Yellow Snow on Everest

At Everest Base Camp, about 6,000 liters of urine flow onto the glacier each day. A study now estimates that the body-warm urine of visitors melts roughly 154 tons of glacier ice during a climbing season, adding a startling dimension to the long-running debate over the camp’s future.

The study, published in July 2026 in Regional Environmental Change, examined human activity during the 2023 spring season, which lasted about 50 days. Climbers used 824 liquefied-gas cylinders, 18,935 liters of kerosene and 5,130 liters of gasoline for cooking, heating and electricity. That energy was enough to melt an estimated 3,000 tons of ice and snow, even before urine was counted.

Solid waste is collected and carried down the mountain. Urine, however, mostly reaches the glacier directly and contaminates drinking water in the Khumbu Valley. Study author Khim Lal Gautam gave a conference presentation the playful title “Pisab ko Hisab,” Nepali for “The Calculation of Urine.” Gautam has climbed Everest twice, led the 2019 official survey that established the mountain’s height at 8,848.86 meters, and has overseen the temporary government office at base camp since 2022.

Satellite data from 1991 to 2023 showed that surface temperatures around base camp rose by an average of 0.28 degrees Celsius per year, about twice the rate recorded on the surrounding glacier. Co-author Sudeep Thakuri cautioned that heating, cooking and lighting fuels pose a greater problem than urine, alongside rising average temperatures caused by climate change.

Tshering Tenzing Sherpa of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee believes the current base-camp site will remain usable for only another three or four years. The study’s authors support moving it from the glacier edge to stable rock, which would also offer greater protection from ice and snow avalanches. The climbing community is divided, and the supplied article ends while presenting opposition from Dawa Steven Sherpa of Asian Trekking.