Peak Poop: The Feces Problem on Everest Needs a Solution - Outside Magazine
Step out of your tent at Camp II and take a few steps in any direction. Human waste is littered across the rocky moraine and lurking in the snow all along the route up the world’s largest peak, making the four sleeping areas on the route up Everest’s south side akin to minefields of human excrement. In the 62-year history of climbing on the mountain, climbers above Base Camp have most commonly either buried their excrement in hole toilets they dug by hand in the snow, chucked it into crevasses, or simply defecated wherever it’s convenient,... Many climbers believe that harsh weather, the monsoon snows, or disposal in a crevasse will keep the mountain clean—that the crap they leave will somehow harmlessly dissolve into the mountain. This may have been true during the first four decades after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay achieved the first summit , in 1953, when only a handful of climbers attempted the summit each year. But traffic has dramatically increased with the emergence of commercial guided trips in the past 20 years, and so has the amount of human waste we’ve left on the mountain. As 700 climbers and Sherpas gear up to attempt the mountain over the next six weeks of the climbing season, now is an appropriate time to ask: How much longer can we ignore Everest’s waste problem. “The only good part about the human waste situation above Base Camp is that shit freezes fast at 8,000 meters,” says Adrian Ballinger , veteran Everest guide and founder of Alpenglow Expeditions. Source: www.outsideonline.com
