Youngest Climber Fails To Reach The Summit Of Mount Everest

KATHMANDU, Nepal - Gasping for breath and blinded by snow, a 15-year-old from Nepal abandoned his effort to be the youngest person to scale Mount Everest just a few hundred feet from the summit of the world's tallest mountain.

Arvin Timilsina and his three Sherpa guides decided to retreat from a point at 28,875 feet because they had just enough oxygen to return to their camp at South Col, 3,300 feet below.

"If we had used the remaining oxygen for our summit bid, we would not have any left for our journey down," he said today. "It was a choice between the summit and life."

Timilsina hoped to break the record set by another Nepali, Shambu Tamang, who scaled the 29,028-foot-high mountain in 1973 at age 17. He was just 10 years old when he heard about the successful climb of Everest by a Nepali woman. Since then, he said he never stopped dreaming about the day he would set foot on the summit of Everest.

"This, for me, is a success," Timilsina said today. "I feel like I was at the top of the mountain."

Timilsina was among two dozen other climbers to make their summit bid on May 5. Eight Western climbers - three Americans, two Swedes, a Briton, an Australian and a Canadian - and 10 of their Sherpa guides became the first this year to get to the top.

Since Everest was first conquered in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, about 800 people have scaled the mountain. Authorities say 180 climbers have died on its unpredictable slopes.

Nepal's mountaineering season began March 1 and will end May 31 when all expeditions will have to stop. Nine teams have been licensed to climb Everest from the Nepalese side of the mountain. More teams are trying to climb the north face of Everest in Tibet.