Environment & Energy

Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(108,071 posts) Wed Apr 25, 2018, 09:05 PM Apr 2018

Human waste is making a Denali glacier toxic. The park service is demanding change from climbers.

TALKEETNA — About 1,200 climbers from around the world congregate on North America's tallest peak every year, drawn to Denali's popular West Buttress route.

They spend days in alpine camps dotting the Kahiltna Glacier that underlies the route: eating and resting, sorting gear, readying for the high, frigid summit — and, naturally, creating excrement.

Tons of it.

Now, for the first time, the National Park Service is requiring climbers below 14,000 feet on Denali's western flank to carry all human waste off the mountain in small portable toilet cans.

Above that level, climbers can dump feces and toilet paper in just one designated crevasse below a camp at 14,200 feet, the next to last camp before the push to the 20,320-foot summit.

Rangers say the route's popularity is leaving a growing and potentially health-threatening legacy in the Kahiltna: literally tons of poop that began accumulating nearly 70 years ago and could start surfacing at any time.

https://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure/2018/04/24/climbers-human-waste-is-making-a-denali-glacier-toxic-the-park-service-is-demanding-change/?utm_source=Outside+Magazine&utm_medium=email

2 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Human waste is making a Denali glacier toxic. The park service is demanding change from climbers. (Original Post) Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Apr 2018 OP

Leave no trace.. mountain grammy Apr 2018 #1

"Leave no trace" goes out the window when the airplane fires up its engines. hunter Apr 2018 #2

mountain grammy

(26,630 posts)

1. Leave no trace..

Reply to Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (Original post)

Wed Apr 25, 2018, 09:13 PM

Apr 2018

Every wilderness hiker should follow that rule.

hunter

(38,321 posts)

2. "Leave no trace" goes out the window when the airplane fires up its engines.

Reply to mountain grammy (Reply #1)

Thu Apr 26, 2018, 01:51 PM

Apr 2018

I think world travel is generally a positive thing but air travel requires fossil fuels. Even if these tourists hadn't thrown their crap in the glacier crevices, they've still left a lot of crap carbon dioxide and other pollutants in our earth's atmosphere just traveling to and from the glacier.

Here's a story about a guy who walked and kayaked from Alaska to California:

A life spent with nature ends

Robert Bruce Facer walked through life one barefoot step at a time, entirely at his own pace.

That life ended after 65 years on April 15 in Monterey, the final stop of a journey worthy of poets and mythologists.

Facer was a raggedy man who was homeless by choice, not circumstance. His floppy hat, tattered clothes and ever-shoeless feet attracted strange looks wherever he wandered — and it's hard to imagine anyone ever wandered farther. Between 1984 and 2012, Facer traveled more than 4,000 miles, from Alaska to Monterey, exclusively by foot and kayak. He lived a humble but amazing life, leaving in his wake a lot more friends and admirers than he probably realized.

--more--

http://www.montereyherald.com/article/zz/20120505/NEWS/120508178

Long distance walking and sailing are the most extraordinary forms of human transportation, and together they define us as a species; it's how we humans came to inhabit most of the planet.

Maybe walking and sailing are not an alternative to fossil-fueled transportation, but are there any?

I don't think biofuels are a good alternative because the environmental impacts of agriculture are severe.

Synthetic fuels can be made from the carbon dioxide in air or sea water, but that requires a concentrated source of energy. The U.S. Navy is studying the possibility of synthesizing fuel for aircraft and support vessels aboard its nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

Electric rail transportation and sophisticated sailing ships might be another possibility.

Reply to this discussion