The Mess On Top of the World

In 1963, Barry Bishop, a member of the first American team to summit Mount Everest, claimed the camp at the South Col to be, “the world’s highest junk yard” (Bishop and Naumann, 2). Fifty years later, his exact words started to become headlines in newspapers. There are two major factors that have led Mount Everest to adopt the nick-name “The World Highest Junk Yard:” (1) climbing style in the early 1900s that started poor environmental habits, and (2) the growing volume of climbers and tourist coming to the region, and their ability to hand over a pretty high price to experience high mountain culture. These factors have placed a great deal of stress on the natural and cultural environments of the Everest region (Norgay, 3). As seen in many cases throughout the world, the aftermath of war has the ability to change a culture very rapidly. In the case of mountaineering culture, the development of the sport and its equipment has been shaped by war veterans, imperialists, consumers, and capitalists. History has shown us that the commodification of nature sees short lived and environmentally destructive results. Like coal, like copper, like bananas, like gold; events in history have shown how one can suck the natural wealth out of nature. Explorers and claimants, like Christopher Columbus, have been known to leave environments and people in Latin America in negative conditions. But luckily, events in history can also teach us lessons for the future. In the case of Mount Everest, we are in the process of extracting its natural wealth, but there is still time to preserve its natural beauty before the environmental condition Barry Bishop proposed in 1963 becomes its true reality. Events in history have too often repeated themselves with capitalism, consumerism, commodification, and destruction as major themes. Looking at Mount Everest’s pollution history, its increase in tourism throughout the region, and its lack of environmental regulations from the Nepali government, people can recognize that the mountain sees great environmental and cultural threats. From the late 1900s to early 2000s Mount Everest’s pollution problem has seen a quick turn around from environmentally conscious climbers and its local people, but if environmental management and policies are not put in place, the region will see more patterns of environmental and cultural degradation.

Early mountaineers have traditionally shown a lack of concern for their waste. Sir Edmund Hillary one of the first climbers to reach the summit said, “I must admit, when we went to Everest in 1953, we heaved our rubbish around with the best of them. That was nearly forty years ago and in those days hardly anyone had even heard of conservation” (Bishop and Naumann, 2). In the early 1900s, dealing with waste was seen as another risk, and was simply nonessential for the summit, or returning home. Climbers were, and are still, preoccupied with their safety on the mountain. What to do with one’s waste is often seen as an afterthought. The “out of sight, out of mind” mentality of the few expeditions that visited Mount Everest seemed like a very realistic practice at the time, but it was only a short-term solution (Bishop, para. 7). Early mountaineers made the habit of tossing their trash in crevasses or burying it near camps. The thought of crevasses grinding down garbage did not go according to plan, instead it tends to reappear at Base Camp in its slightly altered but original condition. Trash that gets thrown into crevasses above Base Camp usually shows up at the foot of the Khumbu ice fall, which is also the source of water for villagers. According to the American Alpine Club, the Khumbu Glacier can slide as much as four feet per day. Waste left at Camp I can show up at base camp in as little as five years (Bishop, para. 17).

Someone climbing Mount Everest today might come across old tents, fixed ropes, empty oxygen bottles, human waste, tins, glass, paper, fuel canisters, tools, batteries, film canisters, old clothing, skis, medicines, cooking equipment, food, and bodies. The air on Mount Everest is too cold and dry to allow for decomposition (Mazzolini, 3). This applies to just about everything humans leave behind on the mountain. It is often that dead bodies and empty oxygen canisters even become a common landscape and landmarks used to get to the next camp. Another reason why it is so common to come across trash from past expeditions on the world’s biggest mountain is because its local topography leads climbers to common campsites. There are four faces on Mount Everest (south, north, east, and west) and over fourteen routes (Norgay, 2). Safety hazards and accessibility to water, force expeditions to use relatively small and frequently used campsites (Cullen, 2).

Each visitor leaves behind an average of 6.5 pounds of waste, with hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to the region each year. The estimated garbage left by expedition teams on Mount Everest is over 50 tons (Norgay, 3), and more than 200 corpses still remain on the mountain (Mazzolini, 2). A report by Grinnell College estimates that 12 tons of feces are left on the mountain each year (“How We Turned Mount Everest into a Dump,” staff). The 1963 American expedition alone brought 909 porter loads with them, weighting about 66 pounds each, approximately 27 tons of supplies brought to the mountain (Bishop and Naumann, 1). An estimated 185 tons of supplies were brought on a 1978 expedition. Expeditions tended to increase in size up until then, when alpine style climbing replaced siege-style tactics adopted from World War II (Cullen, 2).

