Nepali mountain guide Kami Rita Sherpa on Tuesday beat his own record by climbing Mount Everest for the 24th time. The 49-year-old mountaineer reached the 29,035-foot peak on Tuesday –
the second time this week, AP reported. He had climbed to the top on May 15 and then returned to base camp.

“This is historic,” Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks told AFP. “He made his record climb this morning, guiding a team of Indian police.”

Kami Rita has been a guide for more than two decades and first summited the peak in 1994 during a commercial expedition. In 25 years, he has scaled five 8,000-metre peaks, summiting them 35 times. He has also scaled the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, in Pakistan.

Experienced sherpas usually guide foreign mountaineers through the Everest. They usually prepare the route and help fix ropes and carry oxygen cylinders and other supplies.

“I can climb for a few more years,” he told BBC before scaling the mountain on his 23rd attempt. “I am healthy – I can keep going until I am 60 years old. With oxygen it’s no big deal.”

Kami Rita often said that he never intended to make records and accumulated his summits while working as a guide. “I did not climb for world records, I was just working,” he told AFP last week. “I did not even know you could set records earlier.”

Nepal has issued a record 381 permits worth $11,000 each for this year’s spring climbing season. Over 750 climbers will walk the same path to reach the summit in the next few weeks.