This year Nepal Government issued permits to record 381 climbers to scale the Mount Everest as part of the —making the 2019 season one of the busiest climbing season ever.

However, the government’s biggest push to commercialize the world highest peak face criticisms for poor management and traffic jam and issuing of permits to more climbers that it could handle bringing the way authorities manage Everest under massive scrutiny.

This season has been the deadliest climbing season with 11 deaths on Everest. Many climbers and media have claimed that some of the deaths this year were caused by the traffic jam on the way to the top which made the climbers wait for hours on the way up and down.

During an interview with Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, the BBC had presented a documentary report on Everest expedition this season. In the documentary, the BBC claimed that of the total 60 liaison officers deployed at the base camp to regulate the expedition team, only five were on the duty.

“Did that revelation disturb you?” Mathew Amliwala had asked PM Oli. But Oli was without a concrete answer.

Oli also claimed that the situation is not as worse as it is rumored and the reason behind the deaths was not due to the crowd.

In contrast to BBC claim, the Department of Tourism, two days later, said that only 15 of the deployed 37 officials for the 44 expedition teams had not reached the base camp, according to a report by Onlinekhabar.

Many of the liaison officers who did not reach the base camp said they were unable to reach there due to their health condition, it further said.

Mountaineer Pemba Dorje Sherpa also denied the reports that too many people on the Everest were the cause of deaths.

‘No, climbers do not die due to traffic jam,” said the 20 time Everest summiteer in a television interview Janata Janna Chahanchan.

“Most of the deaths are due to inexperience and weather condition. Ascending Everest is itself a risky business. There is always a danger of avalanches and blizzards,” he said.

“When the queue is longer, climbers may suffer from cold and frostbite. There is also a risk of running out of oxygen. But we cannot blame traffic jam for the climbers’ deaths.”

“Of course, overcrowding has been a problem that needs to be addressed. To avoid such crowds the government should issue 300 or fewer permits in the coming year.”

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Melting glaciers exposing dead bodies on Mount Everest

Commercial mountaineering has turned Everest into high-altitude rubbish dump

Another major concern about Everest is the heap of trash left by the mountain expeditioners. Although the government has launched Everest clean-up drive from time to time, the rubbish such as fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even human excrement litter the route to the summit of the 8,848-meter (29,029-foot) peak which has made the world’s tallest peak look ugly.

Sherpa said that the government should give Everest a rest for at least a year to give space for clean-up campaign.

He was of the view that the government should deploy mountaineers or Nepal Army personnel instead of inexperienced government employees to clean the Everest.

Asked why the group of mountaineers deployed to clean the Everest did not clean the trash, he said, “The government officials who were on the base camp did not pay the climbers. Why would the mountaineers work?”

According to him, the Sherpa mountaineers were made the victim of politics in the name of trash collection by some corrupt government officials.

“They take money for cleaning the mountain and don’t pay the mountaineers. We even filed written complaints at the Tourism Board. But, they don’t listen,” he said.

He also suggested the government take concrete measures before it is too late.

“Along with clean-up drive, the government should think about not letting garbage on the Everest.”

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said Nepal would receive foreign loan based on the country’s needs and priorities.

In an interview to Mathew Amliwala for BBC World, PM Oli clarified that the Nepal government has the capacity to manage such loan.

On a query regarding Nepal’s participation in Belt and Road Initiative, he responded, “We invite investors for investment. We receive loan according to our necessity and priority, not in a random manner. It’s not about other’s experience rather we could manage it based on our own experience and we do have estimates for this as well”.

On another query regarding environmental impacts of infrastructural development that Nepal government planned, a lot of which cut across the protected areas, PM Oli said, “Nepal has substantial contributions to strike environmental balance. This year we are planning to plant more than 10 million trees to counterbalance any sort of negative impact of development works on the environment.

“If we cut down 2.5 million trees we would plant an additional 5 million saplings. We are also working for the river. We have dedicated 62 percent of the land to environmental protection,” he added.

“Nepal is always cautious of environmental degradation and carelessness while carrying out development projects”.

A documentary by Navin Singh Khadka on Mount Everest climbing was presented at the beginning of the interview, showing the deadliest and busiest climbing season ever and the way the authorities manage Everest, which has come under massive scrutiny.

