Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the historic 1953 Mount Everest expedition led by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, has died at 92 in Kathmandu. He had joined the climb as a 19-year-old porter and later worked in the Himalayas for two decades
The 1953 Everest expedition team with Kanchha Sherpa (circled)
The last surviving member of the first mountaineering expedition to successfully reach the summit of Mount Everest died in Kathmandu on Thursday, aged 92, his family said. Kanchha Sherpa was a teenager when he accompanied the historic 1953 team led by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who became the first mountaineers to reach the peak of the world’s highest mountain.
Kanchha Sherpa
The cause of Kanchha Sherpa’s death early on Thursday morning was not clear. “He had been unwell for a few days,” his grandson, Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa said. Born in 1933, Kanchha Sherpa was 19 when he joined the expedition as a porter despite no prior mountaineering experience.
He undertook the arduous trek, lasting more than two weeks, to Mount Everest’s Base Camp, carrying food, tents and equipment, before climbing to an altitude of more than 8000 metres (26,200 feet) close to the peak. Kanchha Sherpa worked in the Himalayan mountains for two more decades after the expedition until his wife asked him to stop the dangerous journeys after many of his friends died assisting other climbing treks.
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