Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mount Everest and return has died at the age 88 from a heart attack.

Bhoomi Lama, of the Nepal Mountaineering Association in Kathmandu said Hillary was a hero to them.

Edmund Hillary was a beekeeper before turning to a life of adventure. Zimba Zangbu, the association's vice-president, said Nepal's Sherpas considered Hillary "a second father". They are also planning a memorial and a statue in the mountaineering park.

Hillary was in Nepal more than 120 times helping the community living in the foothills of Everest, building hospitals, schools, health clinics and airfields through the Himalayan Trust he founded in 1962.

He also set up the scientific Scott Base in Antarctica in 1957. Then in 1958 he led the first team to reach the South Pole by motorized transport.

In 1960, he returned to the Himalayas in search of the Yeti and set up a trust for charitable work in Nepal.

Visit his memorial Edmund Hillary

via Al Jazeera