Nepal has been celebrating the 61st anniversary of the first conquest of Everest, using the occasion to remember 16 guides killed in an avalanche last month.<br /><br />New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became the first climbers to scale the world’s highest mountain on May 29, 1953.<br /><br />Today’s mountaineers were among several hundred people who held a rally in Kathmandu to commemorate the feat.<br /><br />Sixty-one years ago there was none of today’s sophisticated equipment.<br /><br />The expedition didn’t know what lay ahead. Crevasses posed a serious danger.<br /><br />The rally was led by Kancha Sherpa, the expedition’s lone surviving member. <br /><br />He only went as far as the last camp – and like most of the others had to walk all the way back down. <br /><br />There were 15 Sherpa guides and 16 foreign members, he says. “They have all died, and I am the only one still alive, by the grace of God.”<br /><br />A separate rally was held in memory of last month’s disaster. An avalanche killed 16 guides, mostly Sherpas, just above Everest’s base camp.<br /><br />They were carrying equipment and tents to set up camps.<br /><br />Many Sherpas refused to climb after the deaths and Everest’s season was cancelled.
