It has always blown my mind that they leave all their shit and garbage up there. Any and all responsible hikers, backpackers, and mountain climbers have a "pack it in, pack it out" policy. It's the norm. Yeah, packing shit sucks, but you love nature, so you deal with it.
I’d wager that the love of nature is not something a fair amount of Everest climbers give two shits about, or at the very least it’s nowhere near the “photo op” that’s at the top of their list of priorities.
Eh, imo if you decide to risk your life unnecessarily climbing a mountain, plan to take your garbage out because you shouldn’t be let back down without it. Freeze up there with the garbage.
Yick who wants to climb up a mountain packed with shit. Why do people want to climb Everest anyway? It's such a stupid thing to do. I can think of five million things I'd rather do than climb a frozen tundra of rock and human poop.
Morty: Well then, get your shit together. Get it all together. And put it in a backpack. All your shit. So it’s together.
[exits room]
[pokes head back into room]
Morty: And if you gotta take it somewhere, take it somewhere, you know, take it to the shit store and sell it… Or put it in a shit museum, I don’t care what you do, you just gotta get it together.
How about their shit and the rest of their garbage? Or raise the tax/fine for not doing so to better fund efforts to clean up the mountain. First option is probably better because then no one has to risk their life cleaning up after other people.
I get that it’s a crazy achievement to summit the highest point above sea level, a point dozens, if not hundreds have died to reach, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of the environment.
As much as permits and stuff cost to summit Everest, we’re talking about people who have the kind of fuck-you-money that they’d probably just pay the fine rather than risk being seen doing any sort of domestic labor like trash picking.
That’s exactly what happens from what I understand. The fine is so negligible compared to the rest of the costs for the trip that it can just be paid off.
'“If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class,” comes to mind.
Honestly, the achievement shouldn’t be who making it to the summit anymore. It should be who removed the most trash. Or a yearly summit+trash removal competition. More impressive than an Olympic gold medal, the Everest Restoration medal!
In fairness it’s $35k to climb it, a third of that goes straight to Nepal and they have thousands climb every year. Surely that’s enough to get some robotics garbage & poop system?.
I get people should bring their own garbage down but if they’re that rich my point is that they can pay someone else to do it
Wonder how much it would cost to install some sort of tube system where you carry up cylinders and can send them down the tube periodically as you climb with your shit and garbage inside and it just slides to the bottom where you take care of it later.
I think they should do a cleaning brigade gauntlet made of potential climbers. If you aclimate and clean well enough you get invited back for the next season depending on performance. Then, at the sherpa’s discretion, you may be allowed to summit. Sort of a “prove your worth first”. I bet the traffic jams and garbage would become a thing of the past.
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