Last Living Member Of First Mount Everest Summit Team Says It's Now Too Crowded, Dirty
HuffPost
Times have changed since the 1950s.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — The only surviving member of the mountaineering expedition that first conquered Mount Everest said Saturday that 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 among the 35 members in 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.
“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 first conquest, the peak has been climbed thousands of times, and it gets more crowded every year. During the spring climbing season in 2023, 667 climbers scaled the peak, but that brought in thousands of support staff to the base camp between the months of March and May.
There have been concerns about the number of people living on the mountain for months on end, generating trash and waste, but authorities have no plans to cut down on the number of permits they issue to climbers.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing the biggest test of his political career following the resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, long one of his most powerful and loyal ministers.
Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia from western Syria after rebels captured Damascus, ending the nation's decades-long tyrannical regime.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed almost 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik said Yoon’s impeachment was an outcome driven by “the people’s ardent desire for democracy, courage and dedication.”
Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as one of the heaviest bombardments of the country's energy sector since the full-scale invasion began.
"In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed," Clarissa Ward said.
It’s beginning to look a lot like visitor overload in Rovaniemi, where an onslaught of tourists arrives each year at Christmas time,
The South Korean president has defended his martial law decree as act of governance and denied rebellion charges.
An official says former Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun attempted to kill himself but failed to do so.