A team of 20 Sherpas on a clean-up mission on Mount Everest has come across five bodies and collected over 2.5 tonnes of rubbish, the project coordinator said yesterday.
The Sherpas left for Everest in late April to collect garbage left behind by climbers and to retrieve the bodies of some who had died in the mountain's "death zone" above 8,000 metres (26,000 feet), where oxygen levels are a third of those at sea level.
Coordinator Chakra Karki told AFP that the team had found as many as five bodies, including that of American Scott Fisher, who was a guide on the mountain during the infamous 1996 disaster described in the best-selling book "Into Thin Air".
"We came across Fisher's body ... and took pictures but did not touch him," Karki told AFP by telephone from base camp.
"His family has not given us permission to remove his body and we respect their decision," he said.
The team has already brought back the bodies of two climbers -- Swiss Gianni Goltz who died in 2008 and Russian Duganov Sergey who died this year -- having obtained the consent of their families.
Since 1953, there have been some 300 deaths on Everest. Many bodies have been brought down, but those above 8,000 metres have generally been left to the elements -- their bodies preserved by the freezing temperatures.
The priority of the sherpas had been to clear rubbish just below the summit area, but Karki said large quantities of refuse had already been collected at around 6,000 metres.
There is no definitive figure on how much trash has been left on the mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the name of the world's highest dumpster.
"Unless there is a strict enforcement of monitoring and regulating garbage on the mountain, cleaning campaigns like ours will hardly make a difference," Karki said.
Expeditions currently have to fork out a 4,000-dollar deposit, which is refundable once they show they have brought back everything they took onto the mountain.
But officials say the rules are difficult to implement.
"Our officers accompany the expedition teams but they cannot go to the top, so our monitoring is weak," said Jitendra Giri, a mountaineering official at the tourism ministry.
"We receive lots of complaints about mountaineers discarding tins, bottles and used batteries, but there's nothing we can do."
The clean-up team hopes to carry down at least three tonnes of rubbish to Base Camp on May 29 -- the anniversary of the first ascent of Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953.