Documentary "Sherpa"

Yeah... but the people at that party who are interested in that first ascent story are probably the only people I'd want to talk to anyway.

Interesting. This is a conversation we had with our guide in Peru (not Machu Picchu, but Cordilleras Blanca and Huayhuash. The guide companies themselves are debating quotas, as too many people on the same routes erodes the experience. In the Huayhuash, locals have taken steps to reduce the impacts--collecting fees and building outhouses, for example. Our guide, Dante, wasn't sure how he felt about quotas, but I think he was leaning toward favoring them, for the sake of a better experience. It might also help to publicize other areas, to encourage tourists to spread out more, but the most spectacular routes are never going to be left in peace. They are popular for a reason.

Educating the tourists--and the locals--about something a little closer to LNT would also help. This is different, of course, from Everest climbs, but maybe not so different from trekkers in the Himalaya. It feels a little weird to sweat over LNT in areas where people have lived for millenia and livestock is grazing through your camp, but there it is--the people who live there full time have the areas pretty much at carrying capacity. Tourists trekking through can push them over the edge. And once there's sh** everywhere and trash heaps in every gully, it's not so appealing to visitors OR locals. But only the visitors can leave.

So you've just censored Ridicule and Opinion, the last American freedoms. And are you blind to the climbing trash left on Mt Everest?, or to the outsourcing of the risk by client climbers? Or to the sherpas doing most of the work? REPEAT: Most Western climbers to Mt Everest make sherpas do most of the work. Setting ropes, carrying gear, placing ladders in the icefall, caching oxygen bottles etc.

I wasn't in France for the recent terror killings. Which to Toejam means I can have no opinion of it (no matter how much I read on the subject), I am therefore clueless of the event, and any criticism I make of the event makes me a Hater.

Outdoorsmen in the United States can and should research the Mt Everest debacles in all their shades of gray. Helicopters, overuse, guide services, risk mitigation, sherpa deaths, climbing egos, mountains of trash, Ueli Steck, etc.

The system is imperfect but next season after 15 more deaths on the mountain and after 600 line up in a row for the summit nobody will question the lunacy and it's business as usual.

Actually, I am blind to the trash on Everest. I haven't seen it and neither have you. All I know is from books I've read and a handful of people I've talked to who have been there. It appears to me that the big guide services are the most responsible people on the mountain. They treat the Sherpa best and do most to get the trash off the mountain. Not sure what you mean by clients being coddled. The mountain coddles nobody. Nobody gets carried up the mountain and nobody gets carried off. It's an extreme physical endeavor even with supplemental oxygen and a bunch of fixed ropes. Many don't survive.

And I think Ueli Steck is one of the good guys.

We are in no position to say who gets to try to climb the mountain and how they should do it. It's not our business unless we want to go over there and do something about it. I bet we'd find things are not at all as we'd assumed from our coddled American perspective.

Maybe I'm argumentative, but I'm not "steamed" and I never questioned the problems. I question the entitled American notions that guides and their ego-maniacal clients have "ruined" the mountain, that Sherpa do all the work, take all the risks and are mistreated by climbers, that any idiot with an ego and $70,000 can waltz to the summit, and that you have no business climbing unless you have the ability of the greatest climber of our time.

I'm not an expert, but I think I'm informed well enough to avoid developing a fashionable American outrage based on erroneous assumptions like tipiwalter demonstrated. I'm pretty sure a lot of tourists are idiots (myself included), the trash and waste they leave is a problem, Sherpa are underpaid and overworked (like most Americans) and live in really primitive conditions (like everybody else in rural Nepal). I think I'm with you on those things. Most of the horrifying pictures of trash come from base camp where thousands of people each year come to visit or try to earn money while a few hundred people try to climb the mountain. It looks to me like there are a lot more base camp trekkers than climbers.

Googling "trash on Everest" just for fun I found these quotes in the first couple of links:

"“Everest does not have a trash problem,” Outside senior editor and Everest correspondent Grayson Schaffer says. “These new laws are a diversion tactic to distract from labor issues." Schaffer has reported extensively on the welfare of Sherpas on Everest" - www.outsideonline.com/1805146/louisiana-sinking-fast

"Sherpas are now finding less trash to bring back, which suggests cleanup efforts are working." - theweek.com/articles/546387/how-turned-mount-everest-into-dump

"John All is the director of the American Climber Science Program — and among the few who've reached the summit of Mount Everest. He told VICE News that the impact of climbers is relatively small. "We're tiny little things on a gigantic mass of ice," he said. "What climbers impact doesn't really impact anybody but those climbers."" - news.vice.com/article/one-year-after-deadly-disaster-climbers-are-still-leaving-shit-all-over-mount-everest

I've climbed Mt. Rainier with 2 IMG Everest guides who told a bunch of great stories, and I've heard similar stories from RMI guides. Both of those organizations try to be responsible and do work on the mountain that benefits all the climbers, not just their clients. The IMG Everest page - www.mountainguides.com/everest-south15.shtml#aug31_2015

I've read a handful of books about climbing Everest that touch on the controversial conditions. A couple of interesting ones are Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season - discusses Brice's company, and High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed - shows how conditions can be more desperate for those not climbing with the big guide services.

We shouldn't get outraged and emotional based on stuff in the media by people trying to sell copy when we don't really know or understand what's going on. That's my argument.

And lest anyone thinks the Everest garbage problem is solved, check out this link from April 2015 of the Indian Army coming out to help in cleanup---

www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/travel/feat-mount-everest-trash-pickup-expedition/

And here's the pertinent question: Are current alpine climbers still leaving their trash and oxygen bottles and ropes etc on the mountains they climb? Is it still an accepted practice?

I'm taught as a backpacker to never discard junk in the woods---just think how much garbage would be in each camp I return to. Mountaineers, speaking generally, must never have gotten this lesson.

Thanks Toejam for the reasoned reply. Your quote: "And it's really hard to carry extra stuff at 26,000 feet" reminds me of the "rednecks" we have in the mountains of TN and NC who somehow thru supreme effort manage to get themselves down a foot trail into a river valley or onto a mountaintop and then leave 30% of their crap because "it's really hard to carry extra stuff", period. I've seen some incredible piles of garbage in NC backpacking campsites.




I found these piles of redneck crap on the Snowbird Creek trail in NC. The top pic was stuff I found scattered all thru one campsite and so I picked it all up and placed it neatly next to the trail for some kind dayhikers to cart out.

I would assume if mountaineers are carrying their belly fat and femurs and boots and down suits and ribcages and butt muscles at 26,000 feet and carting these items up and over and around and down and out, they sure can cart out the rest of their crap.