To be enraged by a photograph of a Sherpa picking up litter from Mount Everest

[MyGastIsFlabbered]

I know there are bigger problems to get angry about but I've seen this today and it's infuriated me.

Going up Mount Everest is a privilege available to very few people and they can't respect it enough to take their litter with them. Bloody people

I agree, it’s appalljng. There’s also a photo in the paper of a long queue of climbers waiting their turn to climb to the summit.
Why should the Sherpas have to deal with litter and worse, human waste.

YA sort of BU. Why would Everest be any different from any other part of the planet - we shit over everything. On Everest we've been doing it for years. The mountaineering community must be so proud.

Yanbu, have you ever seen pics of base camp? It looks like a fucking landfill.

However, some of that looks like oxygen tanks, which are only used in the death zone and in emergencies, and I think it's std practice to leave them when they're empty because the extra weight could be the difference between life and death. Not just when someone's in difficulty, but for everyone.

Tbh wtf anyone would want to put themselves in so much danger just to be a bit higher up than anyone else completely escapes me.

It's the sherpas I feel for - having to endanger themselves for other people's enjoyment. The only good thing I can see that comes from it is the helicopter evacs and hospital facilities local people benefit from that wouldn't be there if not for the climbers.

The sherpas do it because they are employed to do exactly that. When they accompany a group, they do a wide range of services for them.

The pictures of the queues that are in the news today show that items not rare any more - it's a raffic jam all the way up the final ascent.

I tend to agree with thise calling for a permit system to be introduced, with a lottery (as it's bound to be over-subscribed)

We left rubbish and human waste on the moon ffs. Why would a mountain be off limits. Not surprising at all!

The last village before base camp.

I've just read something about a chap who's brought 9000kg of rubbish off everest. It's unimaginable.

There is a permit system already. Cost is around $10,000. The Chinese (maybe the Nepalese also - I'm not sure) also charge a hefty rubbish collection fee ($1000+ pp). As far as I'm aware that pays for the sherpas to clean the mountain afterwards (not that that makes it right that people don't carry their rubbish out).

There’s already a permit system in place, but the prevalence of low cost climbing tour companies means many many more people on the mountain, many of whom are hobbiests “doing” base camp for charity.

The scheme that the photo refers to is bringing down equipment that was left behind at, I think, second camp much higher up the mountain following two incidents where camps had to be abandoned because of weather - one I think was a severe avalanche a few years back which killed a number of people. The state of the mountain isn’t good, but there are lots of reasons for equipment being left, often following injury and death. The Sherpas gather up the rubble to be air lifted off by helicopters making return flights having dropped off equipment for climbers, the Sherpas make their living on the mountain and this is part of the work.

The mountaineering community must be so proud.

To my knowledge the mountaineering community has been concerned about the commercial exploitation of Everest for years, companies taking up climbers ill trained and unprepared for the route for money - there are a number of books written about climbing Everest and commercialisation of the route that make very interesting reading and mean I’d never sponsor someone to go to base camp etc.

Human ruin everything and everywhere.

This is the queue of 200 people waiting to reach the summit recently:

www.scmp.com/sport/outdoor/extreme-sports/article/3011536/death-everest-after-indian-and-american-climbers

2 people died of altitude sickness while they were waiting.

The commodification of Sagamartha/Qomolangma is disgusting. It's so interlinked with colonialism. I refuse to call that mountain "Everest".

I've climbed snowdon last month and was appalled at the amount of waste and rubbish there was there, and the fact that someone has taken the time to stick a plastic bottle into a rock crevice rather than just take it with them!

Urgh I find the whole Everest thing selfish to begin with - firstly, the amount of litter left behind. Secondly, the likelihood of death - I can't forgive people who are parents putting their ego above their children, and going off on suicide missions to the summit. Thirdly, the amount of human bodies mounting up Everest and, increasingly, K2 as well.

I just find the whole thing ridiculous and disrespectful. Humans putting ego above all else.

"Take litter with them"?

There are dozens of dead bodies littering that mountain. I don't think you understand the terrain/industry/sport/business.

Personally,I think it would be better if all climbing stopped, but it won't.

That traffic jam.

I will stick with Snowdon I think.

I don't think people should be tripping up and down in the first place. It’s almost like an excursion now. Report on Today this morning that there was a queue of 300 climbers waiting to get to the top and have their selfie recently.
But if people are going to do that, it’s emoyment for local people. climbers are going to cause waste, it can’t be left their, people are paid to clear it up. No different to the man I see at 7 every morning in his council high vis picking rubbish up along the beach as I drive my son to the bus stop.

why would anyone put their life at risk to be a bit higher up than anyone else?

Small Penis Syndrome.

Wonder what the male/female ratio of people doing this is?

Heard a talk recently from a woman who'd climbed Everest twice (making the summit the second time). It was supposed to be inspirational - in reality it made me think every single person that does it is not only mentally unstable in some way but also enormously selfish.

There is a place the tourists stay over night and the Sherpas don't because the avalanche risk is too high. I mean wtaf.

Doesn't surprise me. The vast majority of humans are just pigs. We have totally fucked up this planet.

Don't get the thing of climbing Everest anyway. At one time it was seen as an achievement and something hardly anyone had done. Now there is a bloody queue to get to the top! I mean come on have people got nothing better to do?

She'd done the 7 summits and admitted that Everest wasn't either the hardest or the most dangerous. Just nuts.

But it is the biggest. Thats why people do it. Not hard to work out

I remember Alison Hargreaves, a mother of two small children, dying on K2 back in the mid 90s, having previously scaled the Eiger while six months pregnant with her first. That child, Tom Ballard died this year while climbing Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/15/john-all-himalayas-climate-science

This is an interesting article about a researcher climbing Everest. I can't work out if he is helping or hurting the cause

A lot of people going up Everest are not really part of the "mountaineering community" they are very wealthy people who pay a lot of money (it costs 50 to 80 thousand US dollars per client) to go up Everest as a bucket list/ bragging rights thing.

Base camp is a popular trekking destination, so is visited by a lot more than just mountaineers, again it's one of those 'bucket list' destinations and is just a hike, no climbing involved.

Most mountaineers / climbers I know are very environmentally conscious. Unfortunately Everest has been highly commercialised and as a pp said, many in the mountaineering community are very critical of this.