The only surviving member of the mountaineering expedition that first reached the summit of Mount Everest has said the world’s highest peak is too crowded and dirty, and the mountain is a god that needs to be respected.
Kanchha Sherpa, 91, was one of the 35 members of the team that helped the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay to the top of the 8,849-metre (29,032ft) peak on 29 May 1953.
“It would be better for the mountain to reduce the number of climbers,” Kanchha said in an interview in Kathmandu on Saturday. “Right now, there is always a big crowd of people at the summit.”
Since the Hillary-Tenzing expedition, the peak has been climbed thousands of times, and it has become more crowded every year. During the spring climbing season in 2023, 667 climbers scaled the peak, bringing in thousands of support staff to the base camp between March and May.
There have been concerns about the number of people living on the mountain for months on end, but authorities have no plans to cut down on the number of permits they issue to climbers.
Rules require climbers to bring down their own rubbish, equipment and everything they carry to the mountain, or risk losing their deposit, but monitoring has not been effective.
“It is very dirty now. People throw tins and wrappings after eating food. Who is going to pick them up now?” Kanchha said. “Some climbers just dump their trash in the crevasse, which would be hidden at that time, but eventually it will flow down to base camp as the snow melts and carries them downward.”
For the Sherpa people, Everest is Qomolangma, or goddess mother of the world, and is revered by their community. They usually perform religious rituals before climbing the peak.
“They should not be dirtying the mountain. It is our biggest god and they should not be dirtying the gods,” Kanchha said. “Qomolangma is the biggest god for the Sherpas, but people smoke and eat meat and throw them on the mountain.”
Kanchha was a young man when he joined the 1953 expedition. He was one of the three Sherpas to go to the last camp on Everest with Hillary and Tenzing, but could not go any further because the three did not have a permit.
They first heard of the successful ascent on the radio, and were reunited with the summit duo at camp two.
“We all gathered at camp two, 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.”
The route they opened up from the base camp to the summit is still used by climbers. Only the section from the base camp to camp one over the unstable Khumbu icefall changes every year.
Kanchha has four children, eight grandchildren and a 20-month-old great-granddaughter. He lives with family in the village of Namche, in the foothills of Mount Everest, where the family runs a small hotel catering to trekkers and climbers.
