Mourners gathered on Sunday to pay their last respects to Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the mountaineering expedition team that first conquered Mount Everest.

Kanchha died early Thursday, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association, at age 92 at his home in Kapan in the Kathmandu district of Nepal.

He was among the 35 members of 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.

A mountain guide for most of his life, he was one of three Sherpas to reach the final camp before the summit with Hillary and Tenzing.

But he never climbed to the summit of Everest himself, as his wife considered it too risky, he said in a March 2024 interview. He forbade his children from becoming mountaineers.

Kanchha was born in 1933 in the village of Namche in the Everest foothills, when most members of Nepal’s Sherpa community earned their livings farming potatoes and herding yaks.

He spent his childhood and young adult years earning a meager living through trading potatoes in neighboring Tibet.

When he and several friends later visited Darjeeling, India, he was persuaded to train for mountain climbing, and he began working with foreign trekkers.

He began mountaineering when he was 19 and remained active in the expedition sector until the age of 50.

In 1953, his father’s friendship with Tenzing Norgay helped Kanchha secure a job as a high-altitude porter for Tenzing and New Zealander Edmund Hillary when they made the world’s first summit of Everest.

He was one of three Sherpas who reached the last camp below the summit, above the 7,900-meter-high (26,000-foot-high) South Col.

Kanchha made other Everest climbs over the years, reaching various altitudes.

He is survived by his wife, four sons, two daughters and grandchildren and his last rites will be held Monday.

AP video shot by Upendra Man Singh