Mount Denali Will See Heaps of Human Feces Due To Climate Change

Arnav Dhar - Apr 11, 2019

Visited by thousands of climbers every year, Mount Denali in Alaska is now full of poop, which will be exposed soon due to climate change and melting ice.

Many travelers believe that you should leave nothing but footprints when you visit somewhere. But on mount Denali of Alaska, it's not what's happening. Estimated 66 tons of solid human feces is becoming an ecological disaster when exposed because of climate change and melting ice.

The number is provided by Denali National Park Service after they have been tracking what travelers have left over the years on the mountain. Federal experts also predict that not later than this summer, this huge load of poop will start to reemerge. This is a direct indication of glacial melt caused by global warming.

Just like other famously high mountains like Mount Everest which is now full of human poop, Denali is bearing more and more feces littered by approx. 1,000 visitors who come here annually.

According to a spokesman from Denali NPS, this overloaded amount of poop comes from a reportedly high number of climbers in the Kahiltna Glacier, making it the primary interest in their waste management policy.

For many years, climbers have been going number two then packed their waste and dump it either on Kahiltna Glacier which is as high as 20,000 ft. or into the crevasses. This resulted in a 2007 ban of dumping waste on said locations where it is higher than 14,200 ft. Everything that is under that number has to be brought down.

And while Denali authorities hoped that this load of poop would be dealt by snow soon, it is indicated by Michael Loso, a glaciologist from NPS, Alaska's national parks have seen glacier's cover loss larger than the whole island of Rhode.

Tracking the state of glaciers in Denali using documented photos of the last 5 to 8 decades, they found that many of them have been in poor condition. Also according to the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, the local glaciers have been melting abnormally fast during the last 4 centuries, mostly caused by warming temperature.

Loso also said that he found that many harmful bacteria including E. coli can survive the harsh condition on Mount Denali, and once brought down by the glacier melt, it can be a huge threat to future visitors' health.