The documentary showed the traffic jam on the way to the world’s highest peak making the climbers wait for hours up and down.

According to the documentary, the Nepal government deployed nearly 60 liaison officials to regulate the expedition team but the BCC investigation showed not even five officials stayed at the base camp who go home and not even turn up.

Nepal has planned to bring in 2 million tourists next year, which the government has taken as Visit Nepal 2020, a year committed to tourism industry with the vision of making a reasonable brand picture of Nepal as travel and vacationer destination, backing up the tourism foundations, enhance the growth of tourism industry, and enhance local tourism as supportable industry.

Expedition operators are excited about the tourism year, but, according to BBC, they agree that managing the traffic jam on the highest peak is a Himalayan task, especially when something goes wrong.

Alan Arnet, a climber, said limited proper timing, over permission and low-cost proposal of the company due to the competition are three major causes behind the fatal incidents in the world’s highest peak.

This year the Nepal government has issued permits to record 381 climbers to scale the Everest.

PM Oli said that it is an unnecessary hype and clarified, “the number of permits issued to the climbers is not large.”

“The Mountaineers have to wait for long for good weather. Sometimes they need to wait for days. This needs to be reviewed. The situation is not complicated as rumored”, he added.

Noting that adequate attention would be paid on granting permission to summiteers as well as monitoring the conducts of the concerned officer in coming days, he said it was not the truth that the climbers had died because of disrupted traffic.

“We have made some amendments to rules. Our amendments include numbers of guides, oxygen cylinder, summit preparatory obligations and a proper number of mountaineers”, he added.

By Dil Kumar Ale Magar

KATHMANDU, April 9: The Government of Nepal is planning to rescale the height of Mount Everest amid speculations that the peak shrunk due to the deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake of April 2015. According to China’s National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, the quake moved the mountain by more than an inch southwest.

The government is dispatching a four-member survey this week, who will ascend the summit in May and switch on a Global Navigation Satellite System receiver that will store data from the satellite to spot its geographic location.

“The observation session can last about 10 minutes,” reported the Kathmandu Post quoting Susheel Dangol, Chief Survey Officer of the Everest Height Measurement Secretariat, under the Department of Survey.

According to the Post, the survey team members Khim Lal Gautam and Rabin Karki will be accompanied by a number of trained Sherpas while ascending the summit while other two survey officers Suraj Singh Bhandari and Yubaraj Dhital will stay at the base camp to monitor the activities and assist the climbers.

The survey department will conduct precise leveling, trigonometric leveling, gravity survey and GNSS survey to measure the height of the Everest, covering 285 points with 12 different observation stations. Of the 12 observation stations, nine are located in hills of Sankhuwasava, Bhojpur and Solukhumbu districts. Seventeen surveyors have been mobilized for leveling survey and 13 for GNSS, the Post further reported.

This is the first time Nepal is conducting survey on its own mountain. Until now, Nepal has relied on an Indian survey conducted in 1954 which figures the height of Everest at 8,848 meter (29,029 feet) tall—which is the current official height of the Everest. The measurement was subsequently confirmed by a Chinese survey in 1975. However, China remeasured the height of the world’s tallest peak in 2005 and asserted the height of Everest as 8,844.43 m (29,017.16 ft) with accuracy of ±0.21 m (8.3 in)–13 feet shorter than officially accepted height. China claimed it to be the most accurate measurement to date. A survey conducted by an American team in 1999 had recognized the height of the summit at 29,035 feet. But, in 2010, both Nepal and China had agreed that the height of Everest of 8,848 meter.

According to Dongol the survey will provide the measurement with a centimeter level accuracy. “The data obtained from the surveys will be processed to produce the final result. We have targeted to finalize the report on precise height by the end of 2019,” he told the Post.

Nepal is expected to announce the height of the world’s tallest peak in January next year.

Expedition’s leader Gautam said that the the climbers faced risks difficulties and challenges in the extreme weather of the Everest.

Nearly 5,000 climbers have successfully scaled the Mount Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reached the summit for the first time in 1953. Nearly 300 mountaineers have lost their lives while attempting to reach the summit since the first attempt in 1922.

