The Government of Nepal is evaluating the possibility of moving the camp a few meters further down from which many mountaineers begin their climb to Mt. Everest. What happens is that the committee that investigated the state of the glacier on which the campsite is located noted that it is becoming increasingly unstable.
“It is an initial discussion. We have experienced increasing changes in the environment. The Khumbu Glacier is melting fast”, said Surya Prasad Upadhyaya, head of the committee that moved to the Everest last month to assess site conditions. The melting of the ice on the mountain is explained by climate change, but human activity could also have played a role.
The gas used to cook and air-condition the tents generates heat, which impacts the melting of the glacier. Added to this is the absence of toilets, so climbers must urinate in the snow (about 4 thousand liters in total per day) and this also contributes to the melting of this area of the Everest.
The very authorities running the camp notice the changes in the glacier: new cracks appear overnight. “In the morning, many of us get chills thinking that we might have fallen into the cracks during the night. So many cracks come out that it is quite dangerous,” said Tshering Tenzing Sherpa, manager of the Mt. base camp.
Currently, the base camp is at 5,364 meters above sea level and the transfer proposal, although not yet officially presented, would be to take it between 200 and 400 meters below.
Consequences for climbers
The camp sees some 60,000 climbers pass each year on their way to reach the highest peak in the world. Nevertheless, moving this first post a few hundred meters further down would mean a greater distance to camp 1, the next point on the way to the summit of Everest.
However, the measure is consistent in the sense that it is expected that in this area there will be more avalanches and falls of rock and ice. Something similar is expected for the rest of the way. According to the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, since the end of the 1990s, melting in the Everestso routes are expected to be affected in the future.