Mt. Everest: health hazard

Pictured: 99% poop

"Human waste left by climbers on Mount Everest has become a problem that is causing pollution and threatening to spread disease on the world’s highest peak, the chief of Nepal’s mountaineering association said Tuesday (3/3/15).
The more than 700 climbers and guides who spend nearly two months on Everest’s slopes each climbing season leave large amounts of faeces and urine, and the issue has not been addressed, Ang Tshering told reporters." - The Guardian.com

Could there possibly be a more emphatic statement of our disdain for this planet, Earth, the only one where we can currently live, at least in terms of our own selfish desires, than this? Hundreds of people gather every year at the base of this most majestic and spectacular monument to the powers of nature and creation... so they can shit on it.

“Climbers usually dig holes in the snow for their toilet use and leave the human waste there,” Tshering said, adding that the waste has been “piling up” for years around the four camps.

Shocker. They know what gear to buy, including $800 sleeping bags from The North Face and $50 water bottles from Wherever You Would Buy Something Like That, yet they don't know how snow works. Lovely.
We're referring of course to the handful of narcissists who do things like climb mountains and swim between continents and jump out of spacecraft for no other purpose than satisfying their own personal whims and egos. "Oh no," you say. "Those people are heroes!" Are they? What's heroic about it? How are they helping humanity? What disease are they curing? Whose puppy is being rescued? "Accomplishing" something is not necessarily a heroic act. Need help telling the difference? Easy. If somebody ever says, "Whoo! I did it!", they're not a hero. George Mallory, who died trying to climb Everest in the 1920s, before it became a hobby, was once asked "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?", to which he replied "Because it's there". Here we are about 100 years later and the answer is, "Because I feel like it." Of course they're going to go up there for no other reason than the thrill of taking a dookie at 20,000 feet above sea level.

"Fuck! I can't see my house from up here."

Get down from there, you jerks. You have no good reason to do what you're doing. The only thing you can do from on top of a mountain is look at stuff that's easier to see from down here. And relieve yourself. Get back down here where your waste products can be dealt with correctly and stop treating the world's marvels like a bus station restroom.