Everest Ecology

I quite enjoy that reading any desired assortment of literature, news, magazines, and listening to talk shows and music has become an activity that I can call “studying.”

I picked up a copy of the Courrier International the other day after my friend had showed me some of the articles it had – lots of reports and analyses of the American elections, and several clever cartoon editorials about the ridiculosity of some of it…

It’s always interesting to read news from home as seen and reported by international eyes (and this paper compiles articles from London, Madrid, New York, etc.). The French, for one, have some very interesting perspectives of America, and unlike American writers they have no worries about saying exactly what they think. They don’t have the fear that seems to come with being on the inside these days. I know plenty of Americans see the eerie resemblances of our current religious movements and its usage of God to justify our actions in the Middle East and the religious reasonings various fundamentalist groups have used to justify civilian-aimed violence. Perhaps I am less informed when it comes to American media, or perhaps it exists and was just suppressed, but it doesn’t seem to me that there have been many American journalists or writers getting this idea expressed in the printed word. The French, however, have not a single reservation – one of my favorites (though it makes me a bit uneasy) is an ending to an article about American megachurches: In today’s “world society,” God is leading American globalization, dressed in XXL.

I was flipping through the Courrier this week, mostly overrun with the American elections, and the word Everest caught my eye. Backtracking a bit to find it again, I discovered an article from the London Observer titled “Why it is necessary to close Everest to tourists.” I was immediately intrigued. I’ve only ever heard epic stories about climbing on Everest – my initial reaction was that there must be some endangered species they discovered there or something. Bound to be an interesting read.

As the civil war between the Maoists and the Nepalese has recently come to an end (or at least a cease-fire), the region has become more politically stable and ecology groups who have had their eye on the impacts of tourism can finally take some initiative.

Everest has become the icon of mountaineering, and with more and more people getting into the sport, it has seen a steadily increasing number of visitors every year. An obvious feat of human spirit it is (read with Yoda voice impression). But with all the strong spirits and soul-seekers come, inevitably, those with less respect and admiration for our world’s sacred and beautiful places. And this spells disaster.

Recently people have been finding the path through town to base camp lined with trash, old discarded clothing, and even empty medicine ampoules and syringes. This in itself is enough to indicate that some radical changes need to happen if people are to be allowed to continue seeing and exploring the region.

But perhaps less obvious and much worse is the simple effect of increased numbers of tourists. The local economy has seen an incredible boom: the Sherpas make a heap of money for transporting equipment, and the town’s restaurants and hotels are booming – as well as their need for hot water and fuel. To sustain the increasing need for hot meals and warm showers the locals cut down the region’s surrounding trees – thus we have tourism fueling deforestation. Ironic in a region where people come to experience the wilderness.

There is talk of closing the region entirely to tourism for a few years in order to let the region recover. The Himalaya Trust foundation is pushing to limit the number of expeditions on Everest to 2 or 3 a year in hopes of solving the ecological problem.

And it was here I was surprised to find myself ill at ease. Do I disagree with an ecology group? But it wasn’t quite that – it was more the “cold-turkey” approach that I didn't like. It’s like quitting smoking by locking someone up until they’re cured. It might work in achieving the desired end-result, but it's not exactly humane.

The first idea – cutting tourism off entirely for a few years is a bit silly. For the ecology to truly recover it will need much more than just a few years. Forests take decades, at least – not just a couple years to grow back.

Clearly it is important to address the danger to the forest and the poor morals of some of the tourists, but for the sake of the economy of the region we cannot just cut tourism off. It’s an issue of responsibility. It is our tourists (“our” in the sense of the rest of the world, not necessarily just the US) who have so greatly altered both the ecology and the economy, and to answer this question by pulling out so abruptly would be an answer even more irresponsible and careless than the problem itself. It’s a selfish response designed to “take back” our ill-planned and sloppy caretaking of the region. This is where ecology groups give themselves a bad public image and create a void between their morals and those of the rest of the world, when in fact it is in everyone’s interest to protect the region. Ecologists can really profit from this realization in uniting the efforts and enthusiasms of so so many more people.

