Posted on 03/03/2014 7:17:57 AM PST by bgill
"The government has decided in order to clean up Mount Everest, each member of an expedition must bring back at least eight kilos of garbage, apart from their own trash," he said... Decades of mountaineering have taken a toll on the peak, which is strewn with rubbish from past expeditions, including oxygen cylinders, human waste and even climbers' bodies, which do not decompose in the extreme cold.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Not really. They're just climbers. Mostly deeply self-absorbed, but not necessarily committed to any other ideology.
The Nepalese economy does very well out of them. Rather than make trash collectors out of rich tourists being hauled to the summit, tax them to fund parties of sherpas to do the dirty work. For the right price, I’m sure competent and willing teams would emerge. Just make the climbers pay.
Just invite conservative Tea Party climbers, it’s in their DNA to clean up messes.
Then deny access to communist liberal environmentalist, it’s in their DNA to make messes.
Many years on rock and ice.
My guess is that a majority tend left.
An erstwhile partner was a climbing bum named Mark Udall.
I have met a few ‘tourist climbers’ that had notched Everest; always megabucks, others were the paid help.
Once found an unopened bottle of rum in the snow at over 14k!
Yes, we packed the empty out.
They don’t take out the trash because they don’t know if they will live to make the trip back from the summit?
Seriously, it never occurred to me that there was not some requirement for picking up trash for mountain climbers. And aren’t there bodies on that mountain that have been there for several decades?
I take a folded trash bag and work gloves in my kit every time I hike in the woods, because the tourists at the RV park across the river crap up the bank with their soda cans, water bottles and snack bags...
Great story about the (unopened) bottle. One can just imagine the gasping newbies desperate to shed weight. I have a good deal of experience in high country hiking and scrambling in USA, Mexico, and Switzerland — up to about 13,000 ft — but never any technical routes.
With all the big money the climbers have, you’d think they could bring along a few of their personal slaves to clean up after them.
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