World’s Highest Garbage Dump

by Eva | July 13, 2008 at 09:16 pm

2118 views | 27 Recommendations | 19 comments

What is Mount Everest? The highest mountain in the world you will answer. Well it is that, but dismayingly, what Mount Everest is now increasingly being known as is The Worlds’ Highest Garbage dump. It is hard to reconcile the image of the pristine, snow covered, wind-swept crags of the mountaineer’s ultimate challenge with that of a rubbish tip, but that is grave concern right now. The roof of the world is filthy dirty people!

When I read the news story about China’s plans to clean up Mt Everest, I realized what problem climbers can pose to the very peaks that they look to conquer. When people climb Everest, they inevitably leave behind climbing equipment, food, plastics, tins, aluminum cans, glass, clothes, papers, tents, specially along the most popular route to the summit—the Southeast Ridge. The trail consists of a base camp at 17,600 feet and four additional camps closer to the summit. Since the first successful expedition, at least 50 tons of trash has accumulated.

Admittedly, collecting litter becomes rather less of a priority when you are struggling for survival at the higher altitudes when your body and brain is severely oxygen deprived and hypothermia a constant threat. Some estimates suggest that there is some 120 tons of litter on Mt Everest!

Apart from litter there is another rather grim leftover of climbing expeditions to Everest: there are about 120 dead bodies of climbers claimed by the mountain who are frozen in eternity somewhere along the slopes of the mountain.

So according to reports, China is now planning to restrict access to the summit to climbers to allow for a clean up by several of their environmental teams. This will clean up at least some of the litter that has accumulated on the Chinese side of the Everest which is in fact the less popular access route. The Nepalese side evidently is even more popular and presumably more littered.

One person, Jeff Clapp had a good idea, to collect some of that litter (oxygen tanks etc) and turn it them into bells such as this picture, bowls and other stuff such as this glitter ball. Great idea I thought, make a statement against the litter which represents our historical negligence of one of the world’s treasures and make some money while you’re at it!

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Uwe Paschen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 21:25 on July 13th, 2008

Eva, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I can attest to that! I saw it last year for my self!

Amy Judd

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 15:56 on July 14th, 2008

Eva, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Really good piece - thanks!

Mike Wood

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:05 on July 14th, 2008

Eva, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Wow! A lot of trash.

Jarrett Martineau

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:09 on July 14th, 2008

Eva, I like this story. It's good stuff.

feltron

at 17:49 on July 14th, 2008

to learn more about my day at everest, please visit:
http://feltron.com/index.php?/content/hello_china_tibet/P7/

feltron has contributed a photo to this story.

Eva

at 19:37 on July 14th, 2008

I thank all of you to appreciate my story. I think we all can collectively save our nature by joining hands and trying to make people aware that Mount everest is our own and we should not make it as a garbage dump.

you can also get a lot of other informative stuff on http://www.evawhite.com

htomley

at 20:11 on July 14th, 2008

I was at base camp on the Nepal side last November. No expeditions were there since it was too cold. The good thing is, base camp was clean - no garbage dump. From what we heard, the Nepal government has been cracking down on litter on the trail to base camp and on the mountain. Expeditions now have to pack everything back out. To track it, they weigh all of their gear before and after a climb, and if the weight is off (they didn't bring enough back), they get charged a heafty fee. From what I saw, it seems to be working, at least at base camp.

htomley has contributed a photo to this story.

rakeshbalaji

at 22:41 on July 14th, 2008

rakeshbalaji has contributed a photo to this story.

Paul Hopkins

at 00:15 on July 15th, 2008

I agree with what htomley says above. I can't remember the exact fee but I think each climber now has to pay USD5000 in advance as a litter fee. If the expedition is found to be littering or does not meet the required standards then No One gets the USD5000 back.

On the Tibetan side everything seems to be fairly clean.

The main problems are the piles of discarded camping equipment, including tents, food, and wrappers and excess baggage left from almost 100 years of earlier expeditions. Because of the temperatures food does not degrade or get eaten by animals.

The environment and the effects the altitude and temperatures have on the body as the climbers get higher the focus is to stay alive and disgarding surplus weight is a good choice.

As for the bodies, well I think they should stay where they fell. Apart from that getting them down in one piece and before they thaw would not be an easy task.

I have not climbed Everest.

ksengog

at 00:40 on July 15th, 2008

there's plenty of cleaning activity in the area - Yeti Airlines cleared the Khumbu trail this year (here's the story) and the chinese side of the mountain is to be cleaned next year (here's the story)

ksengog has contributed a photo to this story.

steveblethyn

at 03:59 on July 15th, 2008

This photo was taken while flying past on a 'Yeti Airline' tour. Take a look at www.steveblethyn.co.uk for my latest news and updates on Everest, along with some other great mountains.

NB there will be a blog on my site soon with comments about Everest and the rubbish left on it.

steveblethyn has contributed a photo to this story.

Andreas Riska

at 06:25 on July 15th, 2008

Me and a few friends was travelling with a jeep to the Everest base camp in november 2006. We stopped at a place on the road with a good view where I took this picture. I didn't know that the Everest is becoming a garbage dump, I didn't see any garbage on this place or at the base camp back then.

Andreas Riska has contributed a photo to this story.

Eva

at 08:46 on July 15th, 2008

It's simply too great to read all your personal experiences.......I would love to go to Mount everest and experience the same.

AB Travel

at 09:37 on July 15th, 2008

It was the whole day cloudy and we couldn´t see the Mount Everest at all, we went back to the hotel street and the clouds were disapearing so we went back again to the basecamp and there it was the Mount Everest. We saw a strange shadow on the mountain, it looks like somebody is walking on the cloud.It was amazing to see Mount Everest this way.

AB Travel has contributed a photo to this story.

colourdata

at 23:30 on July 15th, 2008

World first peak - Mount Jolmo Lungma
On October 1, 2007 I arrived at the Mount Everest supreme headquarters. It is the first times I see the world first peak in such a short distance the blue sky and the proud alpine peaks.

colourdata has contributed a photo to this story.

justbetweenus_us

at 18:13 on July 18th, 2008

Some friends and I wanted to go on a trip and I was living in my hometown in N.Y. so we went on this trip we didn't dare for a climb we weren't ready for that we just wanted to take a look at this giant beast. Also, we all got done just seeing the movie "Into The Thin Air" which talked about the accounts of climb that people did back in the day. So, I thought this was a nice shot to take and that it came out better than I thought. Glad you enjoyed it as well.

justbetweenus_us has contributed a photo to this story.

rpshen

at 21:15 on July 22nd, 2008

Thank you to everyone who contributed a photo to this story! Much appreciated.

Eva

at 21:05 on July 23rd, 2008

I appreciate everybody's effort to add a photo to my story and share their experiences here.

frozen_star

at 00:25 on August 3rd, 2008

Eva, i am glad that my photo was choosen to spread the message of nature to many.

I went to chowrikhang base camp of a mountain in Sikkim(INDIA). the glaciers in that place has retreated so much that only 20% of what it us to be in 1970's. Unfortunatly litter was found all the way through the trekking route.