Mount Everest is getting increasingly polluted
Sixty years since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached Mount Everest and made history, the journey to the world's highest peak has now become a veritable tourist activity that may be enjoyed by almost anyone with a few thousand dollars to spare. As many as 4,000 people have made it to the top in recent years, and many of them have done so more than once. Guided tours that cost anything between $30,000 and $1,20,000 have become the new norm. As much as 90 per cent of the traffic on Everest now consists primarily of non-professional climbers, some of whom do not even have basic skills.
And so it is that like any other popular tourist spot across the world, be it the Taj Mahal or Times Square, on Mount Everest too, it is now commonplace to see hundreds jostling for space. Plastic bottles, discarded tools and human waste litter the top of the world, bearing an uncanny resemblance to much of the planet below. And that is not all.
Since Everest, like many other natural tourist attractions, is not open through the year, climbers must make the most of the small windows of good weather that come their way during the already short climbing season. Such is the situation now that it is not uncommon to see climber-tourists waiting in line for hours at what is known as Hillary's Step, before they can complete the last stretch — scaling the treacherous 40 feet wall of ice and rock — to the summit. Naturally, tempers flare even as bodies and minds tire and the limits of both physical and mental endurance are put to a gruelling test.
It comes as little surprise, therefore, that this year's climbing season (which concluded in end-May) effectively began with an all-out brawl on the mountain top. A three-member professional European team got into a violent confrontation with about 100 sherpas as it refused to be bogged down by the latter's amateur clients and wait in line to get to the summit. And if that wasn't enough to violate the sanctity of Mount Everest, its pristine environs were further bloodied when four climbers died on their way to the summit later this year ostensibly because of the traffic snarl there. Sure, climbers have died before as well, but that was rarely because they fell prey to hubris. Since then, the issue of overcrowding on Everest has been a much discussed topic in mountaineering circles.
The Government of Nepal, which benefits tremendously from the revenue that Everest tourism generates, is reportedly even considering putting in a permanent ladder at Hillary's Step — the last hurdle one must overcome before one can stake a claim on Everest — so as to hurry tourists along. Professionals remain divided on the efficacy of such a measure, and they prefer instead to push for regulating the number of tourists. But while immediate steps must be taken to disentangle the knot at Everest, the solution to this problem lies in first acknowledging the fact that Mount Everest is not a rich man's trophy.