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Nepal to celebrate 60th anniversary of ascent of Mt. Lhotse and Mt. Manaslu

Xinhua, April 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

Mountaineers from around the world will gather in Nepal to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the ascent of Mt. Lhotse and Mt. Manaslu, the fourth and eighth highest peaks in the world.

A Swiss team represented by Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger from the Swiss Mount Everest/Lhotse Expedition had first climbed the 8,516-meter Mt. Lhotse on May 18, 1956.

Likewise, on May 9, 1956, Japanese climber Toshio Imanishi and Nepalese Gyalzen Norbu Sherpa made the first ascent of the 8,163-meter Manaslu. Two days later, two other members of the same team - Minoru Higeta and Kichiro Kato from Japan ascended the Mt. Manaslu.

To jointly mark these first ascents of these two peaks, Nepal's Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation in association with Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), is holding a special event on April 30 in Kathmandu.

Details of event have not been revealed yet, but Nepalese Tourism Secretary Prem Kumar Rai told Xinhua that Nepalese President Bidya Devi Bhandari would be inaugurating the special program designed to celebrate the diamond jubilee.

There is also a cleanup plan of the base camps of Mt. Manaslu on May 9 and Mt. Lhotse on May 18, when these two peaks were first ascended.

Among the mountaineers to be present in the event includes Minoru Higeta, the only living member of a team that climbed Mt. Manaslu for the first time in May 1956.

"Higeta, the Japanese national, is visiting Nepal along with a 90-member team of Japanese climbers led by Japanese Alpine Club President Nesahi Kobayashi," said NMA President Ang Tshering Sherpa.

A total of 604 climbers have ascended the Mt. Lhotse and 1,067 have reached the summit of the Mt. Manaslu, according to NMA.

"We expect the participation of the around 300 climbers in Nepal to mark the 60th anniversary of these two peaks," said Sherpa. According to him, Mountaineers from Japan, Britain, Italy, South Korea and India among others will be visiting Nepal.

Nepalese officials believed that the event would help boost tourism business at a time when the sector has been hit hard by last year's earthquake and subsequent blockades in Nepal's southern border areas. Enditem