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Korean Climbers To Clean Annapurna
Continuing with their endeavor to clean up all the mountains above 8000 m in altitude, a team of Korean climbers led by internationally renowned mountaineer Han Wang-Yong has arrived in Nepal .
This time the Korean team, which include 22 Koreans, two Japanese and a French mountaineers, will clean up the base camp (north face) and surrounding area of the 8901 m high Mt. Annapurna . Mt. Annapurna is the world’s tenth tallest mountain. Earlier this year, the team had cleaned up the base camp area of Dhaulagiri .
Han, 39, has launched the ambitious mission of cleaning up all the 14 peaks in 2003, right after he achieved the feat of successfully climbing all the 14 peaks. Eight of the 14 peaks that are higher than 8000 m lie in Nepal . Five of them lie in Pakistan and one in Tibet .
He has already led cleaning campaigns to Mt. Everest (autumn 2003), Mt. Manaslu (Autumn 2004) and Mt. Dhaulagiri (spring 2005) as well as cleaning expedition to Mt. K2 (summer 2004). In Mt. K2 his team went up to 3 rd camp for cleaning whereas in other mountains, the cleaning campaign was limited to base camp areas.
He plans to lead cleaning campaign up to camp IV (around 7900 m) of Mt. Everest in the next spring season in 2006. Han Wang-Yong is a veteran mountaineer of Seoul , South Korea and has been active in mountaineering since 1990s. He is the 11 th mountaineer in the world to have achieved the feat of climbing all the 14 peaks above 8000 m altitude.
“Korean Treks and Expeditions Pvt. Ltd is the local partner and provides logistic support throughout the campaign. The collected litters would be brought down nearby base camp area, where biodegradable wastes will be burnt and rest disposed properly,” said Fenzo Sherpa, managing director of the Korean Treks.
Film Festival To Be Organized
Film South Asia 2005 is scheduled to start from Thursday (September 29). The festival will screen 44 documentaries from Nepal , Bangladesh , Pakistan , Sri Lanka , Afghanistan , Burma , South Africa and Canada at the commercial cine complex Kumari Hall.
Himal Association has been organizing the Film South Asia and Mountain Film Festival alternately every year since last one decade. This is the fifth edition of Film South Asia.
While, the market of feature films is slacking in the recent years, the awareness and the size of the audience for documentaries has increased. The film festivals organized by Himal Association deserves credit for teaching the Nepali audience to watch documentaries.
Indicating this growth, Kanak Mani Dixit, the chair of the festival and a journalist said, “The last decade has seen the emergence of a sizeable mass of film critics in Kathmandu . The quality of films featuring in the festival has also gone up.”
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