DATELINE: May 1 2035 in a groundbreaking move the Nepal government has raised Everest permit fees to $45,000 while offering drone assisted human lift service to Camp to in the western Cwm for an additional $20,000 but demand shows no sign of slowing with over 2,000 climbers attempting the summit this season mean while the garbage crisis seems to have been tackled by a new high altitude trash to energy burning plant in lishe and a human waste plant that captures the methane to be used as fuel for Porters working on the mountain of course this news report more than a decade in the future about Mount Everest seems almost impossible to imagine but are we really that far off what does the future look like on Mount Everest and the 8,000 M Peaks things are changing quickly for instance the permit fees on Mount Everest alone have gone up $3,000 this year alone the future of Mount Everest and the 8,000 M Peak certainly holds some incredible potential but what about the Dark Side of overt commercialization overcrowding and environmental impact today we're going to look at the future of Mount Everest changes that are happening going almost out of control and things in the Government of Nepal particularly is doing to remedy some of these situations and some of the things they aren't doing to remedy the situation let's look at Everest's shift from exploration into tourism as someone who has spent more than 20 years climbing and filming on the mountain and studying its Mysteries as well climbing Mount Everest symbolize something bigger than ourselves it was the ultimate test of endurance of of the human Spirit of standing up against some of Nature's greatest Furies but in a world driven by likes and selfies and instant gratification has the meaning of Everest changed forever are there still pure alpinists out there in an interview that I will link to in the description of this video as it was said by one of the world's greatest Mountaineers Reinhold mesner mesner States 90% of the people who go into mountaineering these days have nothing to do with traditional alpinism what's happening on Everest is tourism mountain is full of people when I was there our base camp was 20 by 20 M now the base camp is 2 kilometers long yeah it's a city there are 1,500 T in the base camp it appears that this explosion of activity on Mount Everest has changed the spirit of what Mount Everest stood for back in the day it's become a status symbol a fleeting moment of Fame captured in a Summit selfie so instead of Everest being something about defining oneself it's about conquering the algorithm I hearken back to one of the most extreme cases where an individual attempted to do a backflip on the summit of Mount Everest which by the way he didn't stick claiming though that it was the highest ever backflip in the world truly a feat of exceptional athleticism but shameful when one looks at what the original idea of getting to the top of the mountain was where people revered the mountain itself and the people and the cultures around it I sto maybe 10 ft short of the summit I'm not sure if it's out of fear or respect but I promis myself I would never step on the head of their God if I could I want to jump in real quick you know how much I value my time with my busy schedule I've been looking for ways to cut down on all the extra time it takes to cook to go shopping to actually do the cooking and then the cleaning that's where cook Unity comes in cook Unity delivers freshly prepared restaurant quality meals right to your door made by top chefs from across the country like this week I've got barbecued salmon Bento bowl and tofu forbidden rice bowl with miso peanut sauce it looks amazing right out of the package and the flavors M it's like eating at a restaurant in your own kitchen everything is fresh responsibly sourced and made with high quality ingredients No Junk this this is so good that it honestly feels chefmade because it is so whether you're vegan 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mountain and back then it was also reflected in a very nationalistic type of PR the Americans or the Japanese or the French or the English Today many climbers join guided Expeditions some of them have literally no experience whatsoever in the realm of mountaineering have to be taught to put on crampons how to use an ISX how to put one of these devices called a jumar onto a rope and shown how to slide it up the rope and climb up the mountain they're Tau right on the spot how to use the equipment and they're hoping for the best that [ __ ] doesn't hit the fan and the person that they're relying on isn't taken out of the scene because many of these people would have no ability to extricate themselves from the mountain now I want to inject in here that it's not necessarily good or bad it doesn't make these people good or bad it just shows the dramatic changes that are taking place on the mountain the Everest chronicler Alan Arnette talks about how the number of Sherpa that are being assigned to clients on the mountain has gone up dramatically just in the last decade where about a decade or more ago often times one Sherpa would be working with a client and nowadays it is exceeding 1.5 even two Sherpa per individual person being guided up the mountain for one that contributes to a lot more people on the mountain but also deviating away from personal responsibility or one learning the craft themselves putting complete