After 1978, alpine style climbing reduced the size of climbing teams, and soon became the dominate climbing style throughout the Himalaya. Alpine style is a more self-sufficient climbing style, meaning the use of fixed ropes, fixed camps, and Sherpa support are less extensive than expedition or siege-style climbing. This means teams have less of an impact on the mountain environment; they spend less time on the mountain in small teams and carry less weight. Alpine style climbing certainly reduced, but did not remove the threat of environmental destruction on Mount Everest (Cullen, 2). However, alpine climbing, environmental awareness, and the government of Nepal creating Sagarmatha National Park in 1976 were certainly slowing down human’s negative impact on Mount Everest.

By the early 1990s, the amount of garbage at Base Camp became a popular story for the press to report. The year 1990 also sparked significant efforts to clean up both sides of Everest. Rob Hall and Gary Ball from New Zealand organized an expedition removing 4.5 tons of garbage from the Nepal Base. Bob McConnell led the Everest Environmental Expedition (EEP) removing 2,863 pounds on the Tibetan side (Bishop and Naumann, 3). McConnell attempted to climb Mount Everest in 1987, but was forced to descend after an October snowstorm. McConnell did not reach the summit, but he did have a chance to experience the beauty and also the dark side of the mountain. After returning to the United States, within two months McConnell and his team decided to return to the mountain, not to climb, but to clean Mount Everest. McConnell and the EEP worked with the Tibet Autonomous Region, representatives of the Chomolungma Nature Preserve, and local Tibetans. It took about two and a half years of planning, an international team of eight, two support teams totaling 32 American trekkers, 25 Tibetans, and a total of 709 work days of cleaning up garbage on the north side of Mount Everest. Full bags of garbage collected from Camps II, III, and IV were hauled down to Base Camp, where yaks then hauled the garbage to a tractor trailer to be dumped in a landfill in Shegar (McConnell, 2). The environmental clean-up expeditions were comparably extensive to the original expeditions of just attempting to summit the mountain. In their efforts they have built a frame work that other teams can follow.

In 1994, the Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition (SEE) set out again to the summit via the South Col, without supplementary oxygen, and to remove garbage from Base Camp and higher camps. Their goal was to show that a climbing team could reach the summit and have a positive impact on the environment. The team included Scott Fischer, Rob Hess, Steve Goryl, and twenty-one year-old Lopsang Sangbu Sherpa who became the youngest climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen. SEE was able to reach the summit and collect over 2.3 tons of trash off the mountain, including over 200 empty oxygen bottles (Bishop and Naumann, 3, 4). The New Zealand team, the EEP, and the SEE demonstrated that an expedition can successfully climb Mount Everest and accomplish meaningful environmental goals.

Climbing during the late 1990s showed that Everest’s pollution problem was a manageable one. They may have even sparked a new trend in climbing. New incentive programs by foreign expedition teams involved paying Sherpas above their salaries to collect and transport garbage to Base Camp. Soon Rob Hall’s team and Todd Burleson’s team from the United States joined in funding the incentive program. Sherpas were paid 100 rupees (around $2 US dollars) for every 22 pounds collected. Sherpas were paid a higher wage up to $6, to remove garbage from Camps IV to Camp II, and from Camp II to Base Camp. Chris Naumann and Bob McConnell coordinated the clean up at Base Camp separating the garbage into burnables, tin, and glass. The tin and glass were flown to Kathmandu to be recycled, and oxygen bottles were shipped back to the United States to be sold in fundraising campaigns. Brent Bishop and the SEE returned to Mount Everest in 1995, collecting 380 empty oxygen bottles and summiting in the process (Bishop and Naumann, 5).

Climbers have become more environmentally conscious and the norms of behavior have changed since the early 1900s siege-style of climbing. Efforts from the environmental clean-up expeditions extracted an impressive amount of trash, started a trend, and also left systems in place for other climbers to deal with their garbage. At Base Camp, they built stone holding areas, installed metal trash cans, and placed outhouses at camp. However, because environmental awareness was mostly coming from international climbers it was hard to enforce restrictions on other climbing teams. It was not until the early 2000s, that the Nepali government started to enforce Mount Everest’s pollution problem. Waste removal from Base Camp is now monitored by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) a local nonprofit (Bishop, para. 11). In 2014, the Nepali government enforced a $4,000 deposit requiring each climber to bring back 17.6 pounds of trash (“How We Turned Mount Everest into a Dump,” staff). The amount of used oxygen bottles has been reduced because of new refillable bottles from Russia (Bishop and Naumann, 6). Despite these clean up efforts and encouraging expeditions to take back their trash, there is still a lot that remains scattered on Mount Everest.

Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited Mount Everest, more than 4,400 climbers have reached the peak (“How We Turned Mount Everest into a Dump,” staff). In the 63-year history of climbing Mount Everest an efficient solid waste management system has yet to be put in place (Bishop, para. 2). Adrian Ballinger, a veteran Everest guide and founder of Alpenglow Expeditions says, “If you walk from one tent to another in Camp II or IV, you will step in shit. If you melt snow from the camp areas, you are drinking shit.” The most common ailments in climbers is both lower-intestinal and upper-respiratory infections because waste particles leak into the glacier, contaminate the snow and runoff, and becoming airborne (Bishop, para. 5). The “out of sight, out of mind” habit applies for human waste as well, and there is still no effective regulation in place above Base Camp. From the efforts of environmental expedition crews in the late 1990s, outhouses have been put in place at Base Camp. Every week, a porter transports the waste near the village of Gorak Shep where the pileup in the landfill has become another issue (Bishop, para. 7). What to do with human waste is still an issue above Base Camp. It is very common that people dig holes where it freezes within minutes and can melt years later. Some bring plastic bags and empty them in crevasses where it can enter streams used by villagers. But going to the bathroom is not the easiest task to do at 23,000 feet, while wearing an oxygen mask and under many layers of clothing, so it can be physically impossible and unrealistic to expect climbers to remove all traces of their expedition from the mountain (Cullen, 3).  However, there are solutions. The Clean Mountain Can is being used on Denali. Wag Bags are being used on Aconcagua (Bishop, para. 19). Why, then, aren’t Nepalese officials taking notes? Why is the Nepali government showing a lack of effective management when the conservation frameworks are already in place?

These ideas might be too difficult to implement for the level of corruption from the Nepali government. In the eyes of the government, too-tight regulations might imply a reduction in the flow of cash that is being unloaded from the tourism sector. The tourism industry in Nepal brings in about 400,000 visitors and more than $650 million every year. Tourism also supports an income for about 1.5 million people (Pradham, 10). Nepal is dependent on this international income. Even a slight decrease in the number of visitors coming to climb on, and just see Mount Everest, would strike a huge blow to the local economy (Figueroa, para. 22). Pablo Figueroa, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo Japan who researches contemporary issues of society and culture argues that the problem on Mount Everest is socially caused and at the root is our desire of self-glory. Mount Everest has historically been something that needs to be done. The government of Nepal is capitalizing on commercial climbing and guiding businesses to capitalizing on dreams of wealthy clients (Figueroa, para. 25). Today, the summit is attainable for just about anyone who is in shape and willing to pay about $65,000. If environmental regulations are not put in place soon all the efforts stated above will never keep up with the number of visitors, trekkers, and climbers coming to the region.

The rapid growth of tourism around Mount Everest dates back to the 1960s, after the completion of the Lukla airstrip and the opening of the area to visitors other than mountaineers. The Lukla airstrip provided easy access to the Khumbu region. When Sagarmatha National Park was formed in 1976, its intentions were to monitor the flora and fauna in the Khumbu region and also to manage the mass influx of tourists coming into the region (Pawson, Stanford, Adams, and Nurbu, 6). In 1964, the Khumbu region saw twenty visitors, 18,200 during the 1997 to 1998 season, and more than 27,000 visitors in 2001. A study in the early 2000s showed approximately 3,500 Sherpa live in the Khumbu region (Byers, 5). With the hike to Everest Base Camp becoming a world-class trekking route, the number of tourists, guides, and porters that walked in the Everest region in 2010 was over 100,000 (Figueroa, para. 16). Water is becoming a major concern in the region due to scarcity of reducing glaciers and contamination from human and animal waste. As stated above, villagers use the rivers as a water source that is fed by the Khumbu Glacier and at the foot of the Glacier sits Base Camp which leads to tourists visiting the National Park experiencing diarrhea (Norgay, 3). Ninety-five percent of the population living in the region also have hepatitis A (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 8). Of course among the highest sources of tourist dissatisfaction in the National Park are the poorly maintained toilets which were built for tourist use. Traditional composting toilets were far less odorous and the waste was being used as a fertilizer. Modern toilets require the use of, and accessibility to, water in the mountains (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 20). Waste and sewage disposal are the most serious threats in Sagarmatha National Park.

Sherpa culture is currently changing as well, and it is caused by the ongoing processes of modernization from the tourism industry. Cultural impacts of tourism are seen extensively in modern mountaineering literature. The discussion surrounds Sherpa traditions, their religion and culture, and how they are adapting to the introduction of tourism development in the region (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 3). Tourism creates pressures for service providers to cater to the visitor’s demands. History has also taught us that consumerism has the ability to rule over any other –isms. Infrastructure development is heavily reliant on foreign donations and aid, but the revenue gained from tourism bypasses the local population and goes to the government or companies that own the lodges and hotels in the region (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 22). Tourism is inflating prices to the point that ordinary locals find unaffordable (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 3, 5). Remaining jobs for most Sherpa people are limited to risking their lives on the mountain.

