Taking out the trash in Tibet: Help wanted as tourists rubbish Everest
Print Edition
Trash collectors are desperately needed on Mount Qomolangma 鈥 or Mount Everest 鈥 in the Tibet Autonomous Region as tons of waste are being left on the famed peak by ever-increasing numbers of visitors.
The climbing season starts at the end of March, finishing at the end of May. When the season ends, a cleanup campaign will be carried out on all areas above 5,100 meters.
Picking up garbage on Qomolangma is no easy job.
It takes two to three years of training and adjustment, according to Cering Dandar, a legendary mountaineer and guide.
鈥淭his may sounds cruel, but just picking up a single ring-pull at over 7,000 meters could be a matter of life or death!鈥 said the 32-year-old elite climber. Anything above 8,000 meters is the death zone, where the body starts to die.
He once spent a whole day wriggling gingerly through the ice, just to pick up two oxygen tanks and a plastic cookie bag. Falling into one of the mountain鈥檚 seemingly bottomless ravines has become his worst nightmare.
Cering鈥檚 life journey has been an epic one. Leaving home at the tender age of 18, he became one of China鈥檚 first Tibetan climbing guides and has climbed the summits of the seven continents, not to mention hiking to the North and South poles 鈥 all in less than five years.
He has a master鈥檚 degree in media and communications, and was the cameraman when Beijing Olympic torch reached the top of Qomolangma in 2008. He has summited Qomolangma four times.
Young Cering first noticed trash scattered along the mountain鈥檚 tracks during his first ascent in 2006.
鈥淐ans, chocolate, oxygen tanks, tents and sleeping bags. Their colors just don鈥檛 belong here where everything should be white and blue.鈥
Now the successful climber has come back to where it all started, but this time to protect the colossal mountain.
In 2018, Cering became a founding member of the Mount Qomolangma environment squad. The team has carried out major cleaning above 5,200 meters at the base camp of the northern face 鈥 the toughest approach to the summit 鈥 of the mountain three times.
This time around they have collected more than 5,000 kilograms of food waste, 1,000 kilograms of deserted climbing equipment, and over 2,000 kilograms of human feces from just three privies.
Next year, they will have to do it all over again as a similar amount of domestic garbage will be produced at the camp.
It is almost impossible to clear all the waste on the mountain.
Some of it is simply unreachable, while the rest must be gathered by pickers and put into two big containers at the camp. A single expedition can take eight hours.
The collected trash must be treated 100 kilometers away, and the only road is a zigzagging track that offers little protection. It is not trucks, but yaks that are generally used to make the journey.
Working on Qomolangma is perhaps one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.
The mountain environment squad is made up of 30 members, mostly guides or liaison officers from the climbers鈥 association.
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