In 2016, 16 Sherpa climbers, working for climbing expedition, were crushed beneath the cascading ice mass in Khumbhu Glacier, the most treacherous route to Everest. Following which authorities closed the route.

“It will not be easy to work in that terrain, but we are confident our mission will be successful,” reported AFP quoting Gautam.

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Melting glaciers exposing dead bodies on Mount Everest

KATHMANDU, March 26: As the ice sheets and glaciers are fast-melting because of global warming, the dead bodies on the world’s highest peak are now becoming exposed.

Due to an inhospitable environment for any living thing, the 29,000 feet summit—where the oxygen decreases by about 50 percent and temperature can drop to below 30 degree Fahrenheit, with ascending full of obstacles– is always danger to mountaineers trying to climb it.

Nearly 5,000 climbers have successfully scaled the Mount Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reached the summit for the first time in 1953. Nearly 300 mountaineers have lost their lives on the peak since the first attempt in 1922.

But the climate change and increasing temperature are exposing the dead bodies remained buried in ice for years.

According to a BBC report, the hand of a dead mountaineer turned up above the ground at Camp 1 in 2017.

Most dead bodies have been surfacing in the Khumbu Glacier in the recent years, reported BBC quoting the mountaineers. Another dead body appeared on the surface of Khumbu ice fall the same year, which is known as the most treacherous route to Everest. The remains of dead bodies are also appearing in Camp 4.

Chunks of ice the size of cars from huge ice towers can fall any minute due to the craggy expanse of glacier skids downhill at a rate of several feet per day in Khumbu Glacier.

Mountaineers have christened the icefall’s most notorious sections with names like “Popcorn Field” and “the Ballroom of Death,” and for years guides have eyed the path through them with unease, said The Washington Post.

In 2016, 16 Sherpa climbers, working for climbing expedition, were crushed beneath the cascading ice mass.

The bodies of climbers who died recently have been brought down. But the old ones are coming out as the glacier melts.

“I myself have retrieved around 10 dead bodies in recent years from different locations on Everest and clearly more and more of them are emerging now,” a liaison officer on Everest told BBC.

The increasing exposure of dead bodies has become a growing concern for the expedition operators because dealing with dead bodies is a herculean task and can be expensive.

Bringing the dead bodies down costs about $40,000 to $80,000, according to BBC.

One of the most dangerous recoveries was at 8,700 meters, near the peak, Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal National Mountain Guides Association, told CNN.

“The body weighed 150kg and it had to be recovered from a difficult place at that altitude. It was a Herculean task,” he said.

According to Sherpa, the government lacked proper action and responsibility in removing the dead bodies.

“We don’t get funding from the government in time to remove the dead bodies,” he said.

“But we bring them down whenever we find them,” he told CNN.

(Source: BBC, CNN, The Washington Post)

Feb 17: China has closed the Tibetan entrance to Mount Everest ‘for an indefinite period’ amid a clean-up drive owing to growing piles of garbage left on the world’s tallest mountain.

Chinese officials said although the entrance is closed, tourists can still visit the Rongpo monastery area at 16,400 feet above sea level. Only those with climber permits, however, will be allowed to go to the base camp about 600 feet higher, and beyond.

“The key area of the reserve will be closed for tourism for an indefinite period, mainly for ecological conservation,” tourism official Tang Wu said.

Climbers and tourists leaving trash (camp-equipment, plastic bottles and human faeces) behind on the mountain has long been a problem. In 2014, Nepal ordered climbers and tourists going to the mountain must return with an extra 18 pounds of garbage.

The decision will drastically reduce the number of visitors on the Tibetan side as only 300 people with climbing passes will be allowed past a monastery just below the 5,200m camp.

However, visitors to Nepal’s southern route has increased dramatically in recent decades, from 3,500 in 1973 to a record 45,000 in 2017, according to Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation of Nepal.

More than 40,000 people tripped to China’s base camp in 2015, according to the last official figures, while some 20,000 have attempted the 8,848m-summit from there in the past eight years.

In January, Beijing cut the number of climbing passes by a third.

Sherpas collected nine-tons of waste from the icy slopes in 2017 and China has formed a 200-strong task-force to pick up remaining debris. Some frozen bodies have been left for years.

