BETWEEN raising two daughters and working as a dishwasher at Whole Foods, Lhakpa Sherpa just doesn’t have time for training to climb Mount Everest. Even so, she has done it a record eight times and hopes to outdo herself yet again.

The 44-year-old native of Nepal holds the world record for summits of Everest by a woman and plans to return this month for what has become an annual expedition to the top of the world.

“My body knows that I have already been this high. It’s like a computer. It figures it out very quickly. My body knows the high altitude. It remembers.”