71-year-old is oldest Everest climber

A 71-year-old has become the oldest person to climb Mount Everest, mountaineering officials confirmed Wednesday, after the Japanese retired schoolteacher returned from scaling the world's highest peak.

Katsusuke Yanagisawa was 71 years, 2 months and 2 days old when he reached the 29,035-foot peak on May 22, beating the previous record set last year by another Japanese climber, Takao Arayama, who was 70 years, 7 months and 13 days old.

"I didn't think I would make it," Yanagisawa told The Associated Press in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu on Tuesday, after returning safely from his expedition. "No more high mountains," he added.

Ang Tshering, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, said Wednesday that he checked his records with other mountaineering officials and could confirm that Yanagisawa is the new record holder.

Yanagisawa said he was overwhelmed once he reached the summit. "I did well ... a better job than I expected," he said.

Still, he said he was exhausted and has lost some movement in his right hand.

"Everest was much more difficult than I expected. It was difficult to breath, hard to walk. Even coming down the mountain was more difficult than I had thought it would be," he said. "Everest is a really hard mountain."

Yanagisawa said he was inspired to attempt Everest last year after he managed to scale the nearby Mount Cho Oyu.

"It was my dream to climb Cho Oyu _ a peak that is higher than 8,000 meters (26,240 feet) _ when I reached the age 70," he said.

From the summit of Cho Oyu, he got a glimpse of Everest. "I found my next dream," he said.

Yanagisawa is the third Japanese national in recent years to set a record as the oldest climber of Everest. In 2003, Yuichiro Miura became the oldest to reach the summit at 70 years, 7 months and 10 days.

Hundreds of climbers have scaled Everest since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay conquered the peak on May 29, 1953. Some 205 people have died on the mountain's unpredictable and treacherous slopes.