Sports Outdoors Woman, 73, oldest to climb Mount Everest Japanese lady climbs world’s highest peak to set age mark Sun., May 20, 2012 Tamae Watanabe (right) of Japan in 2002 at a base camp on the foot of Mount Everest in Nepal. She became the oldest woman to summit during that climb. She did it again Saturday morning at age 73. (Associated Press) Twitter Email Reddit SMS See details about Tamae Watanabe’s second record-breaking ascent of Mount Everest in Rich Landers’ Outdoors Blog..