The cleanup of the mountainside will also include removing bodies of dead climbers from prior climbs located higher than 26,200 feet, known as death zone.

Chinese officials have also followed Nepal’s lead in asking climbers to return with litter once they come down, or pay a fine.

The director of the Chinese Mountaineering Association, Ci Luo, said that from now on climbers will “be required to carry out all their waste with them.”

“Prices have gone up on the Chinese side and they are now asking for a deposit for clearing litter,” said Tim Mosedale, a British mountain guide who’s climbed Everest six times. “It seems to be a bit of classic muscle-flexing to show who is boss.

“There is always some suspense with the Chinese authorities about whether the mountain will be open and whether an operator will get a permit and what the rules will be.”

The pro-environment policies come after UNESCO warned that the dramatic growth in adventure tourism has imperiled Mount Everest’s fragile ecosystem and local cultural traditions.

LUKLA, June 28: Tourists hiking in Nepal’s Himalayan mountains are being pressured into costly helicopter evacuations at the first sight of trouble by guides linked to powerful brokers who are making a fortune on “unnecessary rescues”, industry insiders say.

Dodgy operators are scamming tens of thousands of dollars from insurance companies by making multiple claims for a single chopper ride or pushing climbers to accept airlifts for minor illnesses, an investigation by AFP has revealed.

In other cases, trekking guides, promised commission if they get tourists to return by chopper, are offering helicopter rides to tired hikers as a quick way home, but billing them as rescues to insurance companies.The practice is so rampant helicopter pilots are reporting “rescuing” tourists who appear in perfectly fine health.

“It’s a racket that’s tantamount to fraud, and it’s happening on a large scale throughout Nepal,” said Jonathan Bancroft of UK-based Traveler Assist, which carries out medical evacuations in Nepal on behalf of global travel insurance companies.

Trekking outfits stand to make more in kickbacks from evacuating a hiker by helicopter than the cost of the trek itself, contributing to an alarming rise in rescues from Nepal’s biggest tourist attraction: the fabled Himalayas.

Traveler Assist said 2017 was the most expensive year on record for travel insurance companies covering tourists in Nepal due to a startling number of helicopter rescues – though this year is on track to beat it.

There is no centralized dispatch center for helicopter flights in Nepal making it difficult to know precisely how many evacuations are carried out.

But over the past six years the skies of the Everest region have turned into a helicopter highway, with a six-fold increase in the number of choppers in the air, each logging over 1,000 flying hours per year, according to industry data.

“We used to see maybe one helicopter in two or three days. Now we are seeing 10 or so in a day,” said Thanishwar Bhandari, who works as a small clinic in the Everest region.

Meanwhile, one foreign pilot, who requested anonymity, said he rescued trekkers on a near daily basis in April and May this year, peak trekking season.

“I think I took three people the whole season who appeared genuinely ill,” he told AFP.

‘TOLD TO LIE’

Australian trekker Jessica Reeves was urged by her guide to be evacuated by helicopter from near Everest base camp in October 2017 when she complained of a common cold.

“He kept telling me to get a helicopter,” Reeves told AFP. “They said if I keep going it would be really risky so it was better to leave now instead of risking it.”

Reeves said nine or 10 hikers in her group ended up returning to Kathmandu on three helicopters but were instructed to say they were alone on the flight back.

She alleged the company, Himalayan Social Journey, billed each of the tourists’ insurance providers for the whole flight – pocketing around US$35,000 (S$47,870) in the process.

“They told us all to lie to the insurance company and say there was only one person on the helicopter when there were three or four of us on each,” she said. Reeves’ insurance claim was in any case rejected because her policy had expired.

The company owner, Ram Sapkota, denied that the insurance companies were each billed for the full flight.

“(They) claimed insurance on a sharing basis and we received money from (the) insurance,” he said, dismissing allegations as “fake”.

Sapkota blamed the rise in helicopter rescues from the Himalayas on lazy hikers and hypochondriacs.

“When one client gets sick, then the group they say, ‘I feel unsafe and just want to go’,” he said.

Extensive interviews by AFP with players at every stage of the commission chain reveals that guides, trekking operators, lodge owners and charter companies are acting as brokers, playing helicopter companies off against each other to secure a cut of the rescue fees.

