With the climbing season set to get underway on Mount Everest, Nepali Sherpas may finally have the help they have always needed. As per Raj Bikram, CEO of Airlift Nepal, drones will help Sherpas transport equipment such as oxygen cylinders and medicines as well as pick up the trash between the Base Camp, located at a height of 5,364 metres above sea level and Camp One at 6,065 metres.
The test trials have already started with Airlift Nepal's first clean-up drive, involving a drone being used to bring down nearly 1100 pounds of trash from Camp One to Base Camp, according to a report in CNN. As many as 40 flights were required to move the garbage, as the drones can only carry about 66 pounds of weight, but the operators stuck with the 44-pound limit, just to be safe.
Airlift currently has two DJI drones, only one of which is being operated on Mount Everest this year. The second one is a backup, and if there's a need for more drone flights, they'll consider deploying both. Each drone costs $70,000, and that's before they even begin operating.
It was in April 2024 that Airlift started experimenting with the drones after China's DJI donated two drones. It took the team a month to learn the terrain owing to challenges such as visibility and wind speed.
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As per Mr Pandey, the Sherpas give his team the direction they need to go. The drones are then flown out to map the area, after which the brave Sherpas climb the precarious routes that are the hardest to navigate.
"Once they find out 'here we need a ladder,' 'here we need a rope,' they will send us the coordinates via walkie-talkie and then we fly the equipment there," Mr Pandey explained.
Attempts to summit Everest typically occur in mid-May when the weather is mild and visibility is at its peak. Mr Pandey hopes that his drone experiment may help the Sherpas and make their job a little easier and safer.
"We hope that our drones will actually make this a safer profession and bring more people back to this climbing tradition. It's what our country is known for, and without the expertise of the Sherpas we would never be able to navigate this terrain," he added.
