The Himalayan Mountains in central Asia and Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the range and in the world, is one of the front lines for global warming in the world. Most climate scientists agree that the Himalayas, sometimes called the Third Pole because the range boasts the world's largest mass of non-polar ice, is quickly changing.
The 1,500-mile-long range, straddling seven countries including China/Tibet, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan, has over 46,000 glaciers that fill huge glacial valleys, cirques, and perch on the faces of high peaks like Mount Everest. These glaciers, a huge repository of fresh water, are, like the ice caps in Antarctica, Greenland, and the North Pole region, melting. Right now it's estimated that about 95 percent of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking--the result of soot from coal- and wood-burning stoves, highway emissions, and industrial pollution in nearby countries. And as the glaciers melt, bare rock, which absorbs sunlight and warmth, is exposed, leading to more melting.
Over the past few years, climbers on Mount Everest have noted that the mountain is changing as snow and glacial ices melts. More rock is exposed, making the climbing more difficult and dangerous. The mountain, after all, is mostly composed of loose metamorphic rock that is held together with ice.
Now climbers clutter over talus chip-rock in their crampons where a dozen years ago they trudged across snow, which made the climbing safer and less technical. Ice keeps loose rock anchored in place but without the ice bonding, rocks loosen and are easily dislodged, tumbling down the mountain and sometimes striking a climber below--a scenario that happened just a few weeks ago, killing a 30-year-old Sherpa climber. This year the section between Camp 2 at 21,300 feet and Camp 3 at 24,000 feet has been the fall zone, with rockfall occurring on Mount Everest's Southwest Face. It was so bad that several expeditions moved all their climbers back to Base Camp and found a safer way up the upper glacier to avoid being in the line of fire.
This spring Mount Everest appears to be more dangerous and unsafe than ever before, based from reports coming from climbers on the mountain. Part of it is the glacial melting from global warming, while another part is this year's unusual weather pattern which has generally been very dry with little new snowfall and some of the warmest temperatures ever recorded on the mountain.
Indicative of changing conditions is the Khumbu Icefall, the most dangerous section of the South Col Route, the most commonly climbed route on Everest's south side. The Icefall is a crumpled section of the lower Khumbu Glacier as it steeply spills down from the Western Cwm to the valley below the mountain. It's always been a shifting and deadly section of climbing and has been the site of many Everest fatalities.
This year, however, the Khumbu Icefall has been especially bad and is very unstable. Every year a group of skilled Sherpa climbers establish a route through the Icefall, finding the safest passage and placing aluminum ladders across gaping crevasses. Above the route, however, are tottering seracs of ice ready to collapse onto anyone traversing below. It's been so unstable that, according to Dubai climber Atte Miettinen, who wrote on his blog about the Icefall: "... I'd never seen Sherpas react like this: they all hummed prayers the entire three hours we spent coming down, making the entire experience new."
Then just a few days ago, Himalayan Expeditions (Himex), the second largest expedition with over 100 people on Mount Everest this spring, abruptly cancelled their Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse expeditions, citing unsafe climbing conditions for their guides, Sherpas, and clients. Russell Brice, the Himex team leader, has apparently felt uneasy about the dangerous conditions on Mount Everest this spring and apparently his Sherpas concern about the Khumbu Icefall led him to cancel the climbs rather than risk lives. Brice concluded that an Icefall collapse would strand climbers higher on the mountain as well as kill anyone in the Icefall itself.
The Walking with the Wounded expedition from Great Britain also abandoned their attempt to climb Mount Everest last week after a massive ice collapse in the Khumbu Icefall on a section they were due to cross. The group of wounded soldiers were to thread their way through the treacherous icefall starting at 2 a.m. Expedition leader Captain Martin Hewitt said, "Last night at exactly the time we were due to be traversing the icefall towards Camp One on Everest, a huge ice fall came crashing down onto the route, obliterating the ropes and ladders we were due to have stood on. Thank goodness nobody was hurt. But one thing is for certain, that we now are in no doubt that we have made the right decision to live to fight another day."
The blokes can, however, take consolation in that last Thursday night they had the "world's highest whisky tasting" at Base Camp, sipping Glenfiddich 12-, 15-, and 18-year-old single malts and a special 19-year-old Madeira cask finish whisky.
Himex made a prudent and probably wise choice, given some of the bad Everestdecisions in the past for the sake of a few dollars. Still, the cancelling of the expedition, the abandonment of dreams of standing atop the earth, as well as the lost costs of clients, as much as $50,000+ per person, is pretty rough and a disappointing turn of events. Other commercial services, however, are continuing on their Everest quests to guide paying customers to the summit, feeling that the dangers are over-stated.
Photograph above: (Top) Mount Everest is slowly warming. Will all the glaciers and snow melt? Probably not but changes are happening. (Bottom) Apa Sherpa, shown in 2010, climbed Everest for the 21st time this spring. Photographs © Getty Images and Apa Sherpa.
