71-Year Old Japanese Climber Oldest to Climb Everest

Filed in archive Mountain Climbing , Outdoor News on May 29, 2007

First, we had the youngest ever to climb mount everest. Now, we have the oldest.

Yesterday, Japanese climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa became the oldest person, 71 years, 2 months, and 2 days, to summit Everest, topping the previous record by Takao Arayama, who was 70 years, 7 months, and 13 days old. As if that wasn't enough, Yanagisawa plans to climb Everest again next year, at the young age of 75.

This, no doubt, has been a very busy climbing season on Everest, with over 200 climbers scaling Everest since the beginning of the spring climbing season.

"I didn't think I would make it," Katsusuke Yanagisawa told The Associated Press in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu on Tuesday, after returning safely from the world's highest mountain. "No more high mountains," he added.

Yanagisawa, a retired junior high school teacher from central Japan, said he is exhausted and lost some movement of his right palm during the treacherous climb but is mostly fine.

"Everest was much more difficult than I expected. It was difficult to breath, hard to walk. Even coming down the mountain was more difficult than what I had thought it would be," he said. "Everest is a really hard mountain."

But once he reached the summit, he was overwhelmed.

"I did well ... better job than I expected," he said.

He was inspired to attempt Everest last year after he managed to scale the nearby Mount Cho Oyu.

"It was my dream to climb Cho Oyu - a peak which was higher than 26,240 feet - when I reached the age 70," he said.

From the summit of Cho Oyu, he got a glimpse of Everest. "I found my next dream," he said.

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