The response needs much more thought and care than they have given. The response needs to include a strategy to recover the environment without cutting off the economic resources the locals have become accustomed to. We are the ones who “corrupted” their culture with our money, and while I deeply value the presence of cultures removed from the consumer world, I feel it is not our place to decide for them that their lives were better before we came in – again, this is a response equivalent in presumptuousness to the root and origin of the problem itself. We messed up, and we can’t just take it all back saying “oops sorry! My bad.”

So what does this mean? Perhaps a clean-up effort employing the locals and involving the tourists. An initiative that presents the local community with a choice as to how to proceed so that their culture can thrive in the way they want it to, and so the wilderness can thrive again, the way it is supposed to. Ecology and economy really don’t have to be opposing and conflicting forces.

Keep your eyes out for news on this front – I’ll be very curious to see how this all gets addressed and resolved. And email me with your thoughts, too – I’m quite interested to hear what others think about the issue (and I apologize for presenting in such a clearly biased fashion – I hope you can extract me from the writing to formulate your own thoughts and opinions).

These are a few of my favorite things...

Well, I wasn’t exactly thinking raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, though for some odd reason I’ve always really liked brown paper packages tied up with string. Speaks something foreign to me. Probably because that always meant some fascinating Christmas or birthday gift from my Mom’s Swiss friend in Bern. More than a gift, it was an expedition into some unknown land, a foreign culture – starting with the packaging.

But today I was reminded of a few of those little things that have become just a few of my truly favorite things…

Under the menacing sky confiscating climbing from us today, I decided to explore some of the mountains just outside my front door – both to take advantage of our easy access to wilderness and of the brilliantly detailed topographical map I just bought.

After 15 minutes or so on my bike, I started to climb into a valley bordered tightly by hills on either side. After a few more minutes, I was starting to wonder just how I was going to recognize the trailhead, especially if the town wasn’t marked. At almost that exact moment, I looked back and saw the typical green and yellow signpost marking hiking trails.

I rode in the direction it pointed, setting off all the neighborhood dogs. Among houses and sheds, driveways and pigpens, I locked my bike to the rusty sign marked “privé” and looked around for the trail. After several failed attempts ending up in what seemed more to be the locals’ irrigation ditches and gardening paths, I finally asked two gentlemen where I could find the “chemin de randonnée.” They pointed behind a house and up the hill. Aha! They looked at me with raised eyebrows and said “ca fait le serpent” – it makes the snake. Steep and switchbacky it was. Quite a warmup.

I was immediately pleased to find that the trail was not very well traveled. Steep and leafy, full of colors, and inevitably a little wild.

The trail skirted the edges of various farm properties, not exactly strictly fenced off, or perhaps sometimes just a little confused. I turned one corner to find myself face-to-face, or should I say face-to-horns with a young bull. Hm. I stood a few meters away from him, and we both looked at each other, blinking. Neither of us seemed to be sure if we should be scared and run away or act natural and just be on our way. But my path passed about one foot behind his rear end, and I didn’t exactly feel like getting kicked by some massive farm animal, nor chased back down that steep hill with horns at my heels.

In the few moments that ensued, two of my favorite stories ran through my head. First, and most obviously appropriate was one from my mom’s travels in Europe. She was hiking through the hills of, was it Ireland? and found herself in a farmer’s pastureland face-to-face with a bull. The bull, a little aggressive, started chasing her, and the farmers stood watching and laughing at the spectacle. I could see those two gentlemen doing exactly that as I came skidding down the hill pursued by this young bull.

But after a few moments it became apparent that we were both pretty tame and weren’t going to make any rash decisions to charge the other. Phew.

Still we stood blinking. And another of my favorite stories popped into my head.

The bull had a very nice face, in fact. Quizzical, young, golden-brown color, nose piercing – no wait that’s me – cute little horns just starting to grow (okay no, that is not me thank you very much)… Still both blinking. I though of my friend’s surfing story, made mostly by the telling: it was a strange encounter he had with another surfer. He was sitting, chilling out on his board, when he looked to his side to see another surfer, big-eyed and curious. He said to himself, “man, that’s a funny lookin dude!” Switch now to this other surfer, same reaction – he says to himself, “man, that’s a funny lookin seal.” They both give a start. My friend says, “dude, that dude’s a seal!” The other says, “dude, that seal’s a dude!”

