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core athlete and still get some environmental work done." There's a lot of work that needs doing. Working with porters, tourism ministries and international alpine clubs, Brent is in the vanguard of a distinct movement in high-altitude climbing: to halt the slob ethic that leaves behind garbage pits and ravaged landscapes as mountaineers conquer summits. After three years coordinating clean-up efforts on - � •. -!. ) in 1963, are the only US father-son legacy to have seen the top of the world). That year, Brent and his team managed the successful climb and still pulled two and a half tons of oxygen bottles, batteries and trash off the Everest high camps, includ ing some from the 7,980-meter-high Camp IV He returned in 1995 (when he became only the fourth American to climb the adjacent 8,501 -meter Lhotse) and 1996, coordinating a "cash-for-trash" program with Nepalese Sherpas by paying them to ferry rubbish down the mountain when they descended from expedi- tions. "I feel like we sorta rewrote the paradigm of how expedition behavior should be, " says Brent. "You don't have to be a tree-hugger. You can be a hard- Everest, Brent set his sights on the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan, a region with the planet's highest concentration of 8,000-meter peaks, including the world's second-highest, K2. The decision was prompted in part by the 1996 debacle on Everest, where six people were killed, including Brent's friends Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Brent was near Everest attempting to solo Pumori that year and became disgusted with the Himalayan hype. It was time to take his climb-and-clean show to more remote climes. Because the Pakistani government banned climbing in 1959 due to its border war with India-and didn't reopen the region to outsiders until 1972-the Karakorams haven't yet been cursed with the cachet that turned Nepal into trekking Mecca. Still, the early 1980s opening of Brent and his brother-in-law Greg Mortenson-who has worked in this area for five years building schools and vocational