“Mountains are not fair or unfair – they are just dangerous.” – Reinhold Messner

Mount Everest, our planet’s highest mountain, has never been welcoming. Its aptly-named “death zone” (the height where the air is too thin to breathe) and has been claiming lives for the last half-century, including during the 1996 disaster described in Jon Krakauer’s harrowing Into Thin Air. Some of those victims are still up there, their bodies too frozen to be broken down by bacteria and often visible to modern climbers on their way to the summit.

From a distance, Everest looks pristine. Up close, it’s a graveyard littered with tons of garbage that is exposed by global warming. This week, a team of Nepalise climbers are heading into the death zone to attempt to remove some of the many tons of rubbish littering the slopes, and to recover at least two bodies including that of a Swiss climber killed just two years ago. We wish them luck on their difficult, dangerous journey.

Further reading:

“Everest ice forest melting due to global warming, says Greenpeace” – The Guardian

“Global warming reaches Mount Everest” – Physorg.com

Images: mckaysavage and Kappa Wayfarer

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