Nepal is considering relocating Mount Everest base camp.
According to the authorities, global warming and human activity are making the site dangerous.
The base camp for climbing the world’s highest mountain is located at the Khumbu Glacier, and like so many other glaciers in the Himalayas, it is melting at a rapid pace.
Every year, thousands of people visit the site at an altitude of approximately 5,000 meters, especially during the spring mountaineering period.
Now a state group of experts recommends moving the base camp. The melting glacier poses a threat to mountaineers, the motivation reads. The threat consists of increased rockfall and meltwater.
Criticism of the proposal
No final decision has been made yet, but a preliminary report has been produced. The idea is to move the base camp to a lower altitude.
– We can avoid the human activities in the base camp that affect the Khumbu Glacier, says Khim Lal Gautam, one of those who produced the report.
But there are those who think that the proposal is really bad.
– It’s a bad idea, says Sherpa Kami Rita, who has climbed Mount Everst 26 times. He continues:
– Do you think that a move of the base camp 300 to 400 meters further down will protect the environment or stop the glacier from melting? Not at all.
He also believes that the relocation could force the mountaineers to be out for several hours at a time, which could mean greater danger for them.
Human waste
Including the base camp, there are a total of five camps on the way to the top of Mount Everest. All of these have tents, but no toilets. Human feces has been presented as a problem.
“For example, we have understood that people urinate around 4,000 liters at the base camp every day,” one of the experts, Khimlal Gautam, told the BBC.
Some expeditions use plastic bags. If requirements were to be introduced for plastic bags, it would reduce the pollution on the rock significantly, according to Kami Rita.
– Above camp 1, climbers usually dig pits in the snow to use as toilets and leave the human waste there, he says.
The mountaineers’ cooking has also been put forward by the expert group as a reason for the rapid warming of the Khumbu Glacier.