Gheorghe Dijmărescu (commonly known as George Dijmarescu) is a Romanian-American famous for escaping from the Romanian Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu by swimming the Danube river, and for his mountaineering exploits including summiting Mount Everest multiple times in the early 2000s. Gheorghe married Lhakpa Sherpa in 2002, the first Nepali woman to summit Mount Everest and survive and also the woman with most number of times to the summit of Mount Everest in the early 21st century. They met in Kathmandu in the year 2000. From 2008 he had some battles with medical problems. Some of Dijmărescu's life was included in the Michael Kodas book High Crimes, a book about a Mount Everest expedition in the early 2000s. Dijmărescu organized a 2004 Connecticut expedition to Mount Everest.
In Kodas's book, Dijmărescu is portrayed as an angry, short-tempered, and violent man with dictatorial tendencies. Kodas and multiple other people witnessed Dijmărescu beat his wife Lahakpa Sherpa in Everest's Tibetan base camp, and Kodas and the designated expedition leader felt so threatened by Dijmărescu that they feared he would break into their tents at night and assault them. After returning to Connecticut, Kodas went so far as to install a security system at his home because he feared for his family's safety due to Dijmărescu's continued threats.
By 2003, Dijmărescu was noted for summiting Mount Everest five times in five years. He eventually summited Mount Everest nine times, the most for Western guide at that time. In 2004 he rescued a Mexican climber who was getting frosbiiten. Dijmărescu and fellow climber David Watson organized the rescue of the Mexican, which Watson later noted as example of what should have happened with David Sharp who died in 2006 high on Tibetan Everest.
Nine times to the summit was the most for a western guide until about 2007, when he was tied by Dave Hahn. Hahn almost tied him the previous spring year, but Dijmărescu also summited that year and maintained his lead. Hahn summited in October 2006 after already summiting in the spring, which made two summits in a year. In the spring of 2007 Dijmărescu also summited early on, thus taking a lead before Dave summited again later that month.
Records show his first summit was from the Tibet-side on May 26, 1999.
It was a big deal that he survived the swim across the Danube, because it was littered with corpses of people that had been killed trying to swim to the Yugoslavian shores. A nickname for the river in Romania at that time was 'cemetery of the unknown'. He could not even say goodbye to his parents; the swim took over an hour and was timed to avoid guards that killed swimmers. He managed to make his way through Yugoslavia and escape to Italy. From there he was granted political asylum in the United States, eventually settling in New England. Things eventually changed for Romania. Yugoslavia dissolved in the 1990s and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991; the river could compared to the situation at the Berlin Wall where escapees were shot
Dijmărescu Mount Everest summitings:
- May 26, 1999.
- May 19, 2000
- May 23, 2001
- May 17, 2002
- May 31, 2003
- May 20, 2004
- Jun 2, 2005
- May 11, 2006
- May 15, 2007