Vienna - Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to scale the world's 14 highest mountains without using extra oxygen Tuesday, when she reached the peak of the K2 in the Himalayas, her spokeswoman said.
Her method sets her apart from South Korea's Oh Eun Sun and Spain's Edurne Pasaban, who conquered all 14 peaks before Kaltenbrunner last year, but used oxygen supplies on some of their climbs.
The 40-year-old Austrian athlete conquered the 8,611-metre K2 peak - the world's second-tallest after Mount Everest - on the China-Pakistan border on her seventh attempt.
'The weather is perfect,' her spokeswoman Kathrin Furtner told the German Press Agency dpa.
The record-setting efforts were overshadowed by tragedy in August 2010, when her friend and fellow-climber Fredrik Ericsson from Sweden plunged to his death on the K2.
Kaltenbrunner is a trained nurse who started climbing in her youth. She lives in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg with her husband.
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