The Call of Everest Page 9
QOMOLANGMA NATURE PRESERVE
Established in 1989, the Qomolangma Nature Preserve covers an area of 13,500 square miles in the Shigatze Prefecture of the southern Tibet Autonomous Republic of China. Contiguous to the preserve are the existing Langtang National Park, Sagarmatha National Park, and Makalu-Barun National Park of northern Nepal. Compared to the Nepal side, the Tibetan terrain is generally much higher in elevation but considerably less rugged, consisting of rounded hills and flat, broad river valleys. Approximately 12,000 families live in the preserve with a total population estimated to be 68,000, engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry, or both.
Unlike the high-altitude plateau that most people associate with Tibet, the Qomolangma Nature Preserve contains a diversity of landscapes that range from subtropical, densely forested river valleys below 2,000 meters to ice-clad peaks of the High Himalaya at 8,000 meters and above. It also includes the beautiful Kama Valley, gateway to the Kangshung (eastern) face of Everest. The preserve provides habitat for the rare snow leopard, kiang (wild ass), and black-necked crane as well as Tibet’s only populations of the Assamese macaque. Langur monkeys, Himalayan palm civets, jungle cats, musk deer, and tahrs are also found in abundance.
An important cultural feature of the preserve is the Rongbuk (Dza Rongpu) monastery, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the main Dzaka Chhu River Valley draining the base of Qomolangma. The monastery, believed to be the highest in the world at 5,060 meters, is located near the Rongbuk Glacier. It became known to the outside world through reports from the first British mountaineering expeditions to Everest, passing through the river valley en route to Base Camp at 5,364 meters above sea level.
Several years ago, Chinese officials entertained the idea of closing the region to mountaineering and tourism in order to give the landscapes a chance to recover from decades of unregulated adventure tourism. In spite of its remoteness and comparative lack of visitors, garbage accumulations and the inevitable burning of fragile shrub juniper for fuel were reaching unacceptable levels. The restrictions were not enacted, however, and, for better or worse, the Base Camp region has remained open to foreign visitors.
A MOUNTAINEER WALKS in front of large ice pinnacles on the East Rongbuk Glacier on Everest’s northern side.
DECADES OF CHANGE
During the 1970s and 1980s, Khumbu was frequently cited as a case study of poor land management. Scientific and popular articles at that time proclaimed that the region was suffering from extensive deforestation as the result of a growing population, the influx of Tibetan refugees in the early 1950s, increased and unregulated tourism, and the breakdown of traditional Sherpa practices of natural resource management. One widely quoted anthropologist stated in 1975 that “forests in the vicinity of the villages have already been seriously depleted, and particularly near Namche Bazar whole hillsides which were densely forested in 1957 are now bare of tree growth, and villagers have to go further and further to collect dry firewood.” Another often quoted remark was that “more deforestation [has occurred in Khumbu] during the past two decades than in the preceding 200 years.”
At the same time, a much smaller, but equally vocal, contingent of people held the exact opposite view point of view. “There are more trees in Khumbu now than there were in 1950, and I have the photographs to prove it,” said Charles Houston, an American physician, high-altitude expert, member of the 1953 K2 expedition, and one of the first foreign visitors to the Everest region in 1950.
SCHNEIDER’S RECORD
Who was right? For answers, I turned to one of the best mentors that I’ve ever had, and whom, incidentally, I never met: the Austrian climber-cartographer Erwin Schneider, who passed away in the late 1980s. Between 1955 and 1963, Schneider completed a field survey of the Khumbu region that included the use of terrestrial photogrammetry—determining geometric properties of objects and making maps from photographs taken at high-altitude vantage points. His camera was huge and heavy, and it is now housed at the Austrian Alpine Club in Innsbruck. That he was personally carrying this camera and its equally heavy tripod in his late 50s, often scaling semi-technical mountains and outcrops above 5,500 meters to get a particular landscape photograph, came as no surprise once I learned that Schneider had been one of Austria’s top alpinists in the 1930s.
