Bid to clean up Mt Manaslu Himalayan News Service Nearly after the 50 years of first successful accent of Mt Manaslu, Ken Noguchi, a Japanese mountaineer is all set to launch a mountain clean up campaign. Speaking at a press meet organised in the capital today, Noguchi said that Japanese have an emotional attachment with Mt Manaslu as the first successful summit came when Japan was in deep crisis. The Japan-Nepal Manaslu Clean Up Expedition is a part of the golden jubilee celebration. The expedition will also attempt to reach on the top of the mountain to remember the historic moments of the first accent of the mountain by Japanese team back in 1956. “Mt Everest Clean Up Campaign is organised regularly but there is no such camp to clean Mt Manaslu and it has never been in a priority list. And the clean up expedition is being organised to mark the golden jubilee of the first successful accent by the Japanese team in 1956,” Noguchi said. “We cannot estimate how much garbage is there in the mountain because there has not been any clean up camps there earlier. We believe there is a huge amount of garbage there,” Noguchi said. Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) praised Noguchi’s effort. All stakeholders of tourism industry should always be committed for the protection of mountain environment and conservation of nature, he said. The introduction of a provision of garbage deposit system in 1993 has helped reduce the amount of garbage in mountains. however, with no strict policies to penalised wrongdoers the mountain environment is being adversely affected and therefore clean up camps like this needs to be carried out time and again, Sherpa said. It was also informed that Sherpa Foundation has also been established to look after the spouses of Sherpas who have died while trying to accent various mountains in Nepal. Currently the foundation is bearing education expenses of 10 Sherpa children. It was also informed that a four to five member team has already been fixed to scale Mt Manaslu and that former prime minister of Japan, Ryutaro Hashimoto, is also expected to visit the base camp of Mt Manaslu. So far more than 250 people have scaled the mountain including 33 Japanese.