These records culminated last year in his sprint to the summit in 16 hours 56 minutes from base camp, a climb that takes most mountaineers three or four days. The previous year he spent 21 hours on the summit itself, sheltering in a small tent and chattering through the long frozen night into his radio, even singing Nepali folk songs, to avoid falling into a sleep from which doctors warned he might never wake up.

But if Babu's achievements were a deliberate attempt to win fame, then he learned the lesson from those western and Japanese climbers who had relied for years on sherpas like him to do exactly the same thing. And Babu's immense strength illustrated that when it came to climbing the very highest Himalayan peaks, admittedly by their easier routes, hardly any foreign climbers could come close to Babu and his people.

Nor was he some starry-eyed romantic who mythologised the mountain's appeal. "A lot of sherpas go to the mountain with fear," he once said, "but that's no way to climb. They have to go, because it's a job and they're being well paid for it. If they don't have any education, they don't have a choice." To that end, Babu was working to build a school at Traksindo, near his home village of Chhulemu in Solukhumbu district, in the shadow of the mountain that sherpas call Chomolungma.

Babu Chhiri was born the fourth of eight children. His father, Lhakpa Sherpa, was a farmer and trader who had carried a load to Everest's base camp for John Hunt's expedition in 1953. Babu grew up tending the family's yaks and had no formal schooling, something he deeply regretted. He learned English, like many sherpas, as he went along the mountain trails with the tourists he worked for.

At 16 he married his wife Puti, but Babu had secretly decided to follow two of his brothers to Kathmandu to find work in the rapidly growing trekking industry. On his first job he earned around 10 pence a day carrying a 30-kilo load up and down the steep trails of Nepal. He returned to his village broke and in tears after spending his earnings on food and bus fares.

Two years later he tried again, this time as a cook boy, and slowly he worked his way up to better and more lucrative jobs. His break came in 1989, still aged only 23, as a climbing sherpa on a Russian expedition to the world's third-highest peak, Kangchenjunga. He reached the summit without bottled oxygen and discovered he was supremely adapted for living at high altitude. "It was like an exam," he said, and one that he passed with flying colours.

The following year he climbed Everest for the first time with the Frenchman Marc Batard and his new career - as a personality in his own right - took shape. He would reach the summit a further nine times, including two ascents in two weeks in 1995, and be feted as a national hero by King Birendra.

A stocky man with a Buddha-like paunch - he would often praise his wife's cooking - Babu made friends easily, not just in Nepal but in America and Europe, where he understood the real money in climbing lay. But he saw a future for the sherpas, and for his children, outside climbing.

Babu was a safe mountaineer, as well as a strong one. His death, while reportedly taking photographs at Camp II, is a tragedy for his young family, who are in desperate need of help. Donations can be made to the Babu Chhiri Sherpa Trust account c/o Mountain Hardwear, 4911 Central Avenue, Richmond CA 94804, USA. For his community it is a cruel reminder of the dangers on the mountain that gave him so much.

 Babu Chhiri Sherpa, mountaineer, born spring 1966; died April 29 2001