Nawal Sfendla honoured after historic Everest-Lhotse climb
Nawal Sfendla received a royal audience in Rabat after completing one of mountaineering’s most demanding feats, a continuous ascent of Everest and Lhotse, the world’s highest and fourth-highest mountains. His Majesty King Mohammed VI decorated her with the Wissam Al Moukafaa Al Watania in the rank of Officer, underscoring the national recognition attached to her achievement.
Sfendla’s climb stands out because the two summits were linked in a single push, without a long break between them. Everest rises to 8,848.86 meters, while Lhotse reaches 8,516 meters, and the route places climbers in the extreme altitude known as the “death zone,” where oxygen scarcity, exhaustion and weather can quickly turn fatal. The challenge requires more than strong legs and lungs. It demands precise timing, technical control and the ability to keep moving after the body has already been pushed near its limits.
The feat also carried symbolic weight for Moroccan sport. Sfendla became the first Moroccan woman to complete the Everest-Lhotse one-push challenge, a distinction that adds her name to a small international group of climbers who have managed the sequence. Her achievement was framed as the result of years of preparation, perseverance and repeated setbacks, with her own account describing the climb as the product of long physical, mental and emotional work.
The royal decoration followed an earlier message of congratulations from Mohammed VI, who praised the climb as a world-class sporting performance. The audience in Rabat placed Sfendla’s expedition within a broader public recognition of Moroccan women who excel in highly demanding disciplines, and it also reflected the growing visibility of mountaineering in Morocco’s sports landscape. For Sfendla, the Everest-Lhotse success appears to mark not an endpoint but a milestone in a longer career built around major Himalayan and global summits.
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