KATHMANDU, Nepal — A 73-year-old Japanese woman climbed to Mount Everest’s peak last month, smashing her own record to again become the oldest woman to scale the world’s highest mountain.

Tamae Watanabe reached Everest’s 29,035-foot-high summit from the northern side of the mountain in Tibet on the morning of Saturday, May 19 with four other team members, said Ang Tshering of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association in Nepal.

Watanabe had climbed Everest in 2002 at the age of 63 to become the oldest woman to scale the mountain. She had retained the title until she topped herself a decade later.

Watanabe and her team left the last high altitude camp located at 27,225 feet on the evening of Friday, May 18 and climbed all night before reaching the summit Saturday morning.

Weather conditions had improved on the mountain.

Teams had begun reaching the summit even from the Nepalese side on the southern side of the mountain, according to Nepal’s mountaineering department.

The first teams from the Nepalese side reached the summit May 18, and many more reached the summit the next morning.

Weather conditions on the mountain have been challenging this year, prompting several expeditions to cancel their plans to try to reach the summit.

May is considered the best month to climb Everest, when climbers get about two windows of good weather for their bid for the summit.

The oldest person to climb Everest is a Nepalese man, Min Bahadur Sherchan, who climbed Everest in 2008 at the age of 76.