control in the hands of the guides and the High Altitude Porters now let's look at environmental strain in overcrowding Everest has been struggling under the weight of overcrowding in terms of the garbage in the human waste that's been left behind more waste more pollution more strain on the delicate ecosystem one has to wonder what the climbers from the 1924 British Expedition George mallerie and Sandy Irvin would think if they could walk to Everest Base Camp on the Nepal side for instance and see thousands of people working to get hundreds and hundreds of climbers to the summit now it's no secret that Everest has been grappling with sign significant human waste and garbage issues for years and the Nepal government has been doing what they can to try to remedy these problems each climbing season hundreds of climbers not including their guides and Sherpa support staff spend two months on the mountain and therefore put a strain especially at base camp but also in the camps higher up the mountain in 2015 the Nepal government did a report rep that suggested that there was as much as 26,500 lb of human waste on the mountain each season that's about 12,000 some odd kilog in weight most of it is carried off in buckets and when one goes to base camp you can literally see everywhere little miniature toilet tents where every time a blue bucket at the bottom of that receptacle is filled up it is carried to a human waste deposit area not too far from Everest Base Camp left in a pit and it biodegrades though the human waste is being carried from those toilets by local Porters who are paid very well for doing that and they carry it to the side of the glacier and they dump it on the ground it's not being treated any in any way and that human waste is leaking into the water supply it's a terrible problem it's a disgrace these Expeditions are well funded the members of the Expeditions have plenty of money now in terms of human waste higher up the mountain above base camp we did a report before the 20124 season that said how Nepal was implementing a system wherein climbers would be responsible to carry down their own human waste from higher upon the mountain the future of this is is that there's going to have to be a huge amount of self-regulation in fact there are also many instances of teams leaving their tents and discarded garbage up at the high camp Camp 4 the South Coal at 8,000 M and in that a suggestion might be that the Nepal government provides free permits to a limited number of expeditions that are there specifically for the purpose of removing garbage from past Expeditions now let's look at climate change and Everest's future climate change of course is another issue that reinold mesner and many Mountaineers who came to the mountains for their pristine Beauty are very concerned about now this isn't trying to get into global warming as a political statement but the fact is is that the Glaciers are receding rapidly changing the nature of the kumbu icefall in 2009 I treed up into the Gango Tre Glacier in India which is essentially the source of the Ganges River I was with my friend Conrad anchor we were doing a film with David bachio and his producer John cof and we were measuring how quickly the glacier was melting the Gango Tre Glacier scientists had estimated the glacier would be completely melted in 50 years now we did this film 15 years ago Conrad and I with some of the filming we did far up there at the base of shivling and meu Peak were alarmed at how fast the water was flowing right at the top of the glacier and fixing this certainly isn't relegated to just Mountaineers this this is a change that all human beings on the planet are responsible for but it does highlight how Reinhold mesner says that while the mountains seem Eternal they're highly sensitive to human impact and it mirrors the broader Global challenge of balancing human ambition with Environmental Protection mesner is not the only one to think that mountain climbers have an obligation an ethical duty to protect the Mountains and the environment into which they are climbing now let's look at the bigger picture authentic Adventure versus instant gratification despite everything and all the changes that have taken place over the decades Mount Everest still provides every single individual endeavoring to climb to the top of it with an opportunity to face incredible hardships where suffering for a long period of time is unavoidable so regardless of whether an individual is being guided up to the top or not that human that gets to the summit of Mount Everest has gone through immense hardships in order to do that it is not easy to climb Mount Everest but what has changed is what is drawing the people there in the first place with the rise of instant gratification evident everywhere on social media it's possible that many people are drawn to Everest on the idea of getting that photograph from the summit and receiving some ego boost some pat on the back it's as if they're standing at the foot of a mountain and they have this abstract concept called impact that they want to have in the world which is the summit what they don't see is the mountain I don't care if you go up the mountain quickly or slowly but there's still a mountain and so what this Young Generation needs to learn is patience that something things that really really matter like love a skill set any of these things all of these things take time one of