KATMANDU, Nepal - Men and women who have scaled Earth's loftiest height were considering the mundane matter of human waste Thursday at an environment symposium during celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Mount Everest (news - web sites) conquest.
Junko Tabei of Japan, the first woman to reach the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit, told fellow mountaineers she had calculated that over the past 50 years 1 million liters of human urine had permeated into the Lhotse Icefall, the first phase of the Everest climb.
Although the Nepal government fines each Everest climber $4,000 if they do not bring back down their trash and there are regulations about using portable toilets and containers, Tabei, 64, said she feared that "all human waste is left on the mountain."
During the years before regulations, she said, human excrement collected at the edges of the base camp. At higher elevations, it would freeze rather than deteriorate, and there is no soil in which to bury it.
However, Tashi Tenzing Norgay — whose grandfather was the first to reach the summit with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953 — objected to the mountain he considers sacred being described as a garbage pit.
He said it is a "very clean mountain today" and said, "It only costs 17 rupees per kilo (four-tenths of a U.S. penny per pound) to take down your excreta," referring to the price paid to porters.
Norgay, an Australian, also said that just as humans don't eat or sleep much at higher elevations, they don't excrete much either.
He said, "I've been three times to Mount Everest and I only (defecated) twice at Camp Four," the 8,000-foot (24,380-meter) last stop before the summit.
