How do you clean up a mountain so tall it meets the sky? You send 20 Nepali climbers to the top of Mount Everest this week to do an Earth Day-style spruce up, which would set records as the world’s highest ever cleanup campaign. The trash-gathering expedition expects to bring back 4,400 pounds of rubbish.
According to a story on Yahoo, while there have been other cleanup attempts in the past by both native Nepali and foreign climbers, no one has climbed beyond 25,246 feet to the so-called death zone because of the risks posed by the summit’s lack of oxygen and hazardous terrain. The cleanup crew will be manned by Namgyal Sherpa, head of Extreme Everest Expedition 2010, and a team of veteran climbers who will carry special bags and empty rucksacks to pick up the stuff that’s been left behind since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa first tackled the summit in 1953.
During the past six decades, more than 4,000 climbers have scaled the mountain since, discarding empty oxygen bottles, tents, ropes, canisters and utensils. In effect, it has become the world’s highest garbage pit. “The rubbish is creating problems for climbers,” says Sherpa, 30, who has reached the summit seven times. “Some items of garbage are from Hilary’s time.”
This could be the most ambitious — and bravest — Earth Day initiative ever.
Photo by Sistak by Flickr.