One manager of a Kathmandu-based helicopter company said they paid US$500 to brokers for each rescue flight.

“If we don’t pay the commission, we can’t get the business,” the manager told AFP on condition of anonymity.

‘SAFETY NET’

The trekking industry in Nepal took a hit following a devastating earthquake in 2015.

But tourists are now returning: from March to May 2014, more than 20,000 foreigners visited the Sagarmatha National Park, home to Mount Everest, according to government figures.

Meanwhile, there are an estimated 2,000 trekking companies promising to whisk them off into the mountains, many of them operating from scruffy, cramped offices in the dusty backstreets of Kathmandu.

The cost of the 14-day trek to Everest base camp varies wildly between the outfits, but many offer the tour for less than US$1,000, below cost price according to multiple industry sources.

Guides working for the low-cost agencies are being told to make up the shortfall by getting trekkers rescued by helicopter: one guide told AFP on condition of anonymity that he was given a quota for the number of trekkers he should have “rescued”.

“The industry thrives on these unnecessary rescues,” added Suraj Paudyal, who coordinates helicopter rescues for Mediciti Hospital in Kathmandu.

For doctors working in the high-altitude Everest region, the increased availability of helicopters does provide reassurance that critical patients can be airlifted from remote locations to better-equipped hospitals below.

“It is nice, as a doctor, to have the safety net of a helicopter,” said British doctor Helen Randfield, who manned a small clinic that caters to the influx of trekkers who arrive with the good weather of spring and autumn.

But the decision as to who gets evacuations ends up in the hands of the guides, not the medical professionals.

“Trekkers or their guides are deciding themselves whether they need a rescue,” said Sonia Mariano, an American doctor who worked at the same clinic last year.

The majority of rescues are happening without prior approval of insurance companies – 80 per cent according to Alpine Rescue, which carries out evacuations for the International Assistance Group, an alliance of global insurers – leaving the system open to exploitation.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Some hospitals back in Kathmandu also have a stake in the rescue business. Company registration documents reviewed by AFP show that many large trekking outfits have financial ties to hospitals and helicopter providers, creating a conflict of interest.

Ram Sapkota of Himalayan Social Journey said his guides received a commission from some hospitals if they take a tourist there, saying he allowed it because his company needed to “maintain relations” with medical providers.

He also bought a 10 per cent stake in helicopter firm Altitude Air last year, he told AFP.

A German trekker hiking in the Everest region in April told AFP that a broker offered him a return helicopter flight to Kathmandu – with the cost billed to his insurance provider.

“He said he knew a doctor who would sign it off as a rescue,” the tourist said, requesting anonymity.

The majority of rescues in the Himalayas are related to “acute mountain sickness” caused by low oxygen levels at high altitude. The symptoms are vague – headaches, nausea, loss of appetite – and the only treatment is to descend.

But once the patient is at lower altitudes the symptoms disappear, making it impossible to tell if the evacuation was medically necessary.

“By the time (the trekkers) come down, they are fine,” said Dr Prativa Pandey, medical director of respected Kathmandu-based travel clinic Ciwec.

She added that doctors cannot be made responsible for cleaning up the murky business: “You (as a doctor) have to give the benefit of doubt to the patient,” she said.

International insurance companies are beginning to wise up to the rampant fraud.

Multiple insurance companies linked to one major UK-based underwriter are considering no longer offering travel insurance for Nepal, an industry source said, requesting anonymity as the firms did not want to alarm customers.

Nepal’s tourism ministry launched an investigation into alleged insurance fraud in early June after receiving complaints from multiple sources, joint secretary Ghanashyam Upadhyaya told AFP.

“The investigation might take (another) month. When we began our work we did not realise the magnitude of the problem,” Upadhyaya said.

Upadhyaya would not confirm the details of the ongoing investigation, but local media reported that 500 trekking and helicopter companies are being probed, including Sapkota’s Himalayan Social Journey.

Sapkota said he had not been contacted by the ministry and again denied any wrongdoing. AFP

Decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Mount Everest into the world’s highest rubbish dump as an increasing number of big-spending climbers pay little attention to the ugly footprint they leave behind.

Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even human excrement litter the well-trodden route to the summit of the 8,848-meter (29,029-foot) peak.

