Carrying Hillary’s Ashes to the Summit and Bringing Down a Couple Tons of Trash
By Rocky Thompson on April 2nd, 2010
Sir Edmund Hillary has been awfully busy for a man who died 2 years ago. The fund he established to build schools and hospitals in Nepal is thriving with his son at the helm, and it was announced this week that Sir Edmund will again summit Everest. This time it will be in an urn and being carried by Apa Sherpa, who has summited Everest 19 times before. Most of Hillary’s ashes were scattered in his native New Zealand, but some of them were stored at a Buddhist monastery in a Himalayan village. After carrying the ashes to the summit, the 17-person team will work to remove rubbish from the mountainside. This is the third such mountain cleaning expedition. The first cleared a ton of trash, and the last cleared almost 6 tons.
we cleaned a couple hundred pounds off of aconcagua - which sucked because putting on chapstick that high makes you lose your breath. can’t imagine a 17 person team moving ‘tons’ off of everest. but i hear the landfill, i mean everest, is getting out of hand. good on ‘em.
awesome that you brought him home. cleaning up after all these expeditions is long over due. I can understand the exhaustion factor, but one bottle @a time