Apropos of nothing political…
…did you know that Mount Everest is so befouled by human excrement that it is causing major health problems?
I sure didn\’t but I just read last month\’s strange article by The Washington Post\’s Peter Holley, and now am aware of the problems.
A few excreme…er, excerpts:
When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Mount Everest in 1953, it was arguably the loneliest place on Earth – an oxygen-deprived desert perched atop an icy, 29,000-foot ladder of death.
Over the last 62 years, more than 4,000 climbers have replicated the pair\’s feat, with hundreds more attempting to do so during the two-month climbing season each spring, according to the Associated Press.
This week, Ang Tshering, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, warned that pollution – particularly human waste – has reached critical levels and threatens to spread disease on the world\’s highest peak.
“Climbers usually dig holes in the snow for their toilet use and leave the human waste there,” Tshering told the AP, noting that the waste has been “piling up” for years around the four camps, where climbers spend weeks acclimatizing to the high altitude without access to toilets.
So, how much waste are we talking about? As much as “26,500 pounds of human excrement” each season, “most of it bagged and carried by native Sherpas to earthen pits near Gorak Shep, a frozen lake bed and village at 16,942 feet,” according to Grinnell College.
I\’m not exactly sure what to er, make, of this.
Before humans started climbing Everest, and since they have been doing so, I can\’t help thinking that the area\’s wildlife left waste as well. Was that healthier?
Heck, even Sir Edmund Hillary must have left a few “hills” of his own.
I am, however, sorry that the Sherpas have become schleppers who, uh, doodifully haul the human droppings back to ground level. And I certainly hope they don\’t have to deal with many instances of that dreaded local condition, himalayarrhea.
OK, enough bad puns. Back to politics, where if a group of Sherpas ever attended a session or two of congressional hearings, they\’d come across enough human waste to build a mountain that would make Everest look like the Daytona flats.
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NOTE: I just realized that if, as the article says, about 4,000 climbers have reached the top of Mount Everest over the 62 years since Sir Edmund Hillary did so, that comes to an average of about 65 per year.
And if there is an average of 26,500 pounds of human excrement each season, that comes to about 408 pounds of excrement per climber.
Even if you assume that a, er, heavy load of the climber total is skewed to recent years – say 5 times as many per year now as there used to be – that\’s still over 80 pounds per tushy.
No wonder the Sherpas are complaining. What those climbers need is a good dose of that local remedy, himalayopectate.
