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Occupation Mountaineer, Aid worker | ||
Edita Nichols (née Uksaitė) is a Lithuanian-born mountaineer and humanitarian aid worker. She became the first Lithuanian woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest, on 22 May 2013.
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Biography
Edita Nichols is a humanitarian aid worker employed by the World Food Programme (WFP), whom she has worked for since 2010. She has been deployed to Haiti, Niger, the Philippines, South Sudan, Zambia, Guinea, Nepal, Ecuador and Chad.
She began her career as a mountaineer following her ascent of Kilimanjaro in 2010. She has made successful ascents of three 8000m peaks - Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Everest. She survived an avalanche on Manaslu in 2012, when she was catapulted for several metres inside her tent.
She made two unsuccessful attempts on a fourth 8000m peak, Lhotse, in 2014 and 2015. Both of these expeditions were cut short by major tragedies. In 2015 she narrowly avoided another avalanche at Everest Base Camp, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake caused a serac to collapse on nearby Pumori. After the earthquake, she spent two months in Nepal working on the emergency response for the World Food Programme.
In 2016 she was mountaineering in Ecuador when another 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. Once again she remained in the country to assist with the humanitarian response for WFP.
In 2014 she was part of an international team which measured and identified Mafinga Central as the highest point in Zambia.