Nine Sherpa 'icefall doctors', who risked their lives to fix ropes and dig the route to the summit of world's highest peak Mount Everest after last year's devastating earthquakes, were today honoured by Prime Minister K P Oli.
Oli praised the men at a ceremony here when the Sherpas were presented with bouquets and given cheques of Nepali rupees 50,000.
Besides the nine Sherpas, five people, who coordinated and helped out in fixing ropes at Everest, were also honoured.
The hard and arduous work done by the Sherpa guides to fix the ropes after the devastating earthquakes paved way for 450 climbers to reach Everest's summit this month.
The nine Sherpas reached the 8,848 metres high peak on May 11 that paved way for other climbers to scale the world's highest peak after an interval of two years.
Climbing was halted on Everest after the deadly avalanche of 2014 that killed 16 Sherpa guides.
In 2015, the avalanche triggered by the earthquake had killed 18 climbers.
Nepal today observed the International Everest Day by organising a rally and the special programme to honour the Everest heroes.
Everest Day is observed to commemorate the first successful climb in 1953 by Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.
More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the Everest approximately 7,700 times.
So far, 290 climbers have died while attempting to scale the highest peak in the world.
This season five foreigners, including two Indian climbers, died while climbing the Everest.
Prime Minister Oli also congratulated the successful climbers.
"The successful expeditions to the Everest would not have been possible this year if the Sherpa guides did not fix the ropes on the Everest after the devastating earthquake," Oli said.
Noting that Nepal faced two deadly avalanches within a period of two years killing nearly three dozen people, President of Nepal Mountaineering Association Ang Tshering Sherpa underlined the need to generate awareness against the impact of climate change on the mountains.
"Global warming has become has become a matter of grave concern the world over and we all should be cautious and take effective measures to reduce its effects globally," he said.