“It is disgusting, an eyesore,” Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who has summited Everest 18 times, said. “The mountain is carrying tones of waste.”

As the number of climbers on the mountain has soared — at least 600 people have scaled the world’s highest peak so far this year alone — the problem has worsened.

Meanwhile, melting glaciers caused by global warming are exposing trash that has accumulated on the mountain since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful summit 65 years ago.

Efforts have been made. Five years ago Nepal implemented a $4,000 rubbish deposit per team that would be refunded if each climber brought down at least eight kilograms (18 pounds) of waste.

On the Tibet side of the Himalayan mountain, they are required to bring down the same amount and are fined $100 per kilogram if they don’t.

In 2017 climbers in Nepal brought down nearly 25 tonnes of trash and 15 tonnes of human waste — the equivalent of three double-decker buses — according to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC).

This season even more was carried down but this is just a fraction of the rubbish dumped each year, with only half of climbers lugging down the required amounts, the SPCC says.

Instead many climbers opt to forfeit the deposit, a drop in the ocean compared to the $20,000-$100,000 they will have forked out for the experience.

Pemba shrugs that many just don’t care. Compounding the problem, some officials accept small bribes to turn a blind eye, he said.

“There is just not enough monitoring at the high camps to ensure the mountain stays clean,” he said.

INEXPERIENCE

The Everest industry has boomed in the last two decades.

This has sparked concerns of overcrowding as well as fears that ever more inexperienced mountaineers are being drawn by low-cost expedition operators desperate for customers.

This inexperience is exacerbating the rubbish problem, warns Damian Benegas, who has been climbing Everest for over two decades with twin brother Willie.

Sherpas, high altitude guides and workers drawn from the indigenous local ethnic group, carry heavier items including tents, extra oxygen cylinders and ropes up the mountain — and then down again.

Previously most climbers would take their own personal kit like extra clothes, food, a sleeping bag as well as supplemental oxygen.

But now, many climbers can’t manage, leaving the Sherpas to carry everything.

“They have to carry the client’s gear so they are unable to carry down rubbish,” Benegas said.

He added that operators need to employ more high-altitude workers to ensure all clients, their kit and rubbish get safely up and down the mountain.

RAW SEWAGE

Environmentalists are concerned that the pollution on Everest is also affecting water sources down in the valley.

At the moment the raw sewage from base camp is carried to the next village — a one-hour walk — and dumped into trenches.

This then “gets flushed downhill during the monsoon into the river”, said Garry Porter, a US engineer who together with his team might have the answer.

They are considering installing a biogas plant near Everest base camp that would turn climber poo into a useful fertilizer.

Another solution, believes Ang Tsering Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, would be a dedicated rubbish collection team.

His expedition operator Asian Trekking, which has been running “Eco Everest Expeditions” for the last decade, has brought down over 18 tons of trash during that time in addition to the eight-kilo climber quota.

And last month a 30-strong cleanup team retrieved 8.5 tons of waste from the northern slopes, China’s state-run Global Times reported.

“It is not an easy job. The government needs to motivate groups to clean up and enforce rules more strictly,” Ang said. AFP

Bhoj Raj Karki

SOLUKHUMBU, May 29: Managing the trash has become a tall order in the Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) region.

The volume of waste has significantly climbed at Camp 2 and Camp 3, above the Base Camp on Mt Everest as the mountaineering expedition teams have failed to abide by the rules.

It is found that even climbers who went on mountaineering expedition to Mt Everest in this spring climbing season have not followed the rules and regulation.

Both Nepali and foreign mountaineers numbering hundreds reach the Base Camp annually for climbing the world’s highest peak. The Department of Tourism states that more than 400 climbers summited Mt Everest this year alone.

“The problem of increasing trash at the Base Camp and other camps above it is because the mountaineers and their assistants who come along with various paraphernalia and supplies required for the mountaineering expedition do not heed the rules and regulations for managing the waste,” said Pasang Nima Sherpa, himself a climber. Sherpa had climbed Mt Everest on May 21.

“There is some trash around Camp 1 and 2 but it is in high quantity around Camp 3 and 4,” Sherpa recounted.