my favorite quotes or sayings is from my friend Mark cinate who's been on this channel many times and he said it sometime after our 2019 expedition to search for the remains of Sandy Irvin on the north side of Mount Everest and Mark said Adventure is when someone does not know the outcome and it seems to a certain extent that sense of adventure may have been lost on Mount Everest and the 8,000 meter peaks with the overt commercialization of those mountains and the great numbers of people going there to climb them authentic adventure takes time takes great effort and a willingness to face and completely accept uncertainty or failure so what's to be done what would the call to action necessarily be for the future of Mount Everest well we need to support governments like Nepal to continue imposing stricter and stricter rules on the environmental impact on the mountain I haven't talked too much about the north side of Mount Everest the Chinese Tibetan side because there are very strict rules being implemented there it is a spotless side of the mountain with severe limitations on who is allowed to climb on the mountain one needs to prove an extensive list of climbing experience in order to get a permit to go there and they have to pre-approve whatever guiding companies are allowed to guide people on the mountain so we know that there are many challenges facing Mount Everest in the 8,000 meter Peaks one of them being the overcrowding in Nepal it's more of a wild west anybody can guide anybody up there the restrictions on who is allowed to climb on the mountain are very little so what would be suggested but isn't expected at all is that the Nepal government restricts the number of permits being given on the mountain in any given year but that doesn't seem to be in the realm of possibility in the near future with record number of climers coming to the mountain each year when you look at a country like Nepal that is you know still in the developing Nation status it's one of the poorest countries in the world so having a multi-million dollar Revenue generator is important and so the one of the challenges that you see um operating on the on the south side of Nepal that's the opposite of the Chinese government is that there's very little regulation and very little control of the number of people on the mountain or steps put in place to ensure the safety uh of the climbers and the workers there and that's one of the main challenges faced um within the IND industry right now one of the great impacts outside of the environmental impact of the mountain is that this is impacted greatly the sherpa population of the kumu region it has benefited them ultimately and that they have a new way to make income and some of them are doing quite well but it also puts them at Great Risk by going into that career it's a very dangerous job to guide people especially novices on the mountain and as these numbers of clients expands over the years more and more inexperienced Sherpa meaning high altitude Porter or high altitude Sherpa there's going to be less experience with those individuals putting them at greater risk as well in a fantastic interview with writer and fellow colleague Ben ARS he talks about what is going to happen in the next 5 to 10 years on Mount Everest and Beyond is the possibility that some mountaineering organizations won't even recognize Everest Summits as significant achievements in terms of the hopes of the future SS Echoes earlier that it would be hoped that the regulations on the mountain particularly on the Nepal side would that the regulations would become stricter with the introduction of some way to measure the competency of a client who was being hired for the mountain some proof that that person had mountaineering experience and wasn't getting off the couch if you will just for the opportunity for the summit selfie one thing that is happening is that there is a shift happening now to less Western oriented or Western based Expedition organizers to more Nepali owned organizers and now as more and more napali climbers Sherpa climbers are gaining experience and becoming certified guides for instance at The kumu Climbing Center where I just had a short conversation with my friend Conrad Anker who was instrumental in setting up this training for Sherpa and Conrad said in our conversation that the gentlemen Sherpa who were on our expedition in 1999 when we were on the expedition to look for mallerie and Irvin are being replaced by their own children which which is wonderful to see that they're going into the mountains with a great level of climbing I will look forward to doing a future story about The kumu Climbing Center for this channel stay tuned on that one we shall see what the coming years will bring will there be a change in the number of people or who is drawn to the mountain will Nepal Institute stricter regulations we have yet to see we can only hope that the emphasis would be on protecting the mountain limiting the number of people there furthering the safety regulations for those individuals who are working there who don't have as much of a choice in going I hope you'll take some time to let us know your thoughts in the comments below and if you've enjoyed this video please take the time to subscribe and hit the Bell icon in the meantime do a good deed don't ask for anything in return make the world a better place one step at a time peace be with you
2025-01-12 21:19