If people do not continue to be more environmentally conscious on Mount Everest and in the Khumbu region Barry Bishop might be right about it turning into “the worlds highest junk yard.” We have seen the outcomes of our anthropogenic changes to our environment throughout history, and some of the worst world events too often repeat themselves. To prevent further deaths and slow down the environmental degradation of the mountain’s ecosystem, the climbing community should also rethink what a guided climb really means (Figueroa, para.28). Reaching the top of the world is an amazing accomplishment but reveals the shallowness of our broader human culture. What it means to reach the summit of Mount Everest is starting to fade from the climbing community, which is the direction the mountain needs in order to help protect it. But we cannot leave our negative habits to be repeated by future mountaineers. Expedition clean-up crews demonstrated that climbers can reach the summit of Mount Everest and remove their own and historic garbage in the process, but clean-up expeditions cannot be another era in mountaineering world. Environmental awareness is only the beginning to reclaim Mount Everest, next needs to come the implementation of long-term sustainability policies in Sagarmatha National Park. If sustainable tourism is truly a thing, then the main components of sustainable tourism is mitigating the impact of the tourism (Musa, Hall, and Higham, 2). And the suggestions are out there in many articles and newspapers. Our human impacts are still related to pollution and cultural degradation on Mount Everest. The lack of waste management, recycling facilities, and conservation and environmental policies threatens the sustainability of the region. If not dealt with, these issues may be irreversible and can damage one of the worlds most unique ecosystems (Figueroa, para. 19). If we continue to look at Mount Everest as a commodity, some of the best sports literature about the worlds highest mountain that inspires mountaineers and arm chair mountaineers around the world, might soon be replaced with texts about the destruction of the environment and the culture of our tallest mountain. There looks to be light at the end of the tunnel for Mount Everest’s pollution problem in the 21^st Century, but the path to get there remains a very steep, narrow, and slippery one. This paper shows how relatively quickly in the history of climbing Mount Everest, the climbing community noticed a pollution problem and physically acted upon it. One should not feel pessimistic about the future of Mount Everest, but hopeful because of the efforts we have made. But now, the mess on our world’s highest peak is a social and political one. Because the Nepali government is dependent on the revenue produced from the tourism industry, they are hesitant to implement regulations in the National Park. Even though this is a major factor in Mount Everest’s pollution problem, it is our responsibility to respect Sagarmatha’s natural and cultural environments.

 

References:

Bishop, Brent. Outside. Peak Poop: The Feces Problem on Everest Needs a Solution, April 7, 2015. http://www.outsideonline.com/1965696/peak-poop-feces-problem-everest-needs-solution

Bishop, Brent, and Chris Naumann. “Mount Everest: Reclamation of the World’s Highest Junk Yard.” International Mountain Society: Mountain Research and Development 16, no. 3 (1996): 323–327.

Byers, Alton. “Contemporary Human Impacts on Alpine Ecosystems in the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, Khumbu, Nepal.” Annals of The Association of American Geographers 95, no. 1 (2016): 112-140.

Cullen, Ross. “Himalayan Mountaineering Expedition Garbage.” Environmental Conservation 13 no. 4 (1986): 293-297

Figueroa, Pablo. Our World. Vanity, Pollution and Death on Mt. Everest, July 15, 2013. http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/vanity-pollution-and-death-on-mt-everest

Mazzolini, Elizabeth. “Food, Waste, and Judgment on Mount Everest.” Cultural Critique, no. 76. (2010): 1-27

McConnell, Robert M. “Solving Environmental Problems Caused by Adventure Travel in Developing Countries: The Everest Environmental Expedition.” International Mountain Society: Mountain Research and Development 11, no. 4 (1991): 359–366.

Musa, Ghazali, C.M. Hall, and J.E.S Higham. “Tourism Sustainability and Health Impacts in High Altitude Adventure, Culture and Ecotourism Destinations: A Case Study of Nepal’s Sagarmatha National Park.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 12 no. 4 (2004): 306-331

Norgay, Jamling Tenzing. “Mountains as an Existential Resource, Expression in Religion, Environment and Culture.” AMBIO – A Journal of the Human Environment no. 13 (2004): 56-57

Pawson, Ivan G., Dennyse D. Stanford, Vincanne A. Adams, and Mingma Nurbu. “Growth of Tourism in Nepal’s Everest Region: Impact on the Physical Environment and Structure of Human Settlements.” International Mountain Society: Mountain Research and Development 4 no. 3 (1984): 237–246.

Pradhan, Gyan. “Nepal’s Civil War and Its Economic Costs.” Journal of International & Global Studies 1 no. 1 (2009): 114

Staff. The Week. How We Turned Mount Everest into a Dump, March 28, 2015. http://theweek.com/articles/546387/how-turned-mount-everest-into-dump