The first time Apa Sherpa climbed Mount Everest it was just to get to the top. When he conquered the peak an eighteenth time just over a week ago, breaking his own record, he did it for the mountain.

"I'm not climbing for my record. I climbed this time to help," said Apa (48), who was part of an expedition aiming to draw attention to the issue of global warming and to promote sustainable climbing practices.

"We were trying to clean up because we have only one Everest," he told AFP.

The expedition members, who have just returned to Kathmandu, made a point of bringing down their own waste — excrement and all — since nothing biodegrades in the icy climes of the 8848-metre peak.

"I didn't know about ecology and global warming," said Apa, adding he now wants to educate people living in the mountains and other remote areas of Nepal about its effects.

"I understand now about global warming. This is dangerous so we have to tell the people about it."

Apa said he has seen first-hand the dangers that can be wrought by fragile, melting ice.

Two decades ago, fields in his village of Thame at the foot of the Himalayas were flooded when the icy barriers of a glacial lake broke. That seems to be happening more often, he said.

"This summer another lake broke and washed away all the bridges to Everest," he said.

In addition, climbers have been reporting the steady break-up of the Khumbu icefall, a treacherous maze of cliffs and crevasses that guard the southern approach to the peak.

Super Sherpas

The western-driven mountain tourism industry rests — literally — on the backs of indigenous sherpas like Apa, who work as support climbers to foreign climbing expeditions.

They haul gear, lay out rope, fix ladders and carry out other arduous tasks.

But guides like Apa have also done a great deal to protect the mountain from its ever increasing stream of visitors, initiating regular climbs since 1992 to clean up Everest — a peak they revere and pray to before climbing.

"People who come from all over the world to climb Everest must concentrate on cleaning up Everest," said the climber, whose slight frame conceals what has been described as a body of almost superhuman stamina.

He bagged his first Everest summit in 1990, and has been making the climb into the "death zone" look like child's play ever since.

There are between 500 and 700 high-altitude climbing sherpas — a term that refers to an ethnic group but now is used for all those who assist Himalayan expeditions.

It is dangerous work — the mountain has claimed at least 200 lives — and Apa's wife and three children constantly beg him to stop.

But Apa is a member of a select tribe of "Super Sherpas" — especially skilled mountaineers who are in high demand and who have helped to bring respect to a people once regarded largely as porters by the colonial British.

The first to win recognition for the sherpas as being among the world's best climbers was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who conquered Everest with New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary in 1953.

But last year, when Apa topped the mountain for a seventeenth time, he did it with an all-Sherpa group to make a documentary to raise money for schools in Nepal.

"It was so great standing on the top of the world with only Nepalis, only Sherpas," said Apa. "Otherwise it is always western people."

Now, he says he will only climb the mountain when it again brings the opportunity to do some good. When it comes to setting records, he said others are welcome to beat him.

"They can climb 20 times. I will be very happy for them," he said with a broad smile, adding that, anyway, "The best time is the first time."

AFP