Viridiana Álvarez, a 39-year-old mountaineer from the city of Aguascalientes, was honored with a Guinness World Record on Monday for becoming the first woman to summit all of the world’s 14 peaks above 8,000 meters and the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each continent.
Álvarez, who began her decade-long quest in January 2015, completed her final climb on Oct. 12, 2024, scaling the Indonesian mountain known as Carstensz Pyramid and Puncak Jaya.
“I’m very excited to receive this record because it’s proof once again that dreams do come true,” she said at the Mexico City ceremony, noting she started mountaineering at 30 despite her landlocked home state having no mountains.
Two years ago, Álvarez was honored for becoming the first woman in the Americas to climb the world’s five highest mountains: Mount Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse and Makalu.
Three years before that, she received a Guinness World Record by scaling the three tallest peaks — Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga — in the shortest time on record: one year and 364 days. Her category was for females who used supplementary oxygen.
She is also the first Latin American to climb K2, the second-highest mountain in the world and regarded as the deadliest, with approximately one person dying on the mountain for every four who reach the summit.
In 2022, she became the first Mexican woman inducted into mountaineering’s Hall of Fame.
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At Monday’s ceremony in Mexico City, Guinness representative Alfredo Arista praised the trailblazer for her “effort, sacrifice and passion,” calling the achievement “no easy feat.”
Álvarez, whose education includes the Women’s Leadership Program at Yale University’s graduate business school, described the peaks of Everest, K2 and Annapurna as “special” due to their physical and emotional challenges. She nearly died while climbing K2.
Álvarez quit her office job — she had worked 10 years in the automotive and manufacturing industries — to pursue mountaineering. She now serves as a public speaker who promotes messages about breaking paradigms, especially to youth, and presides over Líderes de Altura (Height Leaders), a nonprofit that focuses on social causes and community improvement.
Álvarez began her journey by reaching the summit of 8,848-meter Mount Everest (Asia) on May 16, 2017 — her first of the Seven Summits. The others: Aconcagua (South America), Denali (North America), Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Carstensz (Oceania) and Mount Vinson (Antarctica).
“She’s proven that human limits are made to be surpassed,” said Arista.
With reports from Milenio, La Jornada, Guinness World Records and El Sol del Centro
