Ang Rita, who conquered Everest 10 times, dies at 72

KATHMANDU, NEPAL >> Ang Rita Sherpa, who earned globa l fame by climb - ing the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, 10 times without the use of supplemental oxygen, died on Monday at his daughter’s house in Kathmandu. He was 72.

His death wa s c onfirmed by his family and by Nepal’s mountaineering associations. No cause was specified, but he had been suffering in recent years from multiple lung and brain ailments that colleagues say could have developed from his years of climbing high altitudes without bottled oxygen.

Most climbers use supplemental ox ygen when ascending peaks higher than 8,000 meters, an altitude mountaineers call the “death zone” because the air is so thin that the human body beg ins to shut down. Early in his career as a porter, and later as a mountain guide, Ang Rita noticed that he never felt the need for supplemental ox ygen, even as he carried bottles of it for other mountaineers. He didn’t use it during his first ascent of Everest in 1983 or on his subsequent nine ascents, the last of which was in 1996.

In his only winter expedition on Everest, in 1987- 88, he and a Korean climber lost their way just below the summit in bad weather conditions and spent the whole night doing aerobic exercises to stay warm.

A n g R it a hold s t he Guinness World Record for most climbs of Everest without bottled oxygen, a record that remains unequaled. ( A nother Sherpa, Kami Rita, holds the record for most total ascents of Everest, having done it 24 times, but he was known to use bottled oxygen.)

The Nepalese government honored Ang Rita with several awards, most notably the Order of Tri Shakti Patta First Class in 1990.

“His demise is an irreparable loss to the country’s climbing industry,” P r e sident Bidy a D e v i Bhandari of Nepal wrote on Twitter.

Ang Rita Sherpa was born in 1948 in Yillajung, a tiny village near Thame in the Everest region of Nepal. His mother, Chhokki Sherpa, and his father, A aya la Sher pa , were farmers. Ang Rita never received a formal education (no school was established in the Everest region until 1961, when Edmund Hillary, the first mountaineer to reach the summit of Everest, built one in K humjung). He learned the Nepali alphabet on his own and could barely write his name.

He is sur vived by his daughter, Dolma, his two sons, Tshewa n g Dor je and Furunuru, and eight grandchildren. A nother son, K arsang Namg yal Sherpa, who also became a mountain guide, died in 2012 after an Everest expedition.