Kanchha Sherpa (died October 16th 2025, aged 92 or 93) was the last surviving member of the 1953 Edmund Hillary expedition to Everest. He was picked for the climb because he could manage, without supplementary oxygen, to reach 27,000 feet. On the expedition his primary duty was to carry the kerosene and the stoves; he also helped build six camps and lay a path up the mountain.
Kanchha grew up in Namche Bazaar, Nepal, the gateway to Everest. His grandfather helped found the settlement. He never went to school. From boyhood he traded whatever his family had, walking for days through the mountains to India or Tibet. His first trading trip involved carrying 30 kilos of Nepalese paper to Tibet to make prayer-wheels. As a teenager he sold surplus Himalayan sheepdogs, strays rounded up in the village, to buyers in India for eight rupees each.
His father, himself a mountaineer, knew Tenzing Norgay, and Kanchha walked five days to Darjeeling to see him. Tenzing hired him as a porter for the Hillary expedition at eight rupees a day for 90 days. When recent snowfall opened a huge crevasse at Khumbu Icefall, he was among ten Sherpas who hiked back to Namche Bazaar, cut down ten tall trees and carried them to the icefall to build a bridge.
On May 29th 1953 he was at the camp below the summit when Hillary and Tenzing reached the top. He never reached the summit himself; his best climb fell 327 feet short. He applied seven times for a government permit to go higher but was turned down.
Kanchha worked as a high-altitude helper for mountaineers for two decades after the 1953 expedition. He later ran a hotel in Namche Bazaar, Nirvana Lodge, where the specialities were Sherpa vegetable stew and conversation with its proprietor. Two of his sons ran hotels, on his firm advice. He had six children.
As a child Kanchha was taught that Everest was the holiest of mountains: Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the World. He was troubled by the environmental degradation brought by climbers, who left behind tents, mattresses, food wrappings and cigarette butts. He observed that around Base Camp, once lush grass where yaks grazed had become packed earth and rocks; peaks once white with snow turned black; glaciers melted. He advocated limiting climbing to one season a year. Yet he acknowledged that tourism had rescued Namche from poverty.
Revenge is a form of nostalgia.