Last Surviving Member Of Pioneering Mount Everest Expedition Dies At 92
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Kanchha Sherpa, the sole surviving member of the mountaineering team that first conquered Mount Everest, died early Thursday, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
The president of the association, Phur Gelje Sherpa, confirmed that Kanchha died at the age of 92 at his home in Kapan in Nepal’s Kathmandu district.
“He passed away peacefully at home,” Phur Gelje Sherpa told The Associated Press, adding that he had been unwell for some time. “A part of the history of mountaineering disappeared with him.”
He said the last rites would be performed on Monday.
Kanchha Sherpa was among the 35 members of the team that took New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay to the summit of 8,849 meters (29,032 feet) on May 29, 1953. A mountain guide for most of his life, he was one of three Sherpas to reach the final camp before the summit, with Hillary and Tenzing.
However, in an interview in March 2024, he said that he himself never climbed to the top of Everest because his wife found it too risky. He forbade his children from becoming mountain climbers.
Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said Kanchha, who was well-liked and respected in the climbing community, “was full of energy and even after his retirement and in his old age, he was trekking to monasteries all over the Everest region for religious ceremonies.”
Kanchha was born in 1933 in the village of Namche at the foot of Everest. Most members of the Sherpa community in Nepal earned their living by growing potatoes and herding yaks.
He spent his childhood and young adult years earning a meager living trading potatoes in neighboring Tibet. When he and a few friends later visited Darjeeling, India, he was persuaded to train in mountaineering and began working with foreign trekkers.
He started mountaineering at the age of 19 and was active in the exploration sector until the age of 50.
In 1953, his father’s friendship with Tenzing Norgay helped Kanchha find work as a high-altitude porter for Tenzing and New Zealander Edmund Hillary when they made the world’s first Everest summit.
He was one of three Sherpas to reach the final camp below the summit above the 7,900-meter-high (26,000-foot-high) South Col.
They first heard about the successful climb on the radio and were reunited with the summit duo at Camp 2, at approximately 6,400 meters (21,000 feet).
“We all gathered at Camp 2 but there was no alcohol so we celebrated with tea and snacks,” he said. “We then gathered everything we could and carried it to base camp.”
Over the years, Kanchha has climbed other Everests and reached various heights.
The route they opened from the base camp to the summit is still used by climbers. Only the section from the base camp to Camp 1 on the unstable Khumbu Glacier changes each year. But later in life, Kanchha had mixed feelings about the mountain’s fate as an adventure tourism destination.
In an interview with The Associated Press in March 2024, he expressed concerns about overcrowding and filth at the world’s highest peak. He urged people to respect the mountain, which is revered as the mother goddess Qomolangma among the Sherpas (Himalayan people), known as mountaineering guides.
“It would be better if the mountain reduced the number of climbers,” he said.
“Qomolangma is the greatest deity for the Sherpas,” Kanchaa added. “But people smoke, eat meat, and throw it into the mountains.”
According to Kanchha’s son-in-law, Nawang Samden Sherpa, Kanchha’s father was also a mountaineer and had participated in an unsuccessful Everest expedition from the Tibetan side a few years before the conquest of the peak in 1953.
In 2013, Kanchha was honored by the Nepalese government on the 50th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest and joined Tenzing and Hillary’s relatives in a car driven around the capital of Kathmandu.
In retirement, Kanchha lived in Namche, where the family ran a small hotel catering to hikers and mountain climbers.
Kanchha Sherpa is survived by his wife, four sons, two daughters and grandchildren.
