🚀 go-pugleaf

                     TRAVEL IN TIBET TO MT EVEREST BASECAMP

                          EVEREST ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT
 
                            JULY 29 - AUGUST 20, 1991

                               (Seatle to Seatle)
                                 Cost: $5895.0
       (Includes round-trip airfare and a $500.00 tax-deductable contribution)
                        
                        For Information Call: (408) 479-8889
                   
                                        or
                       
                     Send A Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope To:

                            Everest Environmental Project
                          3227 Putter Dr., Soquel, CA 95973

Satisfy your need for adventure, and be part of the noble project of cleaning up
Mount Everest in Tibet.  We convene in Seattle and depart for Hong Kong.  From
there, your travels will include stops in Canton and Chengdu, China.  An 
overland journey from Lhasa, capital of Tibet, takes you across the Tibetan
Plateau to basecamp.  During nine days at the 17,000 foot basecamp, we will
travel the area, documenting the state of the ecosystem, recording changes since
last year's work of the Environmental Project, and visiting international
climbing expeditions to do environmental education.  You will depart for the
relative luxury of Kathmandu, Nepal before leaving for Seattle via Bangkok,
Thailand, carrying memories with you that will last a lifetime.

BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT AND SUMMARY OF THE BASECAMP CLEANUP PROJECT OF 1990 

Details of the multinational Everest Environmental Expedition, led by
Robert M. McConnell and Elizabeth H. Nichol, have recently been released
in a fifty-page Post-Expedition Report.  The successful expedition yielded
interesting results which have changed the follow-up focus of the expedition's
participants, the primary aim of the 1991 Everest Project.  

Organizers had intended to "solve the problems" on Mount Everest and then
use their experience to actively assist other countries with similar trash
probles created by foreign adventure travelers.  What the expedition 
encountered at the base of Mount Everest, however, was an environmental
problem with many ramifications and complexities.  As reported in the last
issue of the "AA News", with the support of officials and local Tibetans,
the expedition collected well over a ton of trash and hauled it out to a
land fill near Xegar.  The land fill is viewed as an intermediate step
toward an eventual aggressive recylcing effort.

Many experts agree tat the most serious problems facing the Himalaya
today are overpopulation, overgrazing, deforestation, soil loss, and
flooding, rather than expedition-generated trash.  Members of the 1990
expedition now view their accomplishments and future efforts in a different
perspective: that of moving toward the solution of one small part of the
overall environmental problem in the Himalayas.  The long-term solution
to the problem of the garbage is not with cleanup expeditons but with 
cleaner expeditions whose members accept the responsibilities of travel
in fragile environments.  McConnell and Nichol intend to work with alpine
organizers in the UIAA to educate climbers and trekkers, and to assist host
countries in establishing and implementing the enforcement of a code
environmental ethics for their mountain regions.

Working with a Tibetan veternarian from Xigatse who is now manager of the
newly created Chomolungma Nature Preserve, McConnell plans to raise money
to enable three Tibetan wardnes to be hired to live and work in the
Preserve.  There are also many plans to have the new wardens visit the
Annapurna Conservation Area and the Makalu-Barun Project in Nepal.  Both
of these nongovernmental efforts have been successful to date in arresting
environmental degradation, educating local users and visitors, and 
establishing procedures for sustainablity.  The follow up work of the 1991
Project will work in the Preserve this summer, as described above.

For a copy of the 1990 Post-Expedition Report, contact Robert M. McConnell,
telephone (719) 578-9061.