KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Kanchha Sherpa, the only 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-meter (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-meter-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 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 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.

BEIJING (AP) — Rescuers were helping hundreds of hikers trapped by heavy snow at tourist campsites on a slope of Mount Everest in Tibet, Chinese state media said.

About 350 hikers had reached a meeting point in Tingri country and rescuers were in contact with another 200, state broadcaster CCTV said late Sunday.

There was no immediate update on rescue efforts on Monday.

The hikers were trapped at an elevation of more than 4,900 meters (16,000 feet), according to an earlier report from Jimu News, a Chinese online site.

Mount Everest is about 8,850 meters (29,000 feet) tall.

A hiker who rushed to descend before snow blocked the way told Jimu News that others still on the mountain told him the snow was 1 meter (3 feet) deep and had crushed tents.

Hundreds of rescuers headed up the mountain Sunday to clear paths so that trapped people could come down, the Jimu report said.

A video shot by a villager showed a long line of people with horses and oxen moving up a winding path in the snow.

The snowstorm struck during a weeklong national holiday in China, when many travel at home and abroad.

In another mountainous region in western China, one hiker died of hypothermia and altitude sickness and 137 others were evacuated in the north part of Qinghai province, CCTV said Monday.

The search in an area in Menyuan county with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) was complicated by the terrain, unpredictable weather and continuous snowfall, a CCTV online report said.

Mount Everest, known as Mount Qomolangma in Chinese, straddles the border between China and Nepal, where recent heavy rains have left more than 40 people dead.

Climbers attempt to scale the world’s tallest peak from base camps in both countries. The base camp for climbers is separate from the tourist camp where hikers were trapped by the snowfall.

A strong earthquake killed at least 126 people in the same area in January.

The Chinese side of Everest is in Tibet, a remote western region where the government has cracked down harshly on dissent and poured in funds for economic development including roads and tourism.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, fled during a failed uprising in 1959 and lives in India, where some Tibetans have set up a government in exile.