TOKYO - A 75-YEAR-OLD Japanese skier bidding to be the oldest person to climb Mount Everest left base camp on Tuesday, aiming to reach the summit of the world's highest peak next week, his office said.

Yuichiro Miura hopes to reach the summit on May 26 with a team including his second son Gota, 38, if the weather and other conditions permit.

They are approaching from Nepal after dropping plans to go via Tibet due to recent unrest.

He won international fame in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down the South Col of Mount Everest, using a parachute as a brake.

The descent was immortalised in 1975 in an Oscar-winning documentary film, 'The Man Who Skied Down Everest.' He set a record in 2003 as the oldest person to conquer the 8,848-metre peak at the age of 70, also from the Nepalese side.

But afterwards he suffered arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat, and other problems, forcing him to undergo two heart operations.

If successful this time, Miura would again become Everest's oldest conqueror, breaking the record set last year by another Japanese man - Katsusuke Yanagisawa, who was 71 years and two months at the time.

Mr Miura said in his expedition diary on Monday that his greatest challenge was how his physical condition, especially his arrhythmia, would be at high altitude.

'Fortunately, although I experienced extreme fatigue, no alarming arrhythmia was observed in previous acclimatisation of hard climbing to the 6,600-metre point,' he said in the excerpts released by his office.

'This fact is definitely a grain of hope.'

But he added that at higher altitudes, 'unimaginably severe conditions will await me.'