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

chock

It looks like around 50 Sherpas have died on Everest in the last 20 years alone. They would be safer selling their organs.

@Sharkirasharkira they didn't say it was at a cost to their lives, they literally said it was because if they didn't ignore her and continue, they wouldn't reach the summit and would have to come back. I imagine it's quite a common occurrence to see people dying up there though.

@ M3lon - to be honest, that seems pretty low; 16 died in the 2014 avalanche alone, so I'd put it at maybe three times that over the last 20 years. My point was just that the drive to get up there is, for a lot of Sherpas, just as strong as it is for other climbers - they do want to do it, and if they don't, there are other, less risky, but still well paid jobs to do. And organ donation! Our Sherpa, Kaji's father was a Sherpa in the early days, and there was nothing else Kaji even considered doing. He is a mountain man through and through.

You might find this article interesting - it's all about death and profit, and trying to find the balance - not easy! www.alanarnette.com/blog/2019/05/17/too-many-deaths/

The only way to get rid of it when you're out there is to bring it all the way home.

Well, you took it in, so why can't you take it out, even if that means back home? I walk & wild camp in Scotland and 'leave only footprints' is in my bones. Sadly some of our bothies are despoiled by the lazy, but in general if you can carry something in, you can take it away. If that is too hard for you, don't go.

As above navigator, they don’t bring it all with them

So where does it come from then?

Supplies are brought in by Sherpas, climbing companies, medical assistance, etc daily. People don’t necessarily know how long they’ll be there. They can’t carry much. They bring next to nothing, then the infrastructure network described above delivers it.

chock I realise that you have a lot invested in believing that you didn't exploit someone to the point of risking their life for money...but literally everything you are saying could be said in favour of allowing rich westerners to buy organs or surrogate wombs.

If its the way your parents funded your upbringing and its normalised then why not sell your womb/kidneys to support your own children? I'm sure you could make a whole proto-mythology around how noble a calling it is and how its been a family thing for generations....but it wouldn't make it right.

Sherpas would not be up Mount Everest on a regular basis if it wasn't for the money, for one thing they need to use oxygen too. Going up there is killing them. This is a massively unethical situation.

@Navigator - when I said home, I meant, home UK. I'm not sure Etihad or various airport search people would be very happy if I came through with a poop tube (google is your friend) of shit, loo roll and tampax. When I said that Nepal have no places for rubbish, I meant nowhere, they don't have municipal dumps or recycling plants. The whole country just flytips. I pack in and pack out as much as I can, but unless you're bringing your rubbish 5000 miles home on the plane, it's going to be got rid of unethically, even if it is no longer on the mountain.

or prostitution....

M3lon i don’t think there isn’t anyone who isn’t slightly uncomfortable with the idea of rich westerners paying inproverished mountain folk to carry their stuff and guide them.

But, as chock says, climbing Sherpas live on the Mountain. They have unique physical qualities to work at high altitude that others don’t have, are talented climbers and the mountain is their home. And they can make huge amounts of money. They don’t have special skills in relation to selling their body parts, that’s not actually their alternative

That’s the thing navigator is where, ultimately do you want this rubbish to end up? Landfill. What is landfill? An area of land where everyone’s rubbish is dumped.

Sadly, Everest is becoming landfill, yes. But if the rubbish wasn’t there, it would just be somewhere else wouldn’t it? And there is no landfill system in Nepal.

They aren't so magically skilled that a whole bunch of them aren't dying up there.

The point at which we are paying people to risk death is the point at which it becomes irrelevant how much they think of themselves as mountain people.

@MyGastIsFlabbered

You're a hypocrite. You pay people to take you're rubbish away from your house, yet when climbers pay people to take their rubbish away, its wrong?

Of course death is always a risk. It’s not dissimilar to say, a fishing village, fishing is a tough life and a high risk job. But many people round the world just don’t get the choices we do.

Your rubbish not you're

My bin men are pretty well paid and get sickness benefit and a good pension. How about Sherpas?

They can be well paid and compensated barbarianmum, but depends who employs them

I’m sure you’re aware that a country like Nepal has nothing like the employment rights or protection of the U.K., no matter what job you do, so it wouldn’t be comparable

Its not at all the same as a fishing village, unless people are being paid to do deliberately dangerous forms of fishing, not for their own benefit, but because a bunch of rich westerners think is fun.

If that is happening in the world (and it probably is given you can pay to swim with dolphins/sharks) then I also think that should stop.

Wow! I’ve really had my eyes opened reading this thread. I feel very naive. I’m not at all interested in mountain climbing so have never really thought about what climbing Everest was like. But somewhere in my head I figured it was just a handful of people a year doing it and it was an actual real hardship to do it. In reality it’s a “tick it off the list” holiday for lots and lots of rich people. I’ll be expecting to see Kim and Kanye taking selfies at the top any day now.

@MelonSlice actually my disgust is at the fact that there's all that litter left there NOT because a Sherpa is being paid to pick it up. Don't put words into my mouth.

I have a lot more respect for carers than people who climb Everest. Caring is a proper test of endurance and selflessness.

Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is a fantastic book on the Everest industry, written by a former climber who really knows his stuff.

m3lon have you ever spoken to a Sherpa about how they feel about it?

A friend trecked to the base camp back in the late 90's, she described base camp as a shit hole of human waste.