This is where the biogas plant is to be built

There are things that stink to high heaven – quite literally. For example, if up to 1000 climbers, high altitude porters, cooks, kitchen helpers and other staff relieve themselves for two months during the spring season in the base camp on the Nepalese south side of Mount Everest. The number of 12,000 kilograms of faeces has been reported for years, which seems to me rather low. The removal of the human waste from Everest Base Camp has been regulated for a long time, in contrast to the faecal problem in the high camps. The excrements from the toilet tents of the expeditions are collected in barrels and carried downwards by so-called “shit porters” – until 2014 without exception to Gorak Shep, the next small settlement, located  about five kilometers from the base camp, now also further down the valley. There the faeces have been tipped into pits thus posing a great danger to the drinking water. The International Climbing and Moutaineering Association (UIAA) has now awarded an environmental protection project which could make an important contribution to tackling the problem.

Groundbreaking scheduled for spring 2018

Project manager Garry Porter

The “Mountain Protection Award 2017” of the UIAA goes to the “Mount Everest Biogas Project”. Two Americans, the expedition manager Dan Mazur and Garry Porter, a former engineer of the aviation group Boeing, had founded the project in 2010. In Gorak Shep the faeces from Everest are to be collected in dense containers and used for a biogas digester. The technical challenge is to maintain the required temperature for the digester at the partial extreme cold at an altitude of 5,200 meters. This problem appears to have been solved. “Our engineering and architectural design is sound and we have high confidence in it,” says project manager Garry Porter. “It is now time to put theory to test.” The groundbreaking is scheduled for next spring – if the fundraising is successful by then. In this case the plant in Gorak Shep will probably be completed in winter 2018/19, and the lodge owners could cook with biogas instead of wood or Yak dung.

Faeces problem not only on Everest

Further customers of the technology should also be found in other areas of the Himalayas and the Karakoram. So the base camp at the foot of the eight-thousander Manaslu had Everest proportions this fall. The faecal barrels might have been full there too – if the human waste has been carried away at all.

Nobukazu Kuriki

Nobukazu Kuriki has changed Everest sides. The 34-year-old Japanese today reported on Facebook from Gorak Shep, the 5207-meter-high last inhabited settlement below Everest on the Nepalese south side. Apparently, Kuriki has managed the necessary formalities with the Nepali authorities. Previously, Nobukazu had pitched his tent on the Tibetan north side: on the Central Rongbuk Glacier below Everest North Face. The reason for his change of location, says Kuriki, was that he had changed his previous plan for the ascent. Originally, the Japanese had wanted to climb the North Face, solo and without bottled oxygen, via the so-called “Supercouloir Route”, a system of gullies that stretches almost through the entire wall.

Too much blue ice

Kuriki’s scheduled route

In the lower part of the wall, however, there is currently a lot of blue ice, writes Kuriki on Facebook. Because he lost nine of his ten fingers due to frostbite in his Everest attempt in fall 2012, it is too dangerous for him to climb there, says Nobukazu. That’s why he now wants to ascend from the south side to the West Ridge, from there crossing into the North Face and climbing via the Hornbein Couloir to the summit. “Actually, this route is the one I tried in fall 2012,” writes Kuriki. “I feel like I’m still there at that time.” He plans to leave Gorak Shep on Friday, hoping to reach the summit on 23 May, next Tuesday. Then, according to the weather forecast, the wind from the west will have calmed down, says Kuriki. It is his already seventh attempt on Everest. Six times he had tried in vain to reach the summit, five times from the Nepali, once – last year – from the Tibetan side.

More than 2000 m of height in six hours

Kilian Jornet on Everest

Kilian Jornet, who, like Kuriki, had also failed on the north side in fall 2016, is currently acclimatizing on the Tibetan normal route for his speed attempt without bottled oxygen. On Monday, the Spaniard told on Facebook, that he had climbed within six hours from the Advanced Base Camp at 6,300 meters to an altitude of 8,400 meters. “Good vibrations,” the 29-year-old stated. Kilian had prepared himself for his Everest project with an ascent of the eight-thousander Cho Oyu – in heavy snowfall and very bad visibility: “Honestly, I am not sure that this was the summit as I could only see my feet, but I was at some point around.”