Adventurer Yuichiro Miura, who in May became for the second time the oldest person to scale Mount Everest, now wants to become the oldest person to descend from the world's "highest skiing point."
In an interview Sunday, the 80-year-old Miura said he hopes within five years to ski from the top of 8,201-meter Mount Cho Oyu in the Himalayas, the sixth-highest mountain in the world.
He said he will start training soon and he plans to be accompanied by his son, Gota, 43, who accompanied him on his latest ascent of the 8,848-meter Mount Everest.
"As a professional skier, I hope to send a message to the world that skiing is a wonderful sport," Miura said.
He said he inherited his passion for skiing from his late father, Keizo, who skied down Europe's Mont Blanc at age 99 in 2003.
In 1970, Miura skied down Mount Everest from an elevation of 8,000 meters.
He is also hoping to attract skiers from home and abroad to mountains in the Tohoku region, including 1,584-meter Mount Hakkoda and 1,841-meter Mount Zao, which are "world-class ski sites with great slopes and huge frost-covered trees that can't be seen anywhere else."
Miura was in his native Aomori Prefecture during the weekend to receive honorary citizen awards from the cities of Aomori and Hirosaki.
