The last surviving member of the first mountaineering expedition to successfully reach the summit of Mount Everest died in Kathmandu on Thursday, aged 92, his family said.

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

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