Kanchha Sherpa, last surviving member of pioneering Mount Everest expedition, dies at 92

Kanchha Sherpa, 91, who was among the 35 members in the team that put New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay atop the 8,849-metre peak on May 29, 1953, speaks during an interview with The Associated press in Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the mountaineering expedition team that first conquered Mount Everest, died early Thursday, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

Kanchha died at age 92 at his home in Kapan in the Kathmandu district of Nepal, confirmed Phur Gelje Sherpa, the association president.

“He passed away peacefully at his residence,” Phur Gelje Sherpa told The Associated Press, adding that he had been unwell for some time. “A chapter of the mountaineering history has vanished with him.”

Last rites will be held Monday, he said.

Kanchha Sherpa was among the 35 members of the team that put New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay atop the 8,849-metre (29,032-foot) peak 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.

But he never climbed to the summit of Everest himself, as his wife considered it too risky, he said in a March 2024 interview. He forbade his children from becoming mountaineers.

Well-liked and widely respected in the climbing community, Kanchha “was full of energy, and even after retiring and in his old age, he was trekking to monasteries all over the Everest region for religious ceremonies,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

Kanchha was born in 1933 in the village of Namche in the Everest foothills, when most members of Nepal’s Sherpa community earned their livings farming potatoes and herding yaks.

He spent his childhood and young adult years earning a meager living through trading potatoes in neighboring Tibet. When he and several friends later visited Darjeeling, India, he was persuaded to train for mountain climbing, and he began working with foreign trekkers.

He began mountaineering when he was 19 and remained active in the expedition sector until the age of 50.

In 1953, his father’s friendship with Tenzing Norgay helped Kanchha secure a job as a high-altitude porter for Tenzing and New Zealander Edmund Hillary when they made the world’s first summit of Everest.

He was one of three Sherpas who reached the last camp below the summit, above the 7,900-metre-high (26,000-foot-high) South Col.

They first heard of the successful ascent on the radio and were reunited with the summit duo back at Camp 2, at around 6,400 metres (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 collected whatever we could and carried it to base camp.”

Kanchha made other Everest climbs over the years, reaching various altitudes.

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 over the unstable Khumbu Icefall changes every year. But late 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, revered as the mother goddess Qomolangma among the Sherpas, Himalayan people renowned as mountaineering guides.

“It would be better for the mountain to reduce the number of climbers,” he said.

“Qomolangma is the biggest god for the Sherpas,” Kanchaa added. “But people smoke and eat meat and throw them on the mountain.”

Kanchha’s father was also a mountaineer and joined an unsuccessful Everest expedition from the Tibetan side a few years before the 1953 conquest of the peak, according to Kanchha’s son-in-law, Nawang Samden Sherpa.

In 2013, Kanchha was honored by the Nepalese government during the 50th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest, joining relatives of Tenzing and Hillary in a chariot that was driven around the capital of Kathmandu.

In his retirement, Kanchha lived in Namche, where the family runs a small hotel catering to trekkers and climbers.

Kanchha Sherpa is survived by his wife, four sons, two daughters and grandchildren.

Binaj Gurubacharya, The Associated Press