Mt. Everest Climb: Highest Peak Polluted 60 years after First Climb
May 29 marked the 60th anniversary of the first ever climb of Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay to Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak.
As part of the celebration, descendants of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay rode a chariot around to Kathmandu, Nepal. They stroll around historical places where Hillary and Norgay were honored after their first climb in the Everest back in 1953.
Edmund Hillary's granddaughter, Amelia Rose Hillary, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur , "Two people worked together to take human history to the top of the world. This is the celebration of that story."
As part of the celebration, other climbers and notable personalities offered flower garlands for the statues of both Mr. Hillary and Mr. Norgay. There was Reinhold Messner who was famous for his record of climbing mountains not below 8,000m.
There was also a Russian sports star, Valery Rozov, who performed a record-breaking base jump from Everest in the height of 7, 220-meters, as reported by The Voice of America.
However, in spite of the joyous celebration, Nepalese officials expressed their concerns about the pollution which results from the increasing number of climbers frequenting Mt. Everest.
According to BBC's Nepal correspondent, Surendra Phuyal, there were over 4500 people who have climbed to the highest peak since the first recorded clim.
The Nepal government said that it is now contemplating to lessen the number of climbers to be given permission to climb Mt. Everest.
Jamling Tenzing Norgay, son of Mr. Sherpa Tensing, told BBC that as much as his late father was happy seeing that the tourism and the mountaineering industry is providing jobs and opportunities to the majority of the Sherpa community, his father will not approve of the commercialism and tourism now polluting and crowding the beloved Mt. Everest.
It looked like, the pollution and overcrowding were problems already seen some years ago. In a 2003 interview of BBC with Edmund Hillary, he said that "having people pay $65,000 and then be led up the mountain by a couple of experienced guides, I personally think, is far less attractive. It isn't really mountaineering at all."
And as for the tourists climbing the Everest then, Mr. Hillary said that "They behave as though they are the lords of the area. They don't consider the welfare of the local people."
According to records there were 35 expeditions in a year and the month of May was considered as the perfect season to make the climb to the highest peak. But, 2013 proved to be the most crowded seasons as compared to the recent years. Just within these past weeks, there were already 500 people who climbed the Everest.
But Time magazine revealed a disturbing number of climbers in the Everest. According to Time, there were more than 230 people climbing the mountain in one single day in 2012. Bryan Walsh of Time magazine said that, these climbers leave empty oxygen canisters, torn tents and "pyramids of human excrements".
Some researchers also described a much disturbing scenario for the Mt. Everest. They said that carbon emissions have reduced the size of the mountain's glaciers by 13 per cent in the past 50 years. This had caused the snowline to move up more than 500 feet.