Everest Awareness Project

Change is always good! As you know, we planned a photo shoot session this spring and our first Cho Oyu expedition in autumn of this year. These activities are part of our first official project, but things have turned out differently. Besides this, we’ve decided to support a Nepali cleaning expedition of Mount Everest in coming April/May! No, it’s not (just) about climbing the mountain, we’re actually going to clean up the rubbish that has been left behind in previous years, and we have decide to make use of this opportunity to do something about awareness in the city of tents and climbers. We call it our Everest Awareness Project.

So what does it mean and what’s the use? Well, as you might know, big mountain ranges like the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains or the Andes, are in fact huge natural water towers. Because of its size and height, these mountains block clouds, creating rain- & snowfall which is stored in glaciers and snowfields at high altitude. This fresh water finally runs down in smaller en bigger streams and eventually in rivers. Climbing a mountain is climbing a water tower!

In the previous years, many climbing expeditions have left their used and broken gear, rubbish and even some of their ‘dead bodies’ at Mount Everest. That’s why this beautiful and sacred mountain has a nick name as well: ‘the highest pile of garbage in the world’. Although it has not been proven that this garbage has a negative impact of the water quality, quantity or whatsoever, it more or less shows us how we take care of our natural environment. For that reason we’ve decided to take this opportunity to spread some awareness about this matter and we will help to clean some garbage as well. If we’re able to make a few climbers think about this subject carefully, then there might be even some interesting discussions or even a little change in awareness and behavior. That’s enough, for now, and we will be satisfied with the results.

To make it all happen, we’ve chosen to print some flyers and a few large sized banners. We'll hand out the flyers in the Everest base camp, the ABC and possibly above it. The flyers explain about the water problems in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, what role mountains have and why it's important to keep these water towers clean. In order to make our point we'll be trying to fix some large sized banners with a short, but clear message and request to keep water sources like Mount Everest clean. Let’s see how the village of more than 250 climbers in the Everest base camp will react on our little project… More to come!