Wellington:
Plans to place the ashes of Mt Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary on the summit of the world's tallest mountain next week were welcomed on Saturday by the New Zealander's family and friends.
"It's a good move, I'd be totally happy with it," his son Peter Hillary told the New Zealand Press Association. Fellow mountaineer Graeme Dingle told Radio New Zealand it was more appropriate that the remaining ashes were scattered on Mt Everest than kept in a Buddhist monastery.
After his death in 2008, most of Hillary's ashes were scattered in the sea off Auckland in his New Zealand homeland, with some kept in the monastery in the Himalayan village of Kunde in eastern Nepal.
Hillary and Nepalese sherpa Norgay Tenzing made history on May 29, 1953, when they became the first men to reach the summit of the 8,848-metre peak.
The New Zealander later opened a foundation that built schools and clinics in the Solokhumbu region at the base of Everest.
Now another sherpa plans to place the remaining ashes on the summit when he attempts to conquer Everest for a record 20th time next week.
"I met Hillary many times, he was a wonderful man who helped so many local people," Sherpa Apa said.
"Without him we would have no clinics, and we would have no schools. So I am very happy to take his ashes with me to the summit."