Ahh, Mount McKinley. North America’s highest peak. A journey into nature, thin air and…this is bad, very bad…virus-laden human fesces. Seems the upper slopes of ol’ Denali are becoming every bit as bad a minefield as any urban street, thanks to frigid temps and a multitude of climbers who can’t be bothered to wander too far to take care of business, or clean up after themselves (“hey, dude, do you have any baggies…?”). A recent study shows that if the mountain doesn’t get you, the diahrrea will.
“They think they’re going out on a pristine climb and there’s virus-laden poo all around them,” said Dr. Bradford Gessner, a mountaineer and one of the study’s authors…
The National Park Service already has started a clean-up campaign, including the distribution of devices called clean mountain cans to store feces for removal from the mountain, said Roger Robinson, lead mountaineering ranger for Denali National Park and Preserve, site of McKinley…
“It’s just an ice pack up there. You really can’t dig down and bury anything,” he said.
Sad. Yet more evidence that there are not only too many climbers crawling all over the world’s great mountains, but also too many climbers who don’t give a sh.., err, damn, about the mountains themselves…
High Altitude Latrine: “Can you hurry up and snap the picture? I really gotta go…”
The Earthist Chronicles 