An 85-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan from Nepal has been reported dead while trying to climb Mount Everest to regain his title as the oldest person to climb the world’s highest Mountain.
According to Reports made available by the chief of Nepal’s Tourism Department, Min Bahadur Sherchan died at the Everest base camp penultimate week but the cause of his death was not immediatelydisclosed as investigations are still on.
The Mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha, who was at the scene said in a telephone conversation that the cause of the death might likely be cardiac arrest but he could not elaborate due to a poor telephone connection.
Sherchan, a grandfather of 17 and great-grandfather to six, according to reports first scaled Everest in May 2008 when he was 76 as at that time being the oldest climber to reach the top of the Mountain.
His record was broken in 2013 by an 80-year-old Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura. Before leaving for the mountain, Sherchan told The Associated Press that once he had completed the climb and became famous, he will to travel to conflict areas to spread a message of peace.
He had trained for months before the attempt, saying that he did not suffer from any respiratory problems and his blood pressure was normal.
Being born in the mountains, he said he had did not have any problems with high altitude or the low levels of oxygen there. Sherchan’s developed love of mountaineering in 1960 when he was assigned by the Nepalese government to be a liaison officer for the Swiss team climbing Mount Dhaulagiri. He later became an apple farmer and constructed roads and dams before settling down to run hotels in Kathmandu.
