Kathmandu, April 16 A team of renowned mountaineers who had pulled off a seemingly impossible expedition in 1978 has returned to Nepal to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic summit when two of its members scaled Mt Everest without using bottled oxygen. The surviving eight members of the historic 12-member expedition — Wolfgang Nairz, Reinhold Messner, Peter Habeler, Helmut Hagner, Hanns Schell, Robert Schauer, Oswald Ölz and Raimund Margreiter — would also visit Mt Everest region, legendary mountaineer Messner told THT. According to Tashi Tenzing Sherpa, grandson of the legendary climber Tenzing Norgay, it’s the team’s first ever visit to Nepal after Messner and Peter Habeler scripted history in Himalayan climbing by standing atop the world’s highest peak for the first time without oxygen support. Till date, less than 200 climbers have made it to the top of Mt Everest from Nepal and Tibet sides without using bottled oxygen. The team has lost four of its members — Horst Bergmann, Josl Knoll, Reinhard Karl and Franz Oppurg. Messner, who advocates traditional alpinism, termed the recent trend on Mt Everest climbing ‘tourism’. “It’s tourism, not climbing. But Nepal needs more tourists,” the 74-year-old told this daily. Habeler, however, seems a bit critical about the unabated flow of inexperienced climbers on Mt Everest in recent years but had no clue how to control it. The 75-year-old mountaineer said Nepal was his second home, recounting a slogan that he coined 40 years ago when he arrived for the first time at Tribhuvan International Airport: “Nepal will change you.” Nairz, 73, who became the first Austrian to summit Mt Everest, said the 1978 expedition paved the way for others to attempt scaling the roof of the world without supplemental oxygen. “Since then, a few of us have visited Nepal on our own, but never the whole team,” he added.