1000415 Spring Cleaning On Mount Everest

Spring Cleaning on Mount Everest

A team of mountaineers begins an expedition to clean up trash left behind by climbers of the world's highest peak

By Kelli Plasket

The world's tallest mountain is in need of spring cleaning. A team of mountaineers flew to Mount Everest today to begin an expedition to clean up tons of trash that was left on the massive mountain by its climbers.

Mount Everest is located in the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and Tibet. At 29,035 feet about sea level, it's the tallest peak in the world. Climbers first successfully reached the peak in 1953. Since then, thousands of people have climbed Everest, leaving their trash along its trails. This includes ropes, tents and empty oxygen bottles, which climbers use to breath more comfortably at the mountain's high altitudes. Nepal requires Everest climbers to bring down everything they take up to the mountain to get their deposit back, but trash from climbs before the rule took effect still litters the slopes.

The mountaineers plan to bring down 11,000 pounds of garbage from Everest this spring. This is the peak climbing time before the summer monsoon season begins. Expedition members will receive $1.40 for every kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of trash they carry down the mountain.

A Local's Mission

Eco Everest Expedition organized the cleaning expedition. This is the fourth year one has been held. Leading the team is Apa, a veteran Nepalese guide who has climbed Everest a record 20 times since 1989. "I want to do this for my country, my people and for Everest," Apa says.

Apa says that when he first began climbing Everest, the trail to the summit was covered in ice and snow. But now the path contains bare rocks with deep cracks from melting ice. This makes expeditions up the mountain more dangerous. Apa, who grew up in the foothills of Everest but now lives in the United States, has campaigned for saving the mountain from the effects of global warming and other issues.

Max-Climbing the highest mountain-Mount Everest is a challenge for humans in the past years. At that time, technology hadn’t developed to this degree as now, so mountain climbers can’t climb to the top of Mountain Everest before. After the year 1953, two climbers called Tenzing and Hillary climbed to the top, many more people also started to climb to the top of the mountain. Right now, climbing to the highest point isn’t hard anymore, since many more people climbed to the top, someone started to make some records, like the youngest climber, the fastest climber to the top…etc. Since many people climbed Mount Everest, the also may have many garbage. So one man called Apa from Nepal organized a team that is used to clean the garbage on Mount Everest. Over the past fifty years, there must be a huge amount of garbage. This is the forth year the team formed, so I think the environment on Mount Everest would be much cleaner than before.