Yeah Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay The cold slopes of Everest are assumed today in the most likely to stay ice cream. And not for temperatures. Since Hillary and Norgay crowned the top in their historic ascent of 1953, Everest has ceased to be an inhospitable place to become a kind of monster touristified. Every year they visit it hundreds and hundreds of mountaineers who leave in their path a millionaire business and a long wasting waftment.
That does not mean that crowning Everest is today a simple task. Neither safe. It was not in times of Sir Hillary and Norgay and it is not now, although technical advances make the experience more bearable. Good proof is that in 2023 they disappeared Three Sherpas professionals in the Khumbu ice waterfall. The repeated attempts to recover their bodies served little. Their names have passed to Get the list of dead and missing On the mountain.
Now both the work of the sherpas and the experience of the mountaineers and the conservation of the mountain have found a valuable ally: the drones.
An ally on heights
The disappearance Of the three 2023 Sherpas left its mark on the company that led the expedition, Imagine Nepal, so after the tragedy its responsible began to look for new ways to improve security in Everest. That effort led her to look at what her Chinese colleagues were already doing in Muztagh ata peak of 7,500 near the border between China and Pakistan where companies turn to drones for transport hot food Between camps.
“I told myself: why not use drones on the southern face of Everest, especially in the Khumbu ice waterfall section,” remember The director of Imagine Nepal in a recent interview with The New York Times. He was not the only one to think about the possibilities of drones on the roof of the world. A similar idea was responsible for those responsible for Airliftcompany interested in mapping Everest with drones.
The theory did not take long to practice and in 2024 there was already a team of the Chinese manufacturer in Nepal DJI testing its cast drones in the area. The devices ended in Airlift olees, which hasn’t taken them to use them.
Since then they have demonstrated their Mountain potential. Despite the initial misgivings on how drones would respond in Everest, under conditions of high altitude, cold temperatures, low visibility and wind gusts, the company has already achieved some interesting results. For example, during a cleaning campaign on the mountain they managed to move about 500 kilos of waste from camp one to the base camp.
The task required 40 flights from a drone, The CNN requiresbut it could have been finished in much less time. Although the apparatus that the company used is capable of transporting 66 pounds of weight (about 30 kilos), preferred to stay in a little less than 20 kg for security reasons. It is not a bad balance if one takes into account that the accumulation of garbage and feces begins to be A serious problem In Everest, which has even led to local authorities to demand from the mountaineers that They collect their excrements in biodegradable bags.
Graph prepared by statista.
Drones serve however, for much more than clean the slopes and camps of Everest. In addition to loading trash can transport stairs, ropes, oxygen bottles and other tools that serve the sherpas and the so -called ‘Icefall Doctors’veterans who are in charge of opening (and maintaining) a route in the Khumbu glacier so that mountaineers can cross it.
For decades the most experienced sherpas have been in charge of that work, but … what if their knowledge could be combined with the technical advantages of drones? After all, a guide has experience and skill, but it takes between six or seven hours in covering the distance between the base camp, located at 5,464 m of altitude, and camp one, 6,065 m. A drone travels 2.9 km away from aerial distance between them in muco less time: Six and seven minutes.
Recent Milan Pandey, from Airlift, assured the CNN that your goal is that the company Help sherpas Already in the 2025 season. Its mission will consist of transporting equipment to the coordinates indicated by the guides and collecting garbage. Without counting that, in addition to stairs or strings, drones can also load with sanitary material (from oxygen bottles to medicines) or even help during geolocation work and rescue missions.
The arrival of drones generates expectation for several reasons.
The first, because (except during the stop of the pandemic or specific restrictions like the one that followed the Nepal earthquake of 2015) the influx of climbers at Everest has not stopped growing Since the 90s. Now hundreds and hundreds are the successful promotions that are computed every year. The second is that drones can make Sherpa’s job more attractive and recover professionals who have been abandoned to emigrate.
Of course not everything is advantages and facilities in the future of Everest drones. The service has a key challenge: money. A single drone can cost More than $ 70,000to which the fuel bill is added to load the batteries, labor, accommodation and logistics challenges.
Images | IEWEK GNOS (UNSPLASH), Guillaume Baviere (Flickr), Mário Simoes (Flickr) and Statista
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