Chapter 591 - 277: Eating, Drinking, Sleeping, and Blood Oxygen

Choosing to dig snow directly near camps above 7000 meters on Mount Everest for water sources is definitely not a wise choice.

Regular Mount Everest climbers are well aware that above 7000 meters, the human ability to move is greatly restricted.

Nowadays, the routes are very well-established, so most climbers who come here choose to rest at the established old camps.

But resting is not just about eating and sleeping; there’s another thing that most people climbing Mount Everest won’t mention voluntarily... and that is relieving themselves.

The Advance Base Camp on the North Side is the last camp with supplies. At the 7000 meters C1 camp, it’s extremely difficult to carry a large number of supplies up through the labor of the Sherpas.

So those public restroom tents available at the Advance Base Camp do not exist at the C1 camp. To be precise, from here upward, there are no public restrooms, and whether male or female, people relieve themselves wherever they can.

Next comes a math problem.

In the past decade, on average, two to three hundred people reach the summit of Mount Everest each year, and even more reach the C1 camp. After all, as an important altitude adaptation point, many climbing teams use the method of summiting and descending repeatedly to adapt their bodies to the altitude. Although there isn’t precise data, it’s easy to estimate from rough calculations that at least a thousand visits to C1 camp occur each year.

So, can you imagine: since the inception of the C1 camp, how dense are the excrement deposits near the camp after all this time?

The bodily functions of these thousands of people take place around the camp, and after they’re done, fresh snow covers it, so if the next year’s climbers dig this snow for water... they would be consuming the bodily waste from the previous year’s climbers.

After all, at such altitude, fungi cannot survive, and there is no biological degradation possible.

Moreover, the microorganisms and bacteria in the waste are merely frozen temporarily due to the cold environment...

The current situation is even more brutal because it is already the last window period in May, and the last batch of climbers reached the summit just two or three days ago. This means... there’s a high probability that if you dig snow near the C1 camp, you’ll be consuming fresh waste.

This is not unfounded; in fact, climbers ascending Mount Everest each year experience infections of various kinds, and the infection source is human waste.

However, this situation is unavoidable; the commercial climbing crowd now forms the majority.

This portion of commercial climbers, frankly speaking, although stronger than the average person, manage to climb Mount Everest with monetary means.

Once they reach camps above 7000 meters, this group practically loses self-sufficiency, relying entirely on guides for culinary support.

At such high altitudes, there’s no time to worry about flavor when eating. If you don’t eat, you die. Staying alive is everything, and who cares about waste in such conditions?

So when Li Younan noticed a guide digging snow from afar... he couldn’t help but feel nauseous.

When it comes to food, Li Younan, being a top chef, is extremely picky.

Water is the most crucial component in cooking, and no matter how harsh the conditions, he cannot let his stomach suffer.

Li Younan chose to selectively forget what he saw and walked toward the camp.

The guide who was collecting snow was stunned when he saw Li Younan carrying such a large backpack.

There has been a philosophical question, which is whether it is the climbers or the Sherpas who are truly climbing Mount Everest.

An intriguing point of debate is that without the local Sherpas or the Tibetan people carrying most of the supplies to the camps, climbers would never be able to reach the summit of Mount Everest by themselves.

Take this climbing team, for instance, who only carried small amounts of goods and equipment while most of the supplies had been pre-delivered to the camp by the climbing companies’ people.

Moreover, they are not climbing without oxygen; each of them carries a sufficient amount of oxygen, the majority of which is also transported by the climbing company’s people.

Every climber coming here has paid hundreds of thousands in money.

So when they saw Li Younan fully equipped and carrying an enormous backpack, they were astonished.

Huh? The supplies were all brought up by himself?

Li Younan didn’t engage with the climbing team immediately, instead, he started setting up his tent on his own.

The tents, oxygen, canisters, food, and other supplies at the camp were prepared by the paid commercial climbing teams, reserved only for their members and supporting personnel.

Although Li Younan had paid some fees earlier, they only covered the use of supplies at the first two camps, and after reaching the C1 camp and upward to the next two camps, he couldn’t use their supplies or their tents.

This is why Li Younan’s backpack is significantly larger than that of a regular climber.

Although he cannot use their supplies, the camp’s ground is public. Here is an ideal shelter from the wind and the terrain is quite flat, so Li Younan also chose to pitch his tent here.

In fact, this is also the first time Li Youran showcased his equipment on live streaming since he began climbing Mount Everest.

First is the four-season alpine tent. Such a tent doesn’t weigh much, the one Li Younan bought is the most professional and best one, weighing only 2.3 kilograms, yet it can withstand snowstorms over level 12 and temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees.