Arizona Tribune - Last member of the first successful Everest expedition dies

Kanchha Sherpa was a teenager when he accompanied the historic 1953 team led by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who became the first mountaineers to reach the peak of the world's highest mountain.

The cause of Kanchha Sherpa's death early on Thursday morning was not clear.

"He had been unwell for a few days," his grandson, Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa, told AFP.

Born in 1933, Kanchha Sherpa was 19 when he joined the expedition as a porter despite no prior mountaineering experience.

He undertook the arduous trek, lasting more than two weeks, to Mount Everest's Base Camp, carrying food, tents and equipment, before climbing to an altitude of more than 8,000 metres (26,200 feet) close to the peak.

"He was a living legend and an inspiration for all in mountaineering and those working in the industry," said Fur Gelje Sherpa, the president of Nepal's mountaineering association. "We've lost our guardian."

Kanchha Sherpa worked in the Himalayan mountains for two more decades after the expedition until his wife asked him to stop the dangerous journeys after many of his friends died assisting other climbing treks, his family said.

P.Smith--AT