Clean up of bodies, rubbish on Mt. Everest

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Mount Everest basecamp, Nepal, amid melting snow and tons of rubbish

 

In May 2003 ABC reported, "With the debris of more than 50 years of climbing -- oxygen canisters, tents, backpacks, and even some bodies -- Mount Everest has been called the world's highest garbage dump." Fast forward seven years and Buddhist Sherpas are still trying to clean up.

• Journey behind Mt. Everest (video)
• UPDATE: Cleaning the Himalayas, "A Green Odyssey"

(BBC) The Extreme Everest team says the mountain has been polluted [by corpses of failed climbers and tons of trash expeditions dump on the mountain]. An effort by 20 Nepalese Sherpas to clear rubbish and remove the bodies of climbers from the top of Mount Everest has been hampered by 100km/h winds. The Sherpa-led Extreme Everest expedition is performing a "deep clean" of the world's highest mountain.

Frozen, forgotten body (lewistown.k12.mt.us)

So far it has recovered several bodies, including that of a Russian climber, Sergei Duganov, which has now been helicoptered off the mountain. The Sherpas hope to remove at least two tons of rubbish from Everest. The clean-up team now aims to reach the summit on Saturday when the weather should have improved. A spokesman for the expedition said that three bodies -- two of which had not been identified...

The BBC's Joanna Jolly in Kathmandu says that the expedition is controversial because many relatives of climbers who died on Everest want their bodies to remain there. However, the Sherpas say the bodies are polluting the 29,035 feet (8,850 m)-high mountain and need to be removed. More

• So you want to climb Everest? (Balloon Goes Bang)
• Team set to clear bodies from Everest death zone
• Expedition: Everest Dispatches