There is growing concern over the mounting problem of litter in the Everest region. Lal Bahadur Waiba, an Everest summiteer, urged the concerned bodies to pay attention to timely management of the litter on Mt Everest.

“Although a bit of initiatives have been made for managing the waste it is hardly adequate. The government should formulate a special plan for addressing this problem,” he said.

Some mountaineering expedition teams even abandon their tents haphazardly at various camps. It is said the climbers fail to manage the waste they generate for various reasons.

The sixth-time Everest climber Yati Sherpa of Sotang said that the quantity of trash on the Everest is growing year by year. Increasing level of waste matter on the mountain is gradually spoiling its aesthetic value.

The culture of random leaving of waste materials on the mountain will tarnish its image in absence of timely interventions. Impact of climate change and an increasing flow of peoples/climbers have posed threat to the significance of this 8,848 meter- high mountain peak.

The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) is working for the waste management in the Everest area. The committee’s rule is that every individual on an attempt to scale the peak shall compulsorily bring 8 kg of waste per head back to its Namche-based office. The separation of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste materials takes place here and biodegradable is managed at the local level while the non-perishable waste is sent to Kathmandu, SPCC program officer Kapindra Rai said.

According to Department of Tourism’s information officer Ram Prasad Sapkota, the government charges refundable deposits up to US dollar 400 from any climber and the amount will be seized if it gets a report that the climber failed to turn up with the waste materials as demanded by the rule.

The good news is that the Department has so far not been compelled to seize such deposits. However, views of tourism entrepreneurs are that enforcement of this provision is not enough to just address the issues of waste management on the Everest.

Formal celebrations of the Sagarmatha Day would keep no meaning unless a long term solution was sought to the problem of Everest waste management. They demand the State come with a special program to address the issue.

Kumar Chaulagain/Kalpana Poudel
KATHMANDU, Feb 14: Nepal, small but a naturally beautiful country in the Himalayan region takes great pride for being home to the Mount Everest, world’s highest mountain peak which stands at 8848 meters above the sea level.

But questions frequently raised regarding its height draw the attention of bodies concerned, trigger discussions and debates and make media headlines.

And finally, to make all confusions about the height of the peak called Sagarmatha in Nepali clear, the government has already begun homework to (re) measure its height on its own for the first time, but works are yet to get a momentum.

Officials at the Survey Department under the Ministry of Land Reform and Management admitted that though initial–phase field works for measuring the peak have been already kicked off, the measurement process has failed to gain momentum due to technical reasons. Differing views, opinions, and claims about the height of the Mt Everest prompted the government to go with a process on its own to determine official and accurate figure.

Various claims and differing views and opinions about its height, Nepal not being able to present official figure on its own, varied measurement data presented by India and China sparking disputes at international level and unofficial reports about the change in its height following the 2015 April earthquake have led to confusions over the height of the world’s tallest peak, though the official height is 8,848 meters to date. Bearing these all in mind, the Department is in the process of determining the exact height and current positioning of the mountain.

It was rumored that the devastating quake may have impacted the peak, leading to the slight change (decrease) in its height.

The Department, before starting the process to measure the peak’s height, had invited experts/ scientists concerned from India, China and Italy to the two-day international seminar held on December 11-12 last year to discuss about the measurement process. The work procedure was prepared being based on the suggestions made by the seminar.

Prof Roger Witham from the Colorado University and the chief of Survey of India who was present in the discussion said they were happy to hear that Nepal was going to determine the height on its own, pledging all possible technical support to this regard, as stated by Department chief survey officer Sushil Dangol who is the coordinator of Mt Everest Measurement Secretariat.

Nepal summoned international expert s to home for consultation on the issue as it wanted to make the measurement unquestionable and all accepted, he added. Prior to this, the then Survey of India in 1954 had measured the peak’s height and put it at 8848 meters which Nepal has officially recognized to date and this figure has been established as official height of the Mt Everest globally.

Since then surveys conducted at different times by different agencies to measure the height ended up offering differing data.

According to the Department, a home team on October 24 last year had been in Solukhumbu to find out the control points that the Indian team in 1954 had used to measure the peak’s height. Such point was reportedly fixed at eight locations in Solukhumbu, two each in Khotang and Dolakha.

