Are you familiar with the Instagram hashtag #portlandlookslikeshit? Well, base camp at K2 doesn’t look much better. And as Portlanders did, one climber took to Instagram to broadcast her thoughts.
You’d have a fair point if you called Peruvian mountaineer Flor Cuenca a purist. Case in point: she summited K2 (28,251 feet) on July 27 without supplemental oxygen or support from Sherpas — just like she did on her previous five 8,000m summits.
You’d be equally accurate to call her K2 ascent an effort of “fair means,” which is a contract of respect between human and mountain that climbers adhere to.
At least most of them do. But according to Cuenca’s post, summit hopefuls on K2 have been doing the opposite: trashing the place.
In the quick Instagram footage, shredded remnants of decaying gear flap in the wind. Cuenca framed the problem with evocative inquiries aimed right at a group she includes herself in.
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“[E]very time when we return from the mountain and especially after reaching the summit, we post our photos very proud,” she wrote. “I ask you. We are also proud of all the garbage we leave behind????? Isn’t it that we go to the mountains to enjoy pure nature, solitude, the magic of the mountains??? What pure nature can we talk about, when year after year we leave our waste there and it accumulates?”
She follows up by appearing to acknowledge that the state of modern high-altitude mountaineering demands long gear lists. Thanks to many comprehensively visible media placements, climbing is more popular than ever — by process, that means more clients for guide companies.
