This is not a garbage dump. It's Mount Everest. pic.twitter.com/8qURLDyh8W
— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 13, 2019
Mount Everest is the world's highest garbage dump. With nowhere for the trash, human excrement, and corpses to go, it just sits there and piles up.
Aware of this growing dilemma, the Nepalese government just removed 24,000 pounds of garbage and four dead bodies from the mountain. The massive pile of trash largely consisted of food wrappers, human excrement, camping gear, and empty oxygen containers and collected from the highly trafficked Camps 2 and 3. According to the New York Post, once collected from the mountain, the trash was flown to Kathmandu by helicopter to be recycled.
RELATED: Seven Climbers Die in Everest Traffic Jam
This isn’t the first time Nepal has tried to handle the garbage crisis. Climbers were required in 2014 to bring down at least 17 pounds of trash with them. That weight was intended to compensate for the amount of trash each climber generates while climbing the mountain.
The recovered bodies were found after snow receded from warmer temperatures. Two bodies are believed to be a Russian and Nepalese climber, whereas the remaining two have yet to be identified.
Since retrieving the remains of the deceased is incredibly dangerous and costly—some estimates are around $80,000 per body—most never leave the mountain. One estimate claims that there are 250 dead bodies on Everest, and some have become recognized landmarks along the route like “Green Boots”, who was later moved to a lower location to join other fallen climbers. In this year alone, eleven people have died on the mountain, and a few of those corpses still line the path to the summit. “I thought I would see bodies from five, 10, 20 years ago. Not from this season. I did not mentally prepare to see people who had died less than 24 hours ago,” said Peter Lowry, who climbed the mountain after the recent deaths, in an interview with the Colorado Sun.
With traffic on the mountain only increasing, as we saw on May 22nd, the amount of trash is only likely to grow.
About The Author
stash member Katie Lozancich
TGR Staff Writer and photographer. Fond of bikes, pow, and dogs. Originally from Northern CA, home for me has ranged from the PNW to a teepee in Grand Teton National Park.