Everest climbers told to take their trash with them
Print Edition
Litterbugs are no longer welcome on the roof of the world.
As Nepal welcomes this year’s trekking season on Mount Everest, it is introducing new rules this week in the hope of taking more control over the world’s tallest mountain.
The rules, including a demand that climbers bring down their own trash, are aimed at making the mountain safer — and cleaner, officials said.
If the hundreds of Western climbers each year clean up after themselves, “we can be assured that no new garbage will be added,” said Kapindra Rai of the mountain’s pollution control committee.
But what of the trash that’s already up there? Tons of crumpled food wrappers, shredded tents, abandoned ropes and spent oxygen cylinders now litter climbing routes, earning Everest the title of “the world’s highest garbage dump.”
More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the 8,850-meter summit since 1953, when it was first conquered by New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.
Yet, Nepal authorities have never had much control over what happens at the mountain’s extreme altitudes.
Instead, private trekking companies are left to organize logistics and report any problems. They are also left to clear the trash, launching yearly springtime expeditions to bring down whatever hasn’t been covered over by ice and snow.
“There is no way to say how much garbage is left on Everest,” said Dawa Steven Sherpa, who has been leading Eco Everest Expeditions since 2008.
Still, Sherpas and environmentalists applauded the new clean-up rules.
“This should have been introduced a long time back,” said Ang Tshering, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association. “It is going to make sure that climbers obey the rules.”
For the government, Everest is the centerpiece of its tourism industry which earns the country US$3.3 million each year in climbing fees alone. Some 230,000 people — nearly half of Nepal’s yearly foreign visitors — came last year specifically to trek the Himalayas, with 810 attempting to scale Everest.
In order to enforce its new garbage-clearing rule, the government is setting up its first Everest base camp tent for officials to check that each climber descends with 8 kilograms of trash — the amount the government estimates a climber discards along the route.
A Tourism Ministry official said Nepal was ready to take action against littering mountaineers, but would not specify what that action might be.
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