I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the bull’s mind – but being a farm animal it was probably more like “so ya gonna feed me?” And he continued munching on his alpine berries.

Finally I worked up the courage to walk calmly past him – and without incident. He got a little spooked just as I passed and retreated into the bushes and I hurried my pace fast enough to get away quickly but not startle him more.

At the end of the steep section I find myself penned in to someone’s property. The hiking post is just on the other side of the fence. I try to open the fence, but in making it bull-proof they made it me-proof, too. I end up pulling a rabbit and burrowing myself under a fold in the fence to emerge on the other side and set off on the other part of the trail towards Villeneuve.

The trail is a poorly-maintained car path that follows the contours of the hill at the upper and lower limits of several farms. My next seal-dude moment is with a herd of sheep. Farm animals all have a very similar expression. It’s this blasé regard, a bit disinterested and bored of you, blinking and watching to see what you’ll do as you pass but not really caring much, and this time multiplied by 10 all following me with their eyes as I trot by them.

One gets bored and scratches its butt, revealing and ringing the bell around its neck. I say “bonjour” as I pass (as obviously sheep speak French here), and can’t help but smile – I love the sound of those bells.

I run along, starting to recover from the vicious hill as I follow the contours of the hill now. I had set the town of Villeneuve as my goal, but as I am surely no endurance athlete I figured I’d just go as long as I possibly could and then head back.

But kilometers are much more rewarding than miles because they go by faster, and I found myself passing one, two, three, four, each time so enticed by the success of winning another kilometer that I ended up making it to Villeneuve.

I dropped into the town, another one of those beautiful French countryside towns – so quiet, calm, voices in the distance, smoke in the chimnies. On a calm Friday morning I got a glimpse into the everyday lives of the people of Villeneuve, one old man shoveling hay around in his garage and burning sweet alpine grasses. I wandered through the town, eavesdropped on the kids playing soccer in their back yard, and gazed at the now-empty drinking-water wells. Nico has a friend that visited the States and met someone who asked him if the French still collect their water from wells. For kicks, he said yes. I’m sure there are still some places…

I set off back up the hill again – to start moving again before my body started to forget how to forget that it was tired. All the beautiful views were reversed, and I saw now straight into the valley and across to Dent de Crolles and St Eynard’s cliffs, losing sight of the Chamrousse ski station as I turned in on one of the last contours. My mind started to wander…

I thought of my Wednesday night at the mountain cinema festival. None other than Lynn Hill came to present several films from her various climbing expeditions and accomplishments in Cuba, Sardinia, Madagascar, Yosemite, competitions… Her spirit is inspiring – her will to continue and complete what she set out to do. I spoke with her after the event (I think she was a bit surprised to hear English again – she speaks a very lovely French!), and found her to be incredibly engaging, and clearly someone who feels very calm, accomplished, and quite satisfied with her life.

I thought of my reaction to the professional climbing scene. I worry these days that as climbing becomes more and more popular it will, perhaps inevitably (and indeed already has to some extent) become infiltrated by those who climb for what I would call the “wrong reasons.” Lynn Hill is someone who has mastered both worlds of climbing at the same time – the professional and personal. She climbs to go to beautiful places, get to know new and interesting people, and/or to spend time with people she loves. What an incredible thing it would be to be a professional climber. Then I saw the quickdraws with PETZL or BEAL plastered as hugely as possible that she was setting, and realized that every adventure is a career choice for her, and she has to perform. I would be very interested to ask her if and how that has affected her. Not too much, it seems, but I imagine it can be hard at times. For me, I wondered too… I am nowhere near that level of climbing, but I wondered if I were to drop everything and devote my life to climbing if I would feel satisfied. The answer came quite easily in fact – no.

I found myself thinking of Lynn Hill’s Madagascar adventure – there was a biologist she climbed with who works for the Access Fund, a climbing conservation group that studies climbing impacts and fights to keep places open to climbing (and to manage impacts). This added a little something for me. Climbing and conservation, all in one.

Just some thoughts.

The crunching of the leaves beneath my feet stole back my attention and I looked again through the dark, tall, slim trees, the blankets of leaves of various colors, and into the mountains.

How did I get so lucky?