KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) The only surviving member of the mountaineering expedition that first conquered Mount Everest said Saturday that the worlds highest peak is too crowded and dirty, and the mountain is a god that needs to be respected.

Kanchha Sherpa, 91, was among the 35 members in the team that put New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay atop the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak on May 29, 1953.

It would be better for the mountain to reduce the number of climbers, Kanchha said in an interview in Kathmandu on Saturday, Right now there is always a big crowd of people at the summit.

Since the first conquest, the peak has been climbed thousands of times, and it gets more crowded every year. During the spring climbing season in 2023, 667 climbers scaled the peak, but that brought in thousands of support staff to the base camp between the months of March and May.

There have been concerns about the number of people living on the mountain for months on end, generating trash and waste, but authorities have no plans to cut down on the number of permits they issue to climbers.