On September 21, 2020, Ang Rita Sherpa, 72, known as the ‘snow leopard,’ and ten-time Everester as well as conservator, breathed his last at his residence in Jorpati, Kathmandu . He has won several awards as a an extremely successful Sherpa, a clan of Himalayan people, known for their skill in mountaineering.
Ang Rita was born in 1948 in a small village, called Yillajung in eastern Nepal. He started working as a Sherpa at a young age. He had an undergraduate degree in parks, recreation, and tourism from Lincoln University, New Zealand. He worked for nine months as a volunteer in the US Parks Service (Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park) before joining The Mountain Institute and became a staff member of the institute, which works on the challenges faced by remote mountain communities and the fragile environments that surround them’.
For the establishment of Makalu Barun National Park, he led a team in 1992. It was a project that focused on biodiversity management along with the local community. He served as a conservator and natural resource officer at the park. This well-known climber worked on the conservation of the alpine Himalayan zone besides many other different projects along with the institute.
Ang Rita Sherpa holds the record of climbing Mount Everest ten times without using oxygen supplement, for which he won a Guinness World Record certificate for climbing Mount Everest the maximum number of times without using supplementary oxygen. In 2011, he received the Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal for his efforts towards conservation of the fragile Himalayan ecology.
Courtesy: ndtv.com