Kanchha Sherpa, last surviving member of pioneering Mount Everest expedition, dies at 92
Kathmandu (AP): 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 meagre living through trading potatoes in neighbouring 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 honoured 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.
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‘Self-styled Vishwaguru stands exposed’: Cong's dig at PM over Pak role in US-Iran ceasefire
New Delhi (PTI): Taking a swipe at the government, the Congress on Wednesday said the role played by Pakistan in bringing about the ceasefire between the US and Iran is a “severe setback” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's “highly personalised diplomacy” and “the self-styled Vishwaguru stands thoroughly exposed”.
The opposition party also said Prime Minister Modi's “cowardice is demonstrated by his silence not only on Israel’s belligerence, but on the completely unacceptable and disgraceful language being used by his good friend in the White House”.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said the entire world will cautiously welcome the two-week ceasefire in the West Asia conflict between the US and Israel on the one side and Iran on the other.
“The conflict had begun on February 28th with the targeted assassinations of the topmost echelons of the regime in Iran. These had started just two days after Prime Minister Modi had completed his much-trumpeted visit to Israel, a visit that diminished India’s global stature and standing,” Ramesh claimed.
PM Modi had said nothing about Israel’s "genocide" in Gaza and its aggressively expansionist policies in the occupied West Bank, Ramesh said.
“The role played by Pakistan in bringing about the ceasefire is a severe setback to both the substance and style of Mr Modi’s highly personalised diplomacy,” he said.
The policy to isolate Pakistan for its continuing support to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and to convince the world that it is a failed state has clearly not succeeded – unlike what Manmohan Singh had accomplished after the Mumbai terror attacks, Ramesh claimed.
That a bankrupt economy dependent entirely on the largesse of external donors and a broken country in so many ways was able to play such a role calls into question Modi’s strategy of engagement and narrative management, he said.
“He (Modi) or his team has also never explained why Op Sindoor was suddenly and abruptly halted on May 10th 2025 - the first announcement of which came from the US Secretary of State and for which the US President has claimed credit almost a hundred times since then,” the Congress leader said.
“There is a palpable sigh of relief everywhere. The External Affairs Minister (S Jaishankar) dismissed Pakistan as a dalal. But now the self-styled Vishwaguru stands thoroughly exposed, his self-declared 56-inch chest shrunk and shrivelled,” Ramesh said.
“His cowardice is demonstrated by his silence not only on Israel’s belligerence, but on the completely unacceptable and disgraceful language being used by his good friend in the White House,” the Congress leader added.
US President Donald Trump pulled back on his threats to launch devastating strikes on Iran late Tuesday, as the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump swerved to de-escalate the war less than two hours before the deadline he set for Tehran to capitulate to a deal or face attacks on its bridges and power plants meant to destroy the Iranian civilisation.
Trump made the dramatic announcement on Truth Social on Tuesday evening (US time) even as Democrats called for his removal over unhinged threats to wipe out the Iranian civilisation.
"Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz," the US President said in a social media post.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council said it has accepted the ceasefire and that it would negotiate with the United States in Pakistan beginning Friday. Neither Iran nor the United States said when the ceasefire would begin, and attacks took place in Israel, Iran and across the Gulf region early Wednesday.
Israel backed the US ceasefire with Iran but the deal doesn't cover fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Wednesday.