In 1984, while living in Khumbu, the Swiss geologist Daniel Vuichard gave me a packet of Schneider’s photographs taken in the 1950s. I instantly realized that they provided a valuable window into the past and might help to resolve some of the controversy concerning the changes in the landscape since that time. Little did I know then that I would be retracing Schneider’s footsteps, replicating his photographs of villages, mountain landscapes, and glaciers, for the next 30 years.
In my spare time in 1984, and then again in the course of research expeditions launched in 1995, 1999, 2001, and 2007, I replicated dozens of Schneider’s photographs. In that way I was able to add my own research results to the landscape-degradation discussion. As early as 1984, it became clear that Charles Houston was right, after all: The hillsides above Namche Bazar had not been densely forested earlier in the century. The landscapes of the 1950s were essentially unchanged 30 years later. During the 1990s, the repeat photographs started to reveal a very encouraging phenomenon. The tree cover surrounding the main Sherpa villages, and along the Imja River Valley, was in fact increasing.
NAMCHE BAZAR, SHOWN in photos taken in 1973 (top) and 2008 (bottom), has grown since the days when Sherpas built stone houses. Now lodgings are multistoried and satellite dishes dot the rooflines, making Namche the gateway to Everest and Khumbu Valley’s largest town.
REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY
Replicating the photographs taken by Schneider, Houston, and others in the 1950s allowed me to track the tremendous growth and development of the Sherpa villages located along the main Everest Base Camp trail, including an almost complete change in building materials and styles. Retaking the photos also provided a unique opportunity to demonstrate just how dynamic a landscape the Everest region was. The scars and impacts of destructive glacial-lake-outburst floods (GLOFs), landslides, and torrents that had occurred in the interim could be easily seen when comparing the old landscape photographs with the new.
But perhaps most important were the changes recorded in the high-altitude alpine landscapes. For years I had been perplexed by the fact that these environments produced by far the highest rates of soil loss. But with repeat photography in combination with detailed alpine groundcover studies and surveys, I discovered that more than half the shrub juniper cover of the upper Imja Valley had been lost since the 1950s, likely because of the growing use of the shrub for fuel by new lodges and more trekking and climbing groups, coupled with the lack of enforcement of park regulations in these more remote regions.
CHANGING GLACIERS
The then-and-now photos had other valuable uses. In the fall of 2007, I was climbing at 5,500 meters up a steep, precarious boulder field in the upper reaches of the Imja Khola watershed. The steep and extensive ridge that makes up the south faces of Lhotse, a neighbor peak to Everest, rose for thousands of meters above me across the valley. The summit of Everest was hidden because of my relatively low altitude. A light snow that had fallen the night before was turning what would have normally been a scramble into a semi-technical and quite dangerous climb. Finally, I realized that it would be foolhardy to proceed under these conditions. I called out to Pema Tema Sherpa, my research assistant and two-time Everest summiter, to stop. Our altitude, 100 meters below the cairn that Erwin Schneider had constructed to mark the location of his photo, was good enough for the objectives at hand.
Comparing the old photograph and the view in front of me now revealed a dramatic change in just 60 years. The Imja Glacier that I had hoped to rephotograph was gone, replaced by a lake almost half a mile long. Icebergs as big as a house had broken off the former glacier and now floated aimlessly in the water. The glacier had melted, leaving behind a large and potentially dangerous lake in its wake.
GLACIOLOGIST FRITZ MÜLLER surveyed and photographed the glaciers around Everest in 1956, providing key data points for the study of changes in the ice and climate today. Here Müller and assistants view Everest (the black slope to the left) from an altitude above 18,000 feet (5,500 meters).
