Nepali crews of sherpas have pulled over 24 thousand pounds of garbage and four bodies off of Mount Everest in the last two months.
The expedition to remove garbage and bodies came as climbers were complaining of the amount of waste left on the mountain. The team of 20 sherpas was able to pull five metric tons of garbage from the camps above Everest's base camp and another six metric tons from areas below it.
“Unfortunately, some garbage collected in bags at the South Col could not be brought down due to bad weather,” Dandu Raj Ghimire of Nepal's Department of Tourism told Reuters.
Cleaning Everest is particularly difficult as a combination of weather, accessibility, and the dangers of exertion at high altitudes can make it difficult to remove anything left behind on the world's tallest mountain.
The removal comes in the middle of what has been a particularly deadly climbing season. Nine people have died on the Nepali side of Everest and two more have died on the Tibetan side. This season is on pace to potentially be the busiest one on record for Everest, thereby compounding the risk of deaths on the mountain and increasing the amount of trash left behind. In May, one climber died while waiting on line at the summit. 54-year-old Anjali Kulkarni passed away while waiting in the high-altitude area known as the death zone.
