World’s second highest mountain K2 recently had its busiest season ever. Many climbers are returned from the mountain but From plastic bottles to discarded tents, are left on mountains by climbers.
Many climbers posted their summit success images/video on social media but Flor Cuenca of Peru who summited K2 on July 27 without using supplementary O2 or Sherpa support posted a small video clip on Instagram
She wrote” every time when we return from the mountain and especially after reaching the summit, we post our photos very proud. Yes, 100% summit. I ask you. We are also proud of all the garbage we leave behind????? We are supposed to be mountaineers, why do we do this to the mountain??? Isn’t it that we go to the mountains to enjoy pure nature, solitude, the magic of the mountains??? What pure nature can we talk about, when year after year we leave our waste there and it accumulates? What do we think? That all this waste is going to disappear as if by magic or will the aliens be in charge of cleaning it up???
I have seen people upload with a huge materials to give comfort to their customers. They spend a lot of time carrying oxygen bottles, tents, and food. But when they descend there is only one way and they do not have the power to lower everything that has been transported upwards.
It is a great pity that K2 and like other mountains of eight thousand, we have turned them into a pigsty. Ok, perhaps an exception can be made, when there is very bad weather or one’s life is in danger, something can be left. but we are not always in those conditions. some have beautiful weather when they return to base camps
WE ARE NOT MOUNTAINEERS, WE ARE SIMPLY A GROUP OF FOOL WHO CLIMB THE MOUNTAINS TO SATISFY THEIR EGO, USING EVERY MEANS WE CAN, BECAUSE A PASSIONATE MOUNTAINEER WOULD NOT DO THIS TO THE MOUNTAIN.
THANK YOU
I don’t want to hurt feelings, but what I say is the truth”
According to Sarah Strattan, camps 1 and 2 on K2 are disgusting. Waste from past and present expeditions has piled up everywhere – old climbing gear, tents, used food packaging, human waste, fuel cans, etc. – and you camp right on top of it. Camps 3 and 4 are a little better but not pristine. There is also trash littering the climbing route. No incentive exists (besides climbers’ own ethics) to bring down gear and trash at the end of the expedition, and when climbers are exhausted and Sherpas and Pakistani porters don’t prioritize leaving camps clean, I’m not surprised at all it has come to this. There was the CKNP K2 clean-up crew in base camp and this is a great start – they collected huge bags of trash from base camp and sent the bags out on mules. However, getting trash down from the on-mountain camps is obviously more of a challenge.
Besides the camps, there are endless heaps and strands of old and destroyed fixed line ropes from current and past expeditions along almost the entire route for almost 12,000 vertical feet (advanced base camp to the summit). Not only is this dangerous as it makes choosing the correct rope to use to climb up or rappel down sometimes impossible, but it’s also a form of trash on the mountain.
