Habitation

Everest is so tall and its climate so severe that it is incapable of supporting sustained human occupation, but the valleys below the mountain are inhabited by Tibetan-speaking peoples. Notable among these are the Sherpas, who live in villages at elevations up to about 14,000 feet (4,270 meters) in the Khumbu valley of Nepal and other locations. Traditionally an agricultural people with little cultivable land at their disposal, the Sherpas for years were traders and led a seminomadic lifestyle in their search for pastureland. In summer, livestock was grazed as high as 16,000 feet (4,880 meters), while winter refuge was taken at lower elevations on sheltered ledges and along riverbanks.

Living in close proximity to the world’s highest mountains, the Sherpas traditionally treated the Himalayas as sacred—building Buddhist monasteries at their base, placing prayer flags on the slopes, and establishing sanctuaries for the wildlife of the valleys that included musk deer, monal pheasant, and Himalayan partridge. Gods and demons were believed to live in the high peaks, and the Yeti (the so-called Abominable Snowman) was said to roam the lower slopes. For these reasons, the Sherpas traditionally did not climb the mountains.

However, beginning with the British expeditions of the early 20th century, surveying and portering work became available. Eventually, the respect and pay earned in mountaineering made it attractive to the Sherpas, who, being so well adapted to the high altitudes, were capable of carrying large loads of cargo over long distances. Though Sherpas and other hill people (the name Sherpa came to be applied—erroneously—to all porters) tend to outperform their foreign clients, they typically have played a subordinate role in expeditions; rarely, for example, has one of their names been associated with a pioneering route on Everest. The influx of foreign climbers—and, in far greater numbers, trekkers—has dramatically changed Sherpa life, as their livelihood increasingly has come to depend on these climbing expeditions.

Environmental issues

On the Nepalese side of the international boundary, the mountain and its surrounding valleys lie within Sagarmatha National Park, a 480-square-mile (1,243-square-km) zone established in 1976. In 1979 the park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The valleys contain stands of rhododendron and forests of birch and pine, while above the tree line alpine vegetation extends to the feet of the glaciers. Over the years, carelessness and excessive consumption of resources by mountaineers, as well as overgrazing by livestock, have damaged the habitats of snow leopards, lesser pandas, Tibetan bears, and scores of bird species. To counteract past abuses, various reforestation programs have been carried out by local communities and the Nepalese government.

Expeditions have removed supplies and equipment left by climbers on Everest’s slopes, including hundreds of oxygen containers. A large quantity of the litter of past climbers—tons of items such as tents, cans, crampons, and human waste—has been hauled down from the mountain and recycled or discarded. However, the bodies of most of the more than 280 climbers who have died on Everest (notably on its upper slopes) have not been removed, as they are unreachable or—for those that are accessible—their weight makes carrying them down extremely difficult. Notable in the cleanup endeavour have been the efforts of the Eco Everest Expeditions, the first of which was organized in 2008 to commemorate the death that January of Everest-climbing pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary. Those expeditions also have publicized ecological issues (in particular, concerns about the effects of climate change in the region through observations that the Khumbu Icefall has been melting).