Denali poo-poo threat
Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2019 7:40 pm
{This is not an April Fool's joke}
Global Warming Threatens Denali National Park.
At Denali National Park a gross reality is taking shape. Climate change could melt decades worth of human poop in the near future!
Theres good news and bad news at Denali, North Americas tallest mountain.
The bad news is that the 66 tons of frozen feces left by climbers on the Alaska summit is expected to start melting out of the glacier sometime in the coming decades and potentially as soon as this summer, a process thats speeding up in part due to global warming.
The good news is that this year, for the first time, the guide companies that lead many of the 1,200 climbers who attempt the summit each year have voluntarily decided to start packing out their human waste. This comes just a year after the National Park Service instituted a policy that all such waste below 14,000 feet must be carried off the mountain.
Climbers and particularly guide services are really embracing the new policy and are even exceeding it. It has become kind of an informal badge of merit to carry off all your waste, said Michael Loso, a National Park Service glaciologist whos been studying the problem of climber excrement on the mountain for close to a decade.
Denali is a majestic mountain about five hours north of Anchorage, Alaska. At 20,300 feet, it's visible from the city on clear days. It's one of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Conquering them all is considered a major mountaineering challenge in the climbing world.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 299522002/
Global Warming Threatens Denali National Park.
At Denali National Park a gross reality is taking shape. Climate change could melt decades worth of human poop in the near future!
Theres good news and bad news at Denali, North Americas tallest mountain.
The bad news is that the 66 tons of frozen feces left by climbers on the Alaska summit is expected to start melting out of the glacier sometime in the coming decades and potentially as soon as this summer, a process thats speeding up in part due to global warming.
The good news is that this year, for the first time, the guide companies that lead many of the 1,200 climbers who attempt the summit each year have voluntarily decided to start packing out their human waste. This comes just a year after the National Park Service instituted a policy that all such waste below 14,000 feet must be carried off the mountain.
Climbers and particularly guide services are really embracing the new policy and are even exceeding it. It has become kind of an informal badge of merit to carry off all your waste, said Michael Loso, a National Park Service glaciologist whos been studying the problem of climber excrement on the mountain for close to a decade.
Denali is a majestic mountain about five hours north of Anchorage, Alaska. At 20,300 feet, it's visible from the city on clear days. It's one of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. Conquering them all is considered a major mountaineering challenge in the climbing world.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 299522002/