To Help Clean Up Bodies, Trash, and Human Excrement, China has Cut Everest Permits by a Third

The world’s most famous mountain is also one of the dirtiest. Trash and bodies are left season after season in the high-altitude landscape. So for this spring climbing season, China has cut the number of climbers allowed to attempt Everest by one third. That leaves 300 hopeful climbers with summit permits from Everest’s north side.

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The popularity of the mountain as a once-in-a-lifetime challenge attracts growing numbers of climbers, but there are concerns they are turning it into a high-altitude rubbish dump. China’s cleanup plan includes recovering bodies of climbers from 26,247 feet or higher. At this height, known as the death zone, climbers routinely succumb to the effects of altitude sickness.

Authorities on both sides of the mountain have tried different schemes over the years to try to clean up the junk left behind. Chinese officials last summer said they had removed eight-and-a-half tonnes of rubbish, including large amounts of human excrement, from the mountain. In the past, the Indian army has cleaned up tonnes of rubbish on the Nepalese side, where expedition organizers have begun sending huge trash bags with climbers during the spring climbing season to collect waste. A clean-up campaign led by Nepalese sherpas last year aimed to airlift 100 tonnes of rubbish from the mountain, reports the Telegraph.

Everest claims multiple victims each year, often in the “death zone” above 8,000 meters (26,246 feet), where the air is too thin to sustain human life. In 2017, 648 people summited Everest, including 202 from the north side, according to the nonprofit Himalayan Database. Six people were confirmed to have died on the mountain that year, one of them on the north side.