(AFP) – Jun 8, 2010 

KATHMANDU — A Nepalese Sherpa who holds the record for the fastest ascent of Everest is hoping to take a local child to the summit after a US teenager became the youngest person to climb the mountain.

Thirteen-year-old Jordan Romero from California reached the top of Everest last month, becoming the youngest person ever to conquer the world's highest peak after a climb some medical experts criticised as irresponsible.

Now Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who climbed Everest in eight hours and 10 minutes in 2004, is hoping to find a younger Nepalese climber to beat that record next year -- and is even considering taking his nine-year-old son.

"The last record-holder (said to be 16-year-old Temba Tsheri of Nepal) was a relative of mine. He held the record for more than 10 years, which made us very proud," Sherpa told AFP on Tuesday.

"Nepal is a small country and we do not get much good publicity. I want to take an 11- or 12-year-old to the summit because I think all the Everest records should be held by Nepalese people."

Sherpa, who lives in Kathmandu but was born in a small village high in the Himalayas, travelled to his home district this week to try to find a child to take to the summit during the 2011 climbing season.

But he said he had struggled to find anyone with a birth certificate in the remote district, where most women deliver their children at home and few births are formally registered.

He fears that would make it difficult to prove the record, and is now considering taking his own son, Tseten Sherpa, who turns 10 later this year.

Around 3,000 people have climbed Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to conquer the 8,848-metre (29,028-foot) peak in 1953.

Several hundred have died, many of them falling to their deaths or succumbing to altitude sickness during the gruelling climb, and any attempt to take a young child to the summit is certain to attract controversy.

Nepal does not usually grant Everest permits to anyone under 16 and Romero, accompanied by his father Paul, climbed the mountain from the northern side of the mountain in Tibet.

But Sherpa said the tourism ministry had agreed to make an exception for a Nepalese child seeking to break the American's record.

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