Expeditions left Everest dirty

The upper part of the Everest is littered with the detritus of the past expeditions including human waste, oxygen bottles, plastics and of course mountaineers' corpses. The extreme cold up there lets nothing decompose.

Earlier, the rubbish used to be hidden under the snow. Now it has come out to the surface with the melting of snow.

Mount Everest poses a whole new problem -- the garbage.

On the eve of the International Everest Day, Apa Sherpa (at right) who climbed up the Everest record 20 times said, the global warming is changing the environment of the Everest.

“Now it has become even hard to climb the mountain,” said Apa Sherpa at a program held in Kathmandu.

He announced in the program that he would not climb the Everest for any commercial purpose anymore. “I'll only climb it for a cause,” said Apa, who led an Everest clean-up program in 2008 and cleaned up to 965 kg of garbage.

“Now onward my climb will be dedicated to highlight the impact of climate change on Himalayas and people living in the region,” said Apa at the program.

Thousands of mountaineers climb the mountains every year and leave wastages above 8,000 meters that have become known as the world's highest rubbish tip with empty oxygen bottles, old ropes, food and remnants of tents.

“Yes, beside the dead bodies, I saw garbage at the upper part of the Everest,” said Musa Ibrahim, when asked about the environmental degradation of the Everest.

“Especially the human excreta, it does not have any management up on the Everest,” said Musa who climbed the Everest along the North Alpine on Tibet side.

Up to the advance base camp, China-Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) do clean up every year before the mountaineering season starts in April and May, he said.

But at the South Col on Nepal side and at the North Col at the Tibet side every year piles of garbage, some of human corpses are adding to the detritus made earlier.

Litter on the mountain was a significant environmental problem until the Nepalese government imposed strict rules forcing visitors to keep it clean, said an official of Nepal Board of Tourism.

This year the Extreme Everest Expedition team off to Everest from Kathmandu on April 6 and brought down seven tons of rubbish down to Base Camp at 5,200 meters high.

Earlier, many teams have tried to clear the mountain, Namgyal Sherpa, leader of the Extreme Everest Expedition 2010, said no one had tried it at 8,000 meters height called the death zone.

''This is the first time we are cleaning the death zone. It's very difficult and dangerous,'' said Namgyal, who has topped the Everest seven times, told the reporters earlier when they started their journey.

The zone earned its name because it is almost impossible to survive the harsh temperatures and thin air of such altitudes for more than a few days. Anyone who stays in the zone for longer will likely perish.

At this altitude oxygen levels are a third of what they would be at sea level.

Scores of corpses preserved by the freezing temperatures remain on the mountain, some for decades.

''I have seen 10 to 12 corpses lying there above the North Col. I heard some of them are lying there for years,'' said Musa.

Nepali Mountaineering Association Sources said, in the South Col (Nepali side) also there are many bodies still lying on the mountain.

In 1999, a research expedition found the remains of George Mallory, a British mountaineer, who disappeared with ropemate Andrew Irvine in 1924.

Experts have long debated whether the pair had reached the summit before perishing. The find did not provide conclusive evidence. A service was held for Mallory and his body left where it was, says a website called everestnews.com.

More than 4000 climbers have scaled Everest since Ed. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did it on May 29, 1953, different sources say.

Source:
The Daily Star, "Expeditions left Everest dirty", accessed June 2, 2010