The Nepali team has so far found the point fixed at four locations in Solukhumbu. Search for point fixed at other places is underway. The Department looks forward to finishing the measurement works of initial phase within the next two years.

A 13-member team has already left for Madar along the Nepal-India border in Siraha for leveling work. The Survey of India will do all the leveling works up to Madar and the Nepali team will take up remaining works right from there. The Department expects to complete the leveling task from Siraha to Okhaldhunga within the current fiscal year. It hopes to bring a preliminary report about the measurement of peak by the next two years. Leveling works are going on from Salleri of Solukhumbu to Bansbari of Udaypur. Works are on to find out whether the April quake caused effects on the road leveling.

Department’s gravity machine is dysfunctional and it is yet to decide whether to purchase a new one and borrow from somewhere. But the budget issue matters – in the case of availability of budget required to buy a new machine, it will have its one new machine, otherwise, works will be done through a borrowed one.

The Department is using three methods to measure the mountain. Direct measurement, triangulation and gravity meter.

Likewise, global positioning system (GPS) is also used in measuring the mountain and China had in 2005 measured the height of the Mt Everest based on the same technology and set it to be at around 8,844 meters, but the results failed to get international acceptance.

“The Department is using a multi-methods based measurement technology in a bid to come up with indubitable findings and the help of climbers is necessary to undertake measurement works at higher altitude of the peak,” Dangol said adding that discussions to this regard are underway. Favourable time for measuring the peak will be only twice in a season. However, it is not certain that the measurement will conclude within the expected timeframe as untoward incident(s) of natural disaster could have a significant impact on such efforts, experts say.

NO BUDGETARY CONSTRAINT FOR PROJECT
Around Rs 250 million is estimated to cost to undertake this mission.

The government has allocated Rs 20 million under the initial phase for this noteworthy project. Earlier in 2011, the Department had prepared a working procedure for re-measuring the mountain, but budget issues hampered the further progress. According to joint spokesperson at the Ministry of Land Reform and Management, Punya Bikram Poudel, the government has made sure the allocation of remaining budget to carry out the measurement works.

Talking to RSS, he said the Ministry had last year proposed to conduct the (re) measurement of the peak with the use of local human and other resources and the government put the project in its top priority in the budget speech and in its policies and programs and the Ministry has proceeded with the project accordingly.

Everest’s height was first measured at 8,840 meters above the sea level in 1856 by a team led by George Everest who served the Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843. The peak was named the Mount Everest in honor of its first surveyor.

Later in 1955, the figure was increased by eight meters and established as the official height to date.

KATHMANDU (REUTERS): Nepal will measure Mount Everest afresh to settle a controversy over height of the world’s tallest peak, especially after some estimates suggested it became a little shorter in the wake of an earthquake two years ago, officials said on Friday.

Nepal, home to Mount Everest and half of the world’s 14 highest mountains, has never measured the peak on its own and uses its snow height of 8,848 meters (29,028 feet) that was measured by the Survey of India in 1954.

Many Western climbers use the height of 8,850 meters (29,035 feet) determined in 1999 by the National Geographic Society and Boston’s Museum of Science, in a survey that used satellite-based technology to measure the peak.

Everest straddles the border between Nepal and China, and in 2005 Chinese mountaineers and researchers put its height at 8,844.43 meters (29,017 feet).

Ganesh Prasad Bhatta, director general of the Nepal government’s Survey Department said an expedition would be made next year to settle the debate.

“We are now developing a methodology for the measurement which will be discussed with international experts, and their advice will be incorporated to make sure that our work meets global standards and is internationally accepted,” Bhatta told Reuters.

He said Nepal lacked scientific tools like Global Positioning System and leveling equipment as well as gravimeters, but would hire what was needed from experts and agencies like the International Association of Geodesy.

“If the weather conditions on the mountain are good, we will start the work in the summer climbing season next year or in the Autumn of 2018,” Anil Marasini, another official with the Survey Department, said.

Officials said they would seek to establish whether a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015 had altered the mountain’s height.

The earthquake occurred during the peak climbing season, and massive avalanches killed 18 people at the base camp.

During the summer mountaineering season this year, some climbers said the Hillary Step – a near vertical rock formation below the summit – had collapsed, though the Nepal government has rebutted those claims. REUTERS