MÜLLER’S RECORD
The previous year my mentor, Jack Ives, had given me a box of old photographs collected by his friend and colleague Fritz Müller. Müller, a Swiss-Canadian glaciologist, was the scientific team leader of the 1956 Swiss Everest expedition. When the climbers went home, he stayed on for nine more months, living above 5,000 meters (a high-altitude record at the time) and studying the glaciers with his Sherpa assistants. Although exceptionally strong, Müller had died of a heart attack in 1980. In the confusion following his early death, most of his photographs were lost, but one box was saved, full of 35mm contact sheets only. Over time I was to discover that in addition to notes, rock rubbings, pressed plants, letters, and telegrams, the box also contained photographs of two other noted climber-scientists, Sir Charles Evans and my personal hero, Erwin Schneider. Evans was the deputy director of the 1953 British expedition that successfully put the first humans on the summit of Everest, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, and were it not for a failed oxygen system, he might have arrived there first.
Since then, a number of glacier inventories have been conducted, largely accomplished by using satellite images as the primary data source. In 2007, very few on-the-ground field studies had been conducted. This struck me as odd, given all the media statements about climate change in the Everest region. None of these studies, as it turned out, was based on actual fieldwork or in collaboration with local people. It thus became even more important to retrace the footsteps of Evans, Müller, and Schneider, climbing up and over the glaciers to their photo points and documenting what had changed.
RETRACING FOOTSTEPS
Finding the places where the original photos were taken was the first challenge. The global positioning system (GPS) did not exist when Müller, Schneider, and Evans took their photographs, and no records of their geographical coordinates remained. But we were usually able to find most of the photo points through a combination of our own familiarity with the landscapes, the suggestions of climbing guides and yak herders, and luck (although where some were taken mystifies me to this day). I also decided that the golden rule for finding the exact locations, especially for Erwin Schneider, was to always go higher than I expected. Nothing was “good enough” for these early scientists, and they always went for the best views regardless of the difficulties involved in getting there. Several proved impossible to reach because of climate-related changes that had occurred in the interim. In some cases massive ice avalanches blocked the original trail. Certain glaciers that had been solid and healthy in Müller’s day were now melting rapidly, making them hazardous to climb upon. One or two other opportunities had to be abandoned because, if truth be known, Erwin Schneider was simply a stronger climber than I am.
Receding glaciers and new glacial lakes were not the only changes I studied. The Imja Glacier, we determined, had melted so rapidly because it had been covered by a thin layer—half a meter or so—of soil and rocks (a geologist would call it a “debris-covered glacier”). The debris would heat up during the day and transfer the heat directly to the ice below. Glaciers become debris-covered when their forward movement stagnates, occurring in the Everest region since the end of the Little Ice Age in the late 1800s. Over time, boulders, rocks, soil, and other debris from the valley and glacial moraines cascade down and cover the ice. A very thick cover of debris, with boulders up to the size of small houses, tends to insulate them from the sun’s heat. But the glaciers we observed had ablated, or lost mass. An abundance of new, small, meltwater ponds now appear on their surfaces, and any exposed glacier ice has melted away.
Dozens of smaller glaciers below 5,200 meters were gone altogether. Their low altitude and lack of protective debris cover apparently made them more susceptible to the region’s warming trends. Ice above 7,000 meters, however, appeared to be remaining relatively stable, since temperatures there remain below freezing for most of the year. Such high-elevation ice and glaciers with north-facing aspects appear to have changed little during the past 60 years. Warmer, south-facing regions tended to show more signs of melting and loss of ice, and yet glaciers on the north side of Everest are melting faster, in part because the north side receives far less annual precipitation.
In summary, I discovered firsthand that climate change is happening, even in the world’s highest mountains. Glaciers are melting, new lakes are forming, snow lines are receding to higher altitudes, and weather patterns are becoming unpredictable.
GLACIAL-LAKE-OUTBURST FLOODS (GLOFS)
Concerns have been raised about the impact of these changes on future water supplies in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region, as well as the increased likelihood of glacial-lake-outburst floods. As with Imja, dozens of new glacier lakes holding hundreds of millions of gallons of water have been created in the Khumbu region since the early 1960s. Usually contained by dams of loose boulders and soil, these lakes present a risk of glacial-lake-outburst floods, triggered by swift lake-area expansion, seepage, changes in the lake’s water level, and surge waves caused by rockfalls, rock slides, or ice calving. GLOFs unleash stored lake water, often causing enormous devastation downstream that can include high death tolls as well as the destruction of valuable farmland and costly infrastructure such as hydroelectric facilities, roads, and bridges. The 1985 Langmoche outburst in Sagarmatha National Park, for example, destroyed the two-million-dollar Thami hydroelectric facility that had just been completed, hundreds of acres of cropland, and dozens of bridges downstream. The 1998 outburst of the Tama Pokhari in the Hinku Valley of Makalu-Barun National Park in Nepal destroyed trails and seasonal settlements for more than 50 miles downstream, and the damage is still visible in satellite images taken a decade later.
