Posted on 03/04/2015 8:43:00 AM PST by Citizen Zed
Mount Everest has a feces problem.
Each year, hundreds of people attempt to climb the world's tallest mountain, spending weeks at four camps en route to adjust to the low levels of oxygen in the air. It's now estimated that they leave behind up to 26,500 pounds of excrement annually — and it's getting to the point where the pits of poop and urine surrounding these camps are becoming a serious environmental and health problem.
"It is a health hazard and the issue needs to be addressed," Dawa Steven Sherpa, an Everest expedition leader since 2008, told the AP Tuesday.
In a 2013 article in United Nations University's magazine , professor Pablo Figueroa put it this way: Given the lack of an efficient solid waste management system, for decades expedition members emptied their bowels wherever they could when they had the urge. As a result, human feces have accumulated in the snow, and streams of excrement are periodically regurgitated by the glaciers up in the mountain.
It might seem odd that feces from hundreds of people is befouling one of the world's most remote places. But it's actually part of a bigger problem that has been growing for some time.
Over the last few decades, the number of people attempting Everest each year has skyrocketed. More than 700 foreigners attempted the climb in 2013, joined by hundreds of Nepali sherpas.
As National Geographic notes , it's easier to climb Everest than ever: many of these people have no previous climbing experience, and simply pay tens or hundreds thousands of dollars to expedition operators to ensure they make it up the mountain.
These hundreds of climbers are funneled along two standard routes — so even though the mountain is enormous, their environmental impact is localized. At both the four camps and the routes in between them, these climbers leave behind piles of broken equipment, used-up oxygen canisters, other garbage...and, as noted, lots and lots of feces. One study found that one of two water sources at Gorakshep , a village at 16,942 feet, near Mount Everest's base camp, was contaminated from all the feces runoff.
In addition, there are an estimated 200 frozen corpses on Everest — the bodies of unfortunate souls who perished en route, and couldn't be carried back down by their teammates. Most climbers report stepping over or around a frozen corpse at some point during their climb.
The trash problem — especially the growing piles of empty oxygen canisters — was first noted decades ago.
Recalling his 1996 climb up Mount Everest in the book Into Thin Air, for instance, Jon Krakauer described how "the tents of Camp Four squatted on a patch of barren ground surrounded by more than a thousand discarded oxygen canisters."
During that era, several expedition companies instituted a program that paid sherpas for every empty canister they brought back down the mountain, which helped improve the situation. More recently, groups like the Eco Everest Expedition and Everest Summiteers Association began carrying out voluntary trash cleanups, collecting tons of trash annually.
Still, there are an estimated 10 tons of garbage left on Everest. Starting in 2014, the Nepali government began requiring all climbers to collect 17.6 pounds of trash from the mountain, but it's unclear how strictly this was enforced.
And poop is another problem entirely. Some climbers and sherpas carry it down in plastic bags, but right now, they're in the minority. Engineers have discussed building a biodigester that could process the feces at base camp, but at this point, it's just an idea.
Conservation groups have suggested cutting down on the number of climbing permits issued annually. But for Nepal, that might be difficult: sale of the $11,000 permits injects about $3 million into the Nepal economy annually, on top of indirect revenue spent on sherpa teams and other expedition expenditures.
Not directly related but for some reason this story reminds me of a story I heard on the Paul Harvey SR. radio show way back. seems Amtrak used to have the habit of dumping the waste from their gray tanks right on the tracks as the train was travelling from one place to another (probably still do). After Paul Harvey finished the story he paused and quipped “When I was a kid I always used to wonder why the strawberries grew so well along the railroad tracks..........now I know”.
Nepal’s problem. I don’t care.
well, when global varming kicks in, its all gonna come sliding downhill.. corpses, poop, debris, Bill Clinton’s legacy, Obammy’s real birth certificate..
Its gonna flow..
When considering the kind of people one normally sees sporting the really snazzy mountaineering gear made by whatchacallit... Pat... Patarovia, is that it? And others...
Anyway, after all the Subarus I've seen with Patarovia decals on them and the people jumping out of them, sporting $1k worth each of Patarovia mountaineering gear just to go be seen at Starbucks...
There's a certain irony here...
“When backpacking in the wilderness, one always packs out what they bring in, to leave the place the same or better than when they arrived.”
Unless you’re a liberal. Their $hit doesn’t stink.
You think that's bad, wait 'till they total how much is on Michael Moore...
No comparison to what you find on Kilimanjaro.
If you can’t bring the poop to Muhammed, bring Muhammed to the poop.
Mebbe there’s a marketing opportunity here. Design a ski pole with a pooper scooper attachment.
I smell a poop tax coming.
They ought to weigh in the climbers at the base, and require that they weigh out at the same number. Climbers will eat a certain weight of food and use a certain weight of gear; they should carry sealable plastic poop bags and take an equal amount of weight down with them.
They sell arctic ice, why not Himalayan poop. ship it in dry ice.
As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about, now this.
Whatever shall we do? As Emily Litella would say, “it’s always something.” Good Grief!!
Can it be burned as fuel? Surely someone can think of a device to make this non-toxic to those in the area of the burner.
How can it dessicate on a frozen surface?
Not to worry. It’s frozen poop. You can even pick it up and through it tens of thousands of feet with very little effort.
A certain irony was my thought exactly.
And there can be little doubt that these morally superior mountain climbers are among the “settled science” true believers demanding everyone else conform to the global warming scam and all other types of unfounded environmental nonsense.
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