Xia, 69, was part of a 20-man Chinese team that tried to scale the 8,848m peak in 1975. “It’s not been easy for me to reach the peak of Mount Everest which I’ve dreamed of,” he said. His attempt this year was nearly derailed by the Nepal government, which in December banned double amputees and blind people from climbing Everest, part of a raft of restrictions it claimed would make the mountain safer. A month before his fifth attempt, Xia told Agence France-Presse that climbing Everest was his dream. “Boyu finally won his 40-year-long battle for Mount Everest,” Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, the managing director at Imagine Treks, who accompanied the Chinese climber, told the Himalayan Times.

Source: The Guardian May 15, 2018 11:48 UTC