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What About the Trash?
Gorak Shep - Sunday, April 9, 2000

DISPATCHES

Berg

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Mountain Zone, having just visited Base Camp. Base Camp, as I said, which is still partly under construction. Many of the Western and foreign climbing teams, climbing members, are still on their way. The Sherpas are building the rock walls, constructing the platforms. You know, this has to be redone every year; it's up there on the glacial moraine and it's not like the camps just stay in place from one season to the next, they get broken up.

With that work going on, and some teams actually climbing, it occurred to me that people might be interested to know, 'what about the trash?' And I'll report to you that walking into the early stages of this season's climbs, that there is no extra trash at Base Camp that was laying around from last season, and I mean that literally — virtually none.

There's going to be an incredible amount of trash generated by all the teams this year. There's a pretty effective system — that's a very effective system — that's been in place for a number of years now that teams that are dedicated to clean up are certainly going to take their share out, and probably more. Other teams with the trash deposit that they've left with the Nepalese government are going to be obligated to remove an appropriate number of kilos of trash out.

And most importantly, from my standpoint, solid human waste is removed, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Commission monitors this, this is not a foreign clean-up effort, this is a Nepalese government agency, and they are requiring everybody, whether they are on an environmental expedition or not, to put solid human waste in appropriate containers and it is removed from Base Camp.

This is one reason why, if you're a trekker, and you're thinking, 'well, I'm going to up go and stay at Base Camp, or visit Base Camp,' that you're not really welcomed. It's a place where keeping the area clean is extremely important and not that easy to do and the teams that do it are obligated to do so and they're self-reliant, from this standpoint. And you're not really welcome to just go up and just sort of add to the burden of trash and most important, probably, human waste that has to be removed.

With regard to all the clean-up efforts which will be going on this year, what good are they? Well, I'll tell you one thing that they're really good for, and these things have been going on for years, is they get people up here in the Khumbu, learning about what's going on, doing their share, certainly. But I'll tell you that the main thing that happens is, people get their eyes open and learn a lot about a new culture, environmental issues that go far beyond what might happen to be laying around at Everest Base Camp, or at Camp II, or on the South Col, and people are going to learn a lot and the exchange between cultures is going to be very very worthwhile.

I remember back in 1990, my friend John Gully from New Zealand, John brought several dozen New Zealand high school students up — two to Khumbu and many of them all the way to Base Camp on a clean-up effort and I saw kids having a great time that year, learning a lot, doing a little bit of good in terms of removing some trash generated by Western trips but probably more importantly, just learning about the Khumbu and I would expect maybe some people who came out of John Gully's program in 1990 will read this dispatch and agree with me. That was a great program.

I was looking at some old Mountain Gazette magazines that an old guy like me has laying around the house sometimes, from the mid '70s, and I saw this ad for support for a Evergreen State College in Oregon trip to help clean-up Everest Base Camp. It was going to be led by Willi Unsoeld back in — it must have been '74, '75, maybe '76 — and I kind of smiled to myself, thinking, 'well, this stuff has been going on a long time, these efforts, Westerners to come in a clean up Base Camp.

As you can tell, I think they're great. I also think that we need to come here with open eyes and we need to be prepared to learn and not just come in with the attitude that we're doing good for people. Everest is an icon for the world, it's a mountain that belongs to the world, but it is located on the south side, the approaches are in the Khumbu, homeland of the Sherpas in Nepal. And the exchange that these efforts bring about are probably the greatest thing about them.

So I know people will be involved with that this year, I'm looking forward to meeting them. And people at home are always interested about trash on Everest, and that's my comments on it today.

— Wally Berg, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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