The pathway to the world’s highest peak isn’t just treacherous, it is also smelly and littered: there are oxygen bottles, broken tents and food containers. There are plastic bags and bottles. There are bodies and even the remnants of a helicopter. And there is human excrement, lots of it.

In all, climbers have dumped more than 50 tonnes of trash on Mt. Everest in the past few decades, earning it the label “the world’s highest garbage dump.”

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Now, the Nepalese government is trying to clean up the mountain, saying every trekker must return with eight kilograms of garbage, in addition to their own. Those who don’t will face penalties, including a ban on future ascents.

But is such a plan achievable?

“I’ve seen this trash,” says Wally Berg of Berg Adventures in Canmore, Alta., who has summited Mt. Everest four times. “It’s ugly, it’s everywhere.”

But the logistics of a cleanup are staggering, he adds. “The intentions are good, the reality is different.”

Hundreds ascend Mt. Everest annually; more than 600 people received permits last year. Many are novices who dump their garbage — which does not decompose at high altitudes — to either save energy for a summit attempt or to return to base camp alive.

But under the new rules, a climber will be required to bring down eight kilograms of garbage, excluding “their own empty oxygen bottles and human dung,” Madhusudhan Burlakoti, joint secretary of Nepal’s tourism ministry, said this week.

If, like last year, 600 climbers ascend Mt. Everest, and each brings back eight kilograms, it would add up to about six tonnes this year — roughly the weight of an adult male African elephant.

If the number of climbers stays steady at 600 annually, it will take more than eight years to clean all the trash from Mt. Everest.

How did so much trash accumulate?

Base camp is relatively trash-free. The problem starts higher up, with the final push to the peak.

Typically, a climber carries about 22 to 25 kilograms in their backpack, including a basic medical kit, extra clothes, food and water, a headlamp and radio, says Calgary’s Jamie Clarke, who has summited Mt. Everest twice, the last time in 2010.

On Everest, “if you get too high, too far and get too tired and become careless and it’s a race for the bottom, you can leave a mess behind,” says Clarke. “It’s unacceptable.”

However, Clarke says climbers are much more conscious of their footprint now.

“The problem is that more people are going (to Everest) and just by the volume of people, you have a much higher impact.”

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Avalanches and accidents have also played a role. It is hard to retrieve belongings in those instances, points out Laurie Skreslet, the first Canadian to summit Mt. Everest, in 1982.

“The new rule is a smart move and it is common sense to bring all your trash back,” says Skreslet.

However, he warns that “an extra eight kilograms may be challenging for some climbers.”

Eight kilograms doesn’t seem like a lot but it can feel closer to 20 or 30 kilograms at high altitude, he says.

Berg says cleaning the mountain of broken tents, fuel canisters and oxygen bottles is a good thing. But when it comes to the bodies — some reports suggest there may be more than 200 on Mt. Everest’s slopes — it’s better to leave them there, he says. “Just leave them in peace.”

For Clarke, the biggest problem is the human excrement.

“It’s from decades ago and it’s all over the place,” says Clarke. “It’s unhealthy.”

This is not the first attempt to clean Mt. Everest.

A conservation group brought back 25 tonnes of garbage in 2010, including 11,250 kilograms of human waste.

Sherpas also get cash rewards for bringing back oxygen bottles. In 2010, almost three dozen sherpas organized an expedition to the “dead zone” above 8,000 metres — where the oxygen levels drop — to collect more than 2,000 kilograms of garbage.

Clarke, who has summited the highest peaks on each of the seven continents, says it is frustrating that the situation at Mt. Everest has come to this.

“If you can’t make it a priority to take waste back, then you have no business going there.”

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