Expedition companies on Mount Everest are testing drones as a way of carrying heavy equipment from a base camp to mountain camps, lightening the load and danger for the Sherpas who carry the equipment and guide the climbers.
The hope is that the new technology will result in less risk and fewer deaths for the guides, whose work has become more and more dangerous as climate change has accelerated snowmelt. The Sherpas are also responsible each year for pathfinding the year’s route across the deadly Khumbu Icefall. Tshering Sherpa, of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee that makes the route, told the New York Times that “Sherpas bear enormous risks. The drone makes their task safer, faster and more efficient.”
Among the efficiencies: Goods that would normally take seven hours to be transported by foot from Everest’s base camp to Camp I can be airlifted within 15 minutes. On the Chinese side of the mountain, where drones have been in use for a couple of years, inspiring this trial, they are even used to deliver hot meals to high elevations.
Image by WeAreGuides from Pixabay
