Five months after he broke the Everest speed record, US endurance athlete Tyler Andrews, 36, set another high-altitude mark on Tuesday, completing the 54.4km trail from Everest Base Camp to Lukla in seven hours and 43 minutes. He beat the previous record of nine hours, 47 minutes and 59 seconds, set by David Byrne and Majell Backhausen in Dec 2023, by more than two hours.
Andrews started from Everest Base Camp at 7.45am and recorded his finishing time on his watch, as stated in his update. Earlier that morning, he had travelled by helicopter from Namche Bazaar to Gorakshep before trekking to base camp to begin the attempt.
The route, which involves approximately 3,000m of elevation loss along with several uphill stretches, typically takes trekkers three to four days to complete. It passes through settlements including Pheriche, Tengboche, Namche Bazaar and Phakding before ending at Lukla, the mountain town whose airport serves as the main gateway for Everest trekkers and climbers.
Dawa Steven Sherpa, managing director of Asian Trekking, Tyler's expedition organiser, told
TOI, "His satellite navigation tracker placed him near Lobuche at 8.50am and Pheriche at 9.40am. By 11am, he had reached Tengboche.
He passed through Namche Bazaar at 12.41pm and Phakding at 2.21pm before completing the final stretch to Lukla."
In May this year, Andrews scaled Everest from Base Camp in nine hours, 55 minutes and 43 seconds, breaking the 23-year-old oxygen-assisted ascent record of 10:56:46 set by Nepal's Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa in 2003. With Tuesday's run, Andrews now holds speed records in both directions on the Lukla–Base Camp and Base Camp–Everest summit routes, with supplemental oxygen used for the summit records.