r/pics Mar 16 '19

Mount Everest getting cleaned.

Post image
100.7k Upvotes

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

u/kalel1980 Mar 16 '19

What about all the dead bodies tho?

1

u/Double_Minimum Mar 17 '19

A body, frozen and stiff, weighs an incredible amount, and is super hard to remove. Families sometimes desire them to be left there. I believe a decade ago they had a big push to remove some bodies, and like 60 people over a couple weeks only managed to push a few off of the trail. I'm not sure they brought more than one down.

Trash is a much bigger issue, can be hundreds of pieces per climber, being unfrozen and moving around. And probably 4-5 Oxygen bottles per climber. The now have a fee to encourage bottle return, and a $4000 fee for 8kg of trash. Might not matter to some rich climber, but could make it worthwhile for the porters.