by Mike Keeler
He had become concerned by the amount of junk which visitors had left behind. The mountain was becoming more famous for being a dumping ground than for being a nice place to hike. So the man grabbed his coat and his gear, and headed up the mountain to do something about it. He started cleaning up old campsites filled with broken tents, aluminum cans, and empty cooking stoves. He’s cleaning up trails littered with plastic bags. But most importantly, he’s picking up dozens and dozens and dozens of oxygen containers. The kind you need to keep your brain from hemorrhaging at high altitude.
The man’s name is Apa Sherpa, but most of the climbing world knows him as “Super Sherpa.” This week, at the age of 51, he made the summit of Mount Everest for the 21st time, breaking his own record. He first started climbing at age 12, helping mountaineers move their gear up and down the mountain, and first ascended Everest as a guide in 1989. Since then, he’s reached the summit almost every summer, and helped many others to do so. But recently he has realized what happens when the world loves a place too much. Tens of thousands of people have gone up some part of the mountain. Almost 3000 have made it to the summit at least once. But as they did so, they left behind tons of equipment. Mount Everest, which the sherpas call Sagarmatha, had achieved a dubious new nickname: the world’s highest garbage dump.
And the problem was only getting worse. With global warming, much of the snow that used to cover the trash has melted, exposing many old dump sites. More and more climbers meant the problem was going to get worse. The Nepalese government has tried imposing fines for dumping, with only minimal effect.
So Super Sherpa has assembled a team which plans to remove 4 tons of junk from the lower mountain, and another ton along the route to the summit. And, unfortunately, part of the task will be gruesome. Over 200 climbers have died on Everest, and many of their bodies remain along the trail in open view, especially in the “death zone” above 25,000 feet. Some of them may be retrieved for cremation or burial, while others will be covered with stone cairns.
In a larger sense, Super Sherpa is doing more than cleaning a mountain, he’s purging a bad attitude in the climbing community. It’s not about conquering the mountain. It’s about having respect for it. Upon reaching the summit, he said, “If my ascent promotes the cause and helps to protect the mountain, I am always ready to climb.”
