Record number of climbers conquer Everest

KATHMANDU, May 31 (Reuters) A record 514 people have so far conquered Mount Everest in this year's main climbing season, the biggest number since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first climbed the world's highest mountain in 1953, a top mountaineering official said.

''This figure will only go up because still there are climbers on the mountain who have not finished their expedition yet,'' Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, told Reuters today.

Sherpa said 239 people had already climbed the 8,850 metre (29,035 feet) summit from the Nepali side and the rest from Tibet.

The previous record was 470 people in the spring climbing season of 2006.

The vast number of climbers who attempt Everest do so in the spring season, before the monsoon rains arrive. Only a few dozen people attempt to climb outside that season.

Tourism ministry official Khadananda Dhakal said it was too early for the government to compile the total numbers.

Sherpa said his figures were based on the information from teams supported by his Asian Trekking Agency and contacts with the Lhasa-based China Tibet Mountaineering Association.

An estimated 2,000 people including a 71-year-old Japanese man, a climber with an artificial leg, and a teenaged boy, have reached the summit since 1953.

Historians say that many people have conquered the summit more than once, meaning that the number of ascents is likely much higher than 2,000.

At least 202 people have died trying to reach the top.

REUTERS PJ BD1849