About 200 people died during their attempt to climb the Mount Everest. The highest mountain in the world has been climbed since 1922. Now snow and ice is melting due to climate change bodies get exposed at camps. Many climbers reached successfully the top of the Mount Everest but many died during this adventure.
Mount Everest 'clean up'
You can imagen that it is very difficult to bring dead bodies down. A climber – always equipped with a minimum of gear – has not the possibility to bring a corpse down at these hights where there is a lack of oxygen and often are extreme weather conditions. Often a person who dies during his/hers climb to the top or descend is quickly covered with snow and ice.
Hillary en Tensing, climbing the Mount Everest in 1922
Now because of climate change the bodies get visible and people from Nepal get confronted with this big challenge to bring the bodies ‘back home’. Some dead bodies which have been brought down by sherpa’s are dating back even to the 1970th.
The NNMGA (The Nepal national Guides Association) is getting upset because of the lack of money coming from the Nepalese government. Also foreign organisations who organise these expeditions should set up a fund to pay for the returning of the bodies and for clearing up the trash left behind by these expeditions.
Melting of snow and ice goes very fast. At the Basecamp it has been measured that it melt at a rate of 1 meter a year.
Some bodies have been brought down to villages some have been covered by stones and snow. Many Sherpas share the opinion that there is a moral responsibility to bring deceased climbers to their final resting place and to pray for them. There are also people who think it is better to leave the bodies where they are.
Anyway it would be a good gesture from foreign operators to help the Nepalese people to bury the bodies and clean up the garbage they left and are still leaving behind on world’s highest mountain; the Mount Everest.
Cover photo by: Dominic Goff
https://www.whatsorb.com/category/climate