Sunday, April 25, 2010

Cleaning Up the Death Zone

People always seem surprised that people who die on Everest are left there. Look: at that altitude, it's all you can do to carry your own gear and put one foot in front of the other. Carrying 160 lbs. of literal dead weight through the Khumbu Icefall is not an option, and the county coroners won't go up there for you. That's not all that's up there. Never having been to the snow-line in the Himalayas, I have heard repeatedly that the upper elevations are a litter field of freeze-dried bodies, discarded oxygen bottles, and excrement. Apparently the Nepali government is bothered enough by it that they're sending Sherpas up for a clean-up. Yes, you want to keep the mountain as pristine as possible and it's a huge revenue source for the government (~$20,000 per summit pass. Per individual, not per group.) But the point of all this stewardship of the environment is the point of all behavior, which is to preserve life and quality of life. So do you really want to risk still-living people for a) no-longer-able-to-suffer people, and b) the esthetic sense of people climbing the mountain?

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