Rubbish on Everest

By the looks of it, Everest is covered in bodies, shit (several tons of it) and rubbish. Some of the photos make it look like a landfill site, and nothing breaks down because it is so cold and dry. I think climbers have to pay a deposit that they only get back when they present their own rubbish plus 8kg extra of historic crap that they have brought down. But I don't know how rigorously that's enforced.

I'm sure most people going up probably set out with the best of intentions and think that they are going to take only photos and leave only footprints in the wild romantic sacred landscape blah blah. But as Mike Tyson said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face". This was interesting I thought:
https://www.quora.com/How-hard-was-it-to-scale-Mount-Everest-for-the-first-time-Any-accounts-of-the-journey-made-by-the-early-climbers-who-were-successful

I imagine that if you're exhausted, sick, cold, still a bit afraid till you're back at base camp, the weather isn't great, and maybe you even had to abandon your summit attempt having spent all that money....and you've been queueing up at the bottlenecks for aaaages with hordes of others (not really helping the beautiful wild solitude vibe)....and the place looks like a shit tip anyway....well, plenty of people probably think fuck it I am not going to use precious reserves of energy carting 8kg of somebody else's frozen shit off the mountain. In fact, maybe I'll just curl out a turd on this rock behind my tent amongst all the other turds and leave it, fuck it, it's dark and windy and nobody will see or care.

I bet when they get back home to do their slideshow to their climbing club, or they're some sort of demi-sleb adventurer doing after dinner motivational speaking, they leave that bit out, or dress it up as "We were all worried about Dave who was looking peaky so we left the polythene bags of shit on a rock, fecked the spent oxygen canisters into a crevasse and did a heroic mercy dash against time down the mountain to get Dave back to his grateful wife and kids before the storm blew in and killed everyone".

They do however manage to kick out of view any rubbish or other kind of undesirable effects for their instagram feed. Total legends.

I mean, this did make me laugh. On one hand we want Everest to be wild, rugged and sacred (all of which it is) and on the other we want people to die picking up rubbish and retrieving bodies, and we want Everest to be in a tax regime 😂😂

I’ve mentioned it in real life before and got short shrift! People feel strongly about it I found.
Agree with you about the tourism being hard (and getting harder) to stop/cap.

It's an absolute disgrace. If they can carry it up they can carry it down.

Also to be fair there is a difference between simply dumping rubbish (which may happen) and things being dropped/ spilled that you are unable to retrieve. I suspect the rubbish problem is both, but certainly at the higher camps likely to be the latter. When you drop your oxygen tank down a crevice, you’re never going to go after it to pick it up.

I live rurally in the UK. So much rubbish - discarded junk food wrappers, drinks cans, dog poo bags. We do a twice yearly litter pick and get a depressing amount of stuff.
I do think most people are good but not all. Tourists should pay a tax to help with cleaning up. Everest’s tax should be very large, might also help to discourage people and reduce numbers.

I actually think yours is a very popular opinion.

its a bit irrelevant though because no one can stop Everest tourism- it has been limited to various degrees, both through bureaucracy and cost, but especially with modern technology making it easier to climb, it’s not a box you can close back up.

Oh, come now, you couldn't possibly expect the sort of people who can bang out around fifty grand to bother themselves with bringing (or rather, getting somebody else to) back their shit off the mountain. They're far too dedicated/obsessed/special to do that sort of thing.

^ Spot on. They also don’t GAF about the local guides or follow their advice. It’s their “mission” whatever the weather. They threaten to leave bad reviews which could make or break a guide’s or guides’ livelihood, if they don’t climb.

There are about 200 bodies up there.

I know it’s an unpopular opinion, there’s always some celeb or motivational speaker who waxes on about climbing Everest or K2 etc, but I think it’s a selfish act. Endangering yourself, Sherpas, other climbers, damaging a sacred environment, scattering litter and that’s alongside the utter callousness of leaving people to die in the snow. It disgusts me. The behaviour disgusts me.

It’s littered with corpses and no one making the ascent has a problem passing them by, so I can’t see them giving a damn about any other detritus left behind.

Well, yes obviously 😂 but since they can and do go up there, stepping over bodies is just unfortunately part of it, a reminder of how unforgiving the mountain is really.

They do pay for their own rescues- or their or their guides insurance does.

tbh people are left to die by default, rescues only happen when it’s feasible

Not go up there?

It's not just Everest, it's a problem closer to home too. I went to Dovedale in the summer and it's beautiful but soooo much litter. I met some lovely dog walkers who were litter picking as they went, out of the goodness of their hearts.

We could take a leaf out of their book. Be the change you want to see. Shouldn't be required of course but better than just complaining.

I personally think each of the one thousand people currently trapped should be paying for their own rescues. People who climb Everest risk multiple lives by doing it. The whole mountain should be shut down it's on sacred land and deserves respect.

You have to climb over dead or dying climbers, what else can you do?

I think Everest mountaineers are self-centred, single minded assholes. If they are happy to climb over dead or dying fellow climbers to summit then they are not going to GAF about litter.

The Nepalese and Pakistani authorities have been working with tour guides to reduce waste for years and it’s had a good impact.

no excuse but people regularly die and get into peril up there. Bags spilling open/ things getting dropped etc is really the tame end of it in my opinion.

I've always been a bit fascinated with Everest and I think overall we shouldn’t be up there to the extent we are.
But who are we to tell the local people they shouldn't make money from this type of tourism from our high income country privilege? It stinks in many ways.

So they all need to remove their rubbish?

Doesn't matter if one person or a million. They shouldn't be littering

I understand your thinking, but it is emphatically not a pristine environment. About one hundred and fifty thousand people go to Everest each year. It's not the remote wilderness you're picturing.

It’s too many people. No one should leave rubbish, but the amount of people visiting Everest now is having an impact in all sorts of ways.