Melting Glaciers on Denali Will Unleash Tons of Human Poop

That’s the best advice for anyone climbing North America’s tallest mountain, Denali, which could be covered in 66 tons of poop as the glaciers melt away in the coming decades and perhaps much sooner — a process that’s speeding up thanks to climate change.

However, according to USA Today, for the first time, guide companies leading the 1,200 climbers who attempt the summit annually will voluntarily start to pack away and remove their human waste.

“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,” Michael Loso, a National Park Service glaciologist who’s been studying the problem of climber excrement on the mountain for close to a decade, told the newspaper. . .

USA Today reports that the frozen feces were first left in various snow pits on the Kahiltna glacier, but that over time the waste would resurface downstream on the glacier’s surface — where it would begin to melt. . .

“We have lost more glacier cover in the Alaskan national parks than there is area in the whole state of Rhode Island,” Loso told USA Today. “One of the consequences of warming temperatures is that the surface of the glacier is melting more quickly.” (Read more from “Melting Glaciers on Denali Will Unleash Tons of Human Poop” HERE)

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