KATHMANDU: An
85-year-old ex-Gurkha who was attempting to reclaim his title as the world’s oldest person to summit Mount
Everest died of
altitude sickness, the expedition organiser said on Sunday.
Min Bahadur Sherchan
died at
Everest base camp on Saturday and his body was airlifted to Kathmandu.
“Doctors said that he
died of natural causes. There was water build-up in his lungs because of
altitude sickness,” Shiv Raj Thapa of Summit Nepal Trekking told AFP after an autopsy.
Sherchan was resting at the base camp and waiting for the weather window to summit in a single attempt, skipping the usual multiple acclimatisation rotations because of his age.
He was on a bid to reclaim a title that he lost to Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura in 2013.
The former soldier became the oldest person to summit
Everest in 2008 when he was 76, but he lost the
record five years later when Miura reached the 8,848-metre peak at the age of 80.
Speaking to AFP earlier this year, the slightly hard of hearing grandfather said he just wanted to prove to himself that he could still make it to the top of the world.
“My aim is **t to break anybody’s record, this is **t a personal competition between individuals. I wish to break my own record,” Sherchan had said in February.
Sherchan’s death is the second fatality of the spring climbing season on Everest, which runs from late April to the end of May.
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