Kanchha Sherpa, last survivor of the 1953 expedition which conquered Everest
When news came that Hillary and Norgay had summited, ‘everyone was so happy. We danced, hugged, and kissed. It was a moment of pure joy’
Kanchha Sherpa, who has died aged 92, was the last surviving member of the pioneering British expedition to conquer Mount Everest in 1953 which led to Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary together becoming the first climbers to stand on the world’s highest peak.
The expedition was led by Col John Hunt along military lines, with “siege tactics” used to overcome all obstacles. Nothing was left to chance: in a monumental feat of logistics and organisation, ropes were fixed up the mountain, along with camp supplies, equipment and, crucially, oxygen at key staging camps. Climbers were organised into “assault parties”, while a small army of porters was deployed to ferry supplies up the mountain.
The porters who carried out this task were Sherpas, a high-mountain people of Nepal, among them Kanchha Sherpa. One of the biggest challenges, he recalled, was the building of a path to Camp One. At the Khumbu Icefall, the team encountered a massive crevasse – a huge glacial fissure – with no way to cross. “We had no ladders,” Kancha recalled. “So we hiked back to Namche, cut 10 pine trees, carried them up and made a wooden bridge.”
Described as “tough and cheerful” by Hunt in his official account, The Ascent of Everest, Kanchha helped to fix ropes and carry loads as far as the South Col, 25,938ft, one of 19 high-altitude Sherpas to reach the col. The oxygen equipment each Sherpa carried weighed 30lb alone. In practice they carried far more. Due to the need to reserve bottled oxygen for the assault party of climbers, Sherpas mostly went without.
“Tsampa was my oxygen!” Kanchha told an interviewer in later life, referring to the simple Tibetan porridge that was their staple diet. Describing his moments at the South Col, he recalled: “I walked around and looked at everything. It was incredible! I looked down and saw so many glaciers! I could see Tibet and the Rongbuk glacier.”
But he was also keen to get off the mountain, recalling: “I had a lot of desire to come down and be with my friends and family.” He was at Camp Two when news arrived that Tenzing and Hillary had made the top. “Everyone was so happy. We danced, hugged, and kissed. It was a moment of pure joy, I was so happy. I couldn’t believe any of this.”
Kanchha Sherpa was born in 1933 – he did not know his exact birthday – in what is now Namche Bazaar. His grandfather, Ang Phuri, was one of the earliest settlers of the village. As soon as he was old enough Kanchha started working as a trader and porter, carrying sugar from India to Tibet to trade for salt, a journey that took 12 days. Another assignment was to carry 30kg of paper from the Everest region to Tibet to make prayer wheels, crossing the 19,049ft Nagpa La pass. He also traded sheepdogs.
Then in the winter of 1952 he left home at the age of 19 and walked to Darjeeling over five days in the hope of gaining employment from Norgay, who was gaining a name locally as a mountain guide for westerners. Norgay knew Kanchha’s father and offered him a porter’s job on the expedition, earning eight rupees a day.
After the expedition Kanchha returned to trading, walking to Calcutta to buy Swiss watches for 300 rupees apiece, which he sold to Chinese soldiers in Tibet for 3,000 rupees. The enterprise ended after the Chinese authorities confiscated his goods and put him in jail for 12 days.
He also resumed work as a high-altitude porter, returning to Everest six times. Although he never reached its summit, he climbed Makalu (27,820ft) and Annapurna III (24,790ft). After an accident in 1970 in which eight Sherpas were killed, his wife persuaded him to retire from climbing and he took to the trekking business, working for Mountain Travel Nepal, which was founded by Col Jimmy Roberts, another member of the 1953 expedition.
In later life Kanchha spoke out about over-tourism in the region and over-crowding on the mountain, telling the Associated Press: “It would be better for the mountain to reduce the number of climbers. Qomolangma [Everest] is the biggest god for the Sherpas. But people smoke and eat meat and throw them on the mountain.”
In 1956 he married Ang Lhakpa, who survives him with their two daughters and four sons.
Kanchha Sherpa, born 1933, died October 16 2025
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
