INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
KATHMANDU, MAY 28As the mountaineering community prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the conquest of Mount
Everest, there is growing concern about temperatures rising, glaciers and snow melting, and weather getting harsh and unpredictable on the
world's tallest mountain.
Sherpa guide who climbed Mount Everest a record 28 times says he's not ready to retire
Mt Everest sees highest number of climbers in seven decades
Since the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain peak was first scaled by New
Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in 1953, thousands of climbers have reached the peak and hundreds of lost their
lives.The deteriorating conditions on Everest are raising concerns for the mountaineering community and the people whose livelihoods depend
on the flow of visitors.The Sherpa community, who grew up on the foothills of the snow-covered mountain they worship as the mother of the
world, is the most startled."The effects of climate change are hitting not just the fishes of Antarctica, the whales or the penguins, but
it's having a direct impact on the Himalayan mountains and the people there," said Ang Tshering, a prominent Sherpa who has been campaigning
for years to save the Himalayan peaks and surrounding areas from the effects of global warming.
Almost every year, he and
his Asian Trekking agency organize a cleaning expedition in which clients and guides alike bring down garbage left by previous Everest
climbing parties.The effects of climate change and global warming have been severe in the high Himalayan area, Ang Tshering said
"The rising temperature of the Himalayan area is more than the global average, so the snow and ice is melting fast and the mountain is
turning black, the glaciers are melting and lakes are drying up."Growing up on the foothills of the mountain, Ang Tshering said he remembers
sliding on the glacier near his village
But that's gone now.Other Sherpas also said they have seen the changes in the Khumbu Glacier at the foot of Everest, near the base camp."We
don't really need to wait for the future; we are seeing the impact already," said Phurba Tenjing, a Sherpa guide who recently scaled the
peak for the 16th time guiding foreign clients to the summit.Phurba Tenjing has been climbing Everest since he was 17
He said both the snow and ice have melted and the trek that used to take five or six hours over the icy path now only takes half an hour
because the glaciers have melted and bare rocks are exposed."Before, the building-like ice chunks of the Khumbu Glacier used to come all the
But now we don't see it near the base camp," Phurba Tenjing said.Recent research found that Mount Everest's glaciers have lost 2,000 years
of ice in just the past 30 years.Researchers found that the highest glacier on the mountain, the South Col Glacier, has lost more than 54
meters (177 feet) of thickness in the past 25 years
A team of 10 scientists visited the glacier and installed two weather monitoring stations - the world's highest - and extracted samples from
a 10-meter-long (33-foot) ice core
The glacier, which sits around 7,900 meters (26,000 feet) above sea level, was found to be thinning 80 times faster than it first took the
ice to form on the surface, according to research published in 2022.The glaciers are losing ice at rates that likely have no historic
precedent, said Duncan Quincey, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.The change is happening "extremely rapidly"
"It's causing challenges for everybody within that region and, of course, for the millions of people who are living downstream," since much
of Southern Asia depends on rivers that originate in the Himalayas for agriculture and drinking water.Both floods and droughts are likely to
become more extreme, he said."There's a huge amount of unpredictability within these systems now, and it makes it very difficult for people
who require water at a particular time of year to know that they're going to have that water available," he said.Nepal's government and
mountaineering community plan to celebrate Everest Day on May 29 with a parade around Kathmandu and a ceremony honoring the climbers and
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://thehimalayantimes.com