Kathmandu, September 18:

An international mountaineering team comprising 22 South Koreans, two Japanese and a Frenchman will begin a cleaning campaign of Mt Annapurna, the 10th tallest peak in the world at 8091 metres, beginning next week. The team led by the veteran South Korean mountaineer Han Wang-Yong plans to spend around 12 days on the mountain clearing garbage from the base camp and the surrounding areas of the Annapurna range. Han’s Mt Annapurna Cleaning Campaign 2005 is a part of an ambitious project to clean up all 14 Himalayan peaks above 8,000 metres.

Wang-Yong, the 11th mountaineer to scale all 14 peaks above 8,000 metres, led a similar international team in October 2003 to clean-up Mt Everest, Mt Manaslu and Mt Dhaulagiri as well as Mt K2. Korean Treks and Expedition Pvt Ltd, a partner in the clean-up campaign, said the collected garbage will be brought down to the base camp, where biodegradable wastes will be burnt while non-biodegradable materials will be disposed of. Wang-Yong plans to clean Mt Everest next spring. The problem of garbage is not unique to the Himalayas; particularly the peaks above 8,000 metres like Dhaulagiri, Mana-slu, Lhotse, and Makalu are littered all over the world.