A CHANGING CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus stated, “Nothing endures but change,” and the Khumbu region of Nepal is no exception. Largely fueled by the phenomenal growth of tourism, the solitude of the Khumbu region has been altered in ways unimaginable to most Sherpa people 30 years ago. Perhaps most striking are the changes in both the number and design of houses, lodges, and shops. Between 1950 and 1973, Namche Bazar was a sleepy little village of traditional Sherpa stone houses with split fir shingles for roofs. Now it is wall-to-wall, two- to three-story candy-colored lodges built specifically for tourists. Each year they ascend higher up the slopes of the bowl-shaped locality, and one awakens and goes to sleep at night to the chink-chink-chink sound of stonecutters squaring off building stone for yet another lodge. The same is true for nearly every village located on the main trekking trail to the Everest Base Camp, including Kunde, Khumjung, Tengboche, Deboche, Pangboche, Pheriche, and beyond.
Along with these changes have also come positive impacts. With increased incomes comes improved health. Goiters, caused by a lack of iodine, were a common sight through the early 1970s, but they have now been virtually eliminated. Sherpa children receive a better education, and there are now many Sherpa Ph.D.’s, doctors, dentists, conservationists, and government workers. Most villages have electric power from mini-hydro stations, complemented with alternative technologies such as solar energy-driven water heaters, lights, and battery chargers. These devices have become particularly popular in lodges in the more remote alpine villages that do not have electric power, such as Pheriche, Dingboche, and Chukung. Dingboche even has solar-powered Internet access. Lodges in the alpine zone switched to kerosene for cooking fuel in 2004, which has resulted in the rapid restoration of fragile alpine ecosystems (a project cofinanced by the National Geographic Society in 2005 and 2007). Thanks to Sir Edmund Hillary and the Himalayan Trust, the region has schools, clinics, and airstrips—Hillary’s way of thanking the Sherpa people for their help in achieving “the most meaningful o
f my accomplishments,” as he put it.
But with the positive also come the negative impacts. With no zoning system, the number of lodges increases each season. Each year lodge owners bring in canned and bottled goods by the ton. These containers end up in landfills outside every village, since there is no recycling system or incentives for them to do otherwise. Five tons of solid waste is generated each year in the Everest Base Camp alone. Human waste and raw sewage is channeled directly into nearby freshwater steams, polluting water supplies for thousands of people living downstream. Trekkers increasingly complain about intestinal disorders contracted along the Base Camp trail in the upper Khumbu Valley, likely caused by improper sewage disposal. Porters use large blue plastic barrels to carry human waste by the ton to a place about two hours’ walk south from Base Camp. There it is dumped into large pits, some of them located in seasonal riverbeds.
VOICES
WATCHING CHANGE IN KHUMBU
My name is Sherap Jangbu. I was born in Namche Bazar, gateway to the Chomolungma, in 1954, exactly one year after the first ascent of Chomolungma—Mount Everest—by Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, from Nepal, and Sir Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand.
I am 58 years old and married, with a lovely wife, Lhakpa Doma. We have one grown-up son and one daughter, and we also are lucky to have one grandson, Tsering Wongchu, from our son, Mingma, and another, Tsering Paljor, from our daughter, Rita.
Namche Bazar is the main trading point in Khumbu region. All those who go on expeditions to Everest, trekking in the area, or to Tibet for trade will go through Namche Bazar, because it is suggested that you first spend two nights here to acclimate. In Namche Bazar we have everything from luxury hotels to lodges, to accommodate all varieties of tourist.