‘Mt. Everest dirty, crowded now,’ says last-surviving Sherpa from Edmund Hillary’s team

Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the first Everest expedition, voices concerns about overcrowding and pollution on the mountain.

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,” Mr. 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.

There are rules that require climbers to bring down their own trash, equipment and everything they carry to the mountain or risk losing their deposit, but monitoring has not been very effective.

“It is very dirty now. People throw tins and wrappings after eating food. Who is going to pick them up now?” Mr. 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.”