A snarl-up at the Summit: The wounds of Sagarmatha

Record summit bids, mounting waste and melting glaciers are leaving deep scars on the world's highest mountain.

This year’s spring climbing season ended with as many as 1,008 climbers successfully summiting Mount Everest, even as a conference in Kathmandu earlier this week saw mountaineers agreeing on the risks to the world’s highest mountain amid warming temperatures and a surge in the number of climbers keen to scale the peak. Another record was set when 274 climbers summited through the South Col route in Nepal in a single day – May 20 – causing dangerous congestion in the ‘Death Zone’ above 8,000 metres.

The congestion has been linked to hypoxia, frostbite, exhaustion, and oxygen depletion, with two Indian climbers among those who died after summiting. Experts say commercial expeditions and inexperienced climbers worsen bottlenecks and strain the rescue and Sherpa support systems. Heavy congestion was reported last year, too, with Nepal issuing 468 permits for foreign climbers in 2025, down from 478 in 2023.

Overcrowding also leads to pollution on the icy heights. An estimated 30-50 tonnes of waste, including oxygen cylinders, tents, ropes, plastics, and human waste, remain on the mountain. Climbers leave behind nearly 12 tonnes of excreta each season. Melting glaciers expose buried garbage and bodies, flagging the stress that the Himalayas face from climate change and unsustainable tourism.

While the Nepal government didn’t conduct any carrying capacity studies for Everest, China strictly enforces a regulatory norm of not giving more than 300 permits in a year.

In 2024, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to limit permit numbers based specifically on scientific assessments of the mountain's carrying capacity and safety limitations. Despite the court order, execution has been slow, leading to continued record-breaking summit queues.

The Himalayan state is home to eight of the world’s ten tallest peaks, and climbing permits are a source of foreign exchange for the government. As a consequence, warnings are overlooked.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development has found that the ice on Mount Everest has been thinning at an alarming rate, and the peak has been losing ice significantly since the late 1990s. The findings are based on data from a 10-metre-long ice core obtained from South Col Glacier at an elevation of 8,020 metres and meteorological observations from two of the world’s highest automatic weather stations.

Scientists at the University of Plymouth have also identified the highest recorded microplastics ever found on earth - at an altitude of more than 8,000 mt, close to the summit of Mount Everest.

Samples collected on the mountain and in the valley below it revealed substantial quantities of polyester, acrylic, nylon, and polypropylene fibres. The materials are increasingly used to make high-performance outdoor clothing commonly used by climbers, as well as in tents and climbing ropes.

On the plus side, death rates on Mount Everest declined dramatically over the last century, as shown by researchers at the University of Toronto in a study published last month. After examining expedition outcomes for more than 30,000 mountaineers who climbed above base camp, the researchers showed that overall mortality above base camp declined from 1.4% between 1921 and 2006 to 0.7% in 2007-2024.

Climate change threats are real, and the situation can worsen with a rise in the number of people who attempt to climb to the top of the world. The National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition in 2019 found that glaciers around Mt. Everest have thinned by more than 100 m since the 1960s, and the rate of ice mass loss has consistently accelerated over the past six decades.

It's not that the Nepal government isn’t aware of the problem. At the Kathmandu conference, Nepal President Ramchandra Paudel said sustainable tourism, responsible mountaineering and conservation of the Himalayan environment are the defining challenges of the day. The question is whether the Balen Shah government will take action to save Sagarmatha.