At 4:10 AM local time on May 23, 2026, Liliya Ianovskaia stood on the summit of Kangchenjunga (8,586 m) — the world's third-highest mountain and her tenth eight-thousander. At 66 years and 290 days, she becomes the oldest woman ever to summit Kangchenjunga.
The summit came three years after a 2023 attempt that ended 300 vertical metres below the top, when the rope team took the wrong couloir on summit day and a second attempt was no longer possible that season. Returning in 2026 with the team at Altipro Adventures, Liliya completed the line she had been forced to leave unfinished.
She reached the summit at dawn alongside her climbing Sherpas, Dawa and Dawa Tashi, with the sun just breaking the horizon behind them — visible in the summit photographs taken minutes after standing on top. Kangchenjunga, on the Nepal–Sikkim border, is widely considered one of the most committing of the fourteen eight-thousanders: high, technically complex, and known for narrow summit windows.
Ten of fourteen
With Kangchenjunga, Liliya now counts ten of the world's fourteen eight-thousanders summited — adding to Cho Oyu (2019), Manaslu (2021), Everest (2022), K2 (2022), Gasherbrum II (2022), Lhotse (2023), Dhaulagiri (2023), Makalu (2024), and Annapurna I (2025). Four eight-thousanders remain: Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, and Shishapangma.
Liliya, 66, took up mountaineering at fifty. With Kangchenjunga, she now holds oldest-woman records on four eight-thousanders — K2 (2022), Dhaulagiri (2023), Annapurna I (2025), and Kangchenjunga (2026) — in addition to her Guinness World Records as the oldest woman to summit K2 (2022) and the oldest woman to complete the Everest + K2 double in a single year (2022).
