A flood on The Mountain
While much attention is focused on recent tragedies on Everest, there is a less-publicized threat that could take many more lives
In 1956 there was no lake on the surface of the Imja Glacier; by 1985 there was a lake more than 1,000 metres long and 500 metres wide. Today that same lake exceeds 2.2 kilometres long and is up to 100 metres deep.
On May 19, Shriya Shah-Klorfine died descending from the summit of Mount Everest, where she had just planted the Maple Leaf of her adoptive homeland. Three other climbers died that day, among the estimated 150 who mobbed a slender ropeway. The traffic jam at the Hillary Step is itself a huge risk factor, exhausting precious oxygen supplies, over-exposing climbers in the Death Zone above 8,000 metres, and delaying ascents until it is too late to descend safely. Shah-Klorfine’s calamity is by now a familiar story; and yet, when it comes to life-threatening developments on Mount Everest, human bottlenecks are just the tip of the iceberg.
People get sucked into the Everest vortex in diverse ways. I first experienced the tug of the Himalayan massif in the spring of 1953; I was an undergraduate, preparing to lead Nottingham University’s first Arctic glacier research expedition while anxiously following the progress of the British Mount Everest expedition. The brilliant success of John Hunt, expedition leader, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, perfectly timed to embellish the coronation of our new Queen, heightened our resolve to persevere in our own comparatively humble objectives. Per aspera ad astra!
The following fall, I was invited to the triumphant Everest lecture at the Royal Albert Hall. There I was introduced to John Hunt, Ed Hillary, and a cohort of Everest pioneers, including Noel Odell and Tom Longstaff. The dream of Everest and its heroes stayed with me until I eventually set eyes on The Mountain in 1979. By then, however, the Everest lustre was wearing thin.
After emigrating to Canada in 1954, I embarked on 12 years of research in the eastern Canadian Arctic and Subarctic, still an exotic destination for hard-core mountain and tundra aficionados. Later, as co-ordinator of a mountain research undertaking initiated by United Nations University, I became engaged in mapping mountain hazards, both in the Middle Mountains of Nepal and in the Khumbu region below Everest. While environmental deterioration was not our direct concern, the negative impact of the burgeoning influx of mountain climbers and trekkers along the main trail to the Everest base camp was already apparent. Today, tens of thousands of trekkers throng the Khumbu each year and add their detritus to that of the commercialized attempts to push hundreds of would-be climbers to the summit, and this within a gazetted World Heritage Site.
As a member of the Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal selection committee, which includes Peter Hillary, I can reveal that not one award has been made for mountaineering feats. While many of the medallists were originally climbers, their most remarkable achievements (like those of Sir Edmund) have been in the mitigation of threats to mountain environments, protection of traditional cultures, and alleviation of suffering in impoverished mountain communities. A few years before his death, Sir Edmund recommended to the Nepalese government that Everest be closed to climbing for several years. His advice was ignored.
Four years later I can only second his recommendation and urge in addition that steps be taken to consider extensive reorganization of the Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) National Park management plan.
The title of a recent book by Michael Kodar: High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed alludes to a pervasive set of ethical and criminal factors: incompetent and vainglorious expedition leaders and climbers, staff and climbers who loot and vandalize critical equipment, and corrupt authorities who fail to maintain the standards on which the entire industry depends.
There is yet another issue that relates both to our original purpose in the Khumbu — mapping mountain hazards — and the way in which “Everest-associated news” is purveyed by the media.
By 1984 our UNU research had brought us face to face with the phenomenon now widely known as glacial lake outburst floods. One occurred in 1985 during our survey of the Everest area, taking the lives of three Sherpas, and sweeping away houses, fields, a new hydroelectric station, and every bridge for about 60 kilometres downstream. The first published assessment of the event and its tragic consequences was prepared for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Kathmandu. This led to identification of the Imja Glacier and its rapidly expanding supra-glacial lake a few kilometres south of Everest. Today Imja Lake, generally attributed to climate warming and glacier melt, has been characterized in the news media worldwide as the most dangerous glacial lake in the Himalaya. Should its apparently fragile end moraine dam be breached, a wall of water, mud, and boulders would annihilate the small Sherpa village of Dingboche, breach the Everest base camp trail within three hours, and continue its devastation far downstream. Yet this scenario is disconcertingly under-reported by journalists concentrating on the dangers of climbing Everest as well as the environmental impacts of thousands of trekkers making their way to the base camp.
Our UNU team became aware of the rapid growth and potential danger of Imja Lake by a curious coincidence. Professor Fritz Müller was a close friend from McGill graduate student days. In 1956 he was a member of the Swiss expedition to Everest and Lhotse, staying on to undertake the first glaciological and permafrost research in the region. His tragic death in 1980 resulted in some of his photographs being placed in my care, including a panorama across the Imja Glacier looking on to the south face of Lhotse. In 1956 there was no lake on the surface of the Imja Glacier; by 1985 there was a lake more than 1,000 metres long and 500 metres wide. Today that same lake exceeds 2.2 kilometres long and is up to 100 metres deep.
The 1985 discovery led to further exploration by my own graduate students, research that has continued to the present. Even in 1985 we had to consider the risk of a glacial lake outburst although any realistic prediction of its timing and magnitude was not possible. Current, although not well-founded, predictions are that an outburst, should it occur, would be felt for up to 100 kilometres downstream.
How does this relate to mountaineering and trekking in the Everest region? Certainly any flood would likely cause extensive damage and loss of life. What is perhaps remarkable is that such an event, depending on its timing, could overwhelm several hundred trekkers, mountaineers, porters, and guides, certainly many times the intolerable total of lives already lost in the search for glory on The Mountain. Yet there is a curious disconnect in news media reportage. On one hand we read about the loss of life on Everest, overcrowding, heroism, and serious environmental damage; on the other, there are grossly exaggerated reports that climate warming is causing formation of numerous glacier lakes that are leading to the imminent threat of catastrophic outbursts, and consequent loss of millions of lives downstream — a particularly shameful case of uninformed exaggeration.
My personal response is that we do not have the necessary geotechnical data to predict if, or when Imja Lake, or any other glacial lake, will burst and so cause heavy loss of life and property. Nevertheless, news media reports, including spectacular and distorted videos (that win international prizes), continue to mislead us with false accounts.
In conclusion, there is surely a need for reassessment of the management of the Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) National Park/World Heritage Site. There is also need for detailed geotechnical study of the stability of glacial lakes and for associated downstream land-use planning that should result in restriction of new construction in potentially dangerous locations together with relocation of exposed sections of the trekking route. Climbing Everest will never be a walk in the park, but a lot can be done to make both climbing and trekking less dangerous to both participants and the host communities.
Jack D. Ives is adjunct professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
No comments:
Post a Comment