the fore-summit.

The fraternity has called the main summit the “true summit”.

The first winter summit was on January 12, 1983, by Maciej Berbeka and Ryszard Gajewski, two Poles, according to a Nepal government report.

Since then four expeditions with a total of 15 people claimed to have successfully summited the peak in winter-time.

In 1983 a two-member Polish team, in 1984 a two-member Japanese team, in 1995 an eight-member Kazakhstan team, and in 1998 a team of two Nepali and one Korean climbers reached atop Manaslu in wintertime.

However, different investigations suggest that since the first summit, climbers have not reached the true summit.

A 2021 investigation by a team of international experts that was reported in the American Alpine Journal, estimated that the vast majority of climbers who claimed to have summited Manaslu had not in fact stood on the true summit.

Eberhard Jurgalski, the leading chronicler of Himalayan and Karakoram mountaineering statistics, said on his 8000ers.com website, that on several 8,000-metre peaks, many climbers had actually not reached the summit and that this had been happening for decades.

“Usually, this has been because of understandable ignorance or confusion about the exact nature of the summit topography,” Jurgalski says on his website.

In 2007, Jurgalski noticed in “summit” photos that climbers on Manaslu seemed to be stopping short of the high point that the Japanese reached on the 1956 ascent of that mountain in spring.

The New York Times had in 2021 reported that some turned around at a popular selfie-taking spot on Manaslu without scaling the precarious ridge hidden just beyond it.

“Climbing Manaslu during the winter is a daring feat. At the last short section is a snow-covered rock outcrop which is very steep, and climbers normally do not go there during the autumn and winter,” said Thaneshwor Guragain, the manager of Seven Summit Treks.

“The last section is potentially deadly because of the fresh snowfall.”

On September 27, 2021, under the leadership of Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, aka Mingma G, 14 Nepali and eight foreign climbers reached the main peak of Manaslu and achieved the rare feat for the first time in 45 years. But that was in the autumn season.

During the summit of 2021 led by Mingma G, one of his members Jackson Grove, a photographer, captured the drone image of Manaslu, which clearly shows a disparity in height between the two points.

Following Mingma’s ascent and Grove’s photos, the Himalayan Database, a Kathmandu-based group that archives mountaineering expeditions, issued a statement that they “will only credit the summit” to those who reach the highest point shown in Grove’s drone picture.