If you ever managed to get Barry Bishop talking about himself, he likely failed to mention the not-so-insignificant fact that he was a member of the first American team to summit Mount Everest. That’s just how Barry was. Besides having a quick sense of humor and a passion for science and exploration, he was also exceedingly modest. And unstoppable.
There will be a documentary on the first US team to summit Everest on April 27 featuring Brent Bishop, son of the above-mentioned Barry, and my former co-worker at an Internet startup. He had also summitted Everest, but wasn’t likely to brag about it either.
You can read more about him here
And he left the mountain better than he found it.
In March 1994, while climbing Everest, Bishop was stunned by what he saw at Camp IV, the highest base camp on the south face of Mt. Everest, “a football field of trash.” Nearly 10 tons of garbage–empty oxygen bottles, tents, rope, tin cans–was strewn everywhere. And there was even more at other base camps.
That climb was part of a special expedition Bishop had undertaken to clean up the mountain. Implementing an incentive program, Bishop’s five-member team orchestrated the removal of more than 5,000 pounds of garbage, including more than 200 oxygen bottles. The program paid Sherpas above and beyond their salaries to collect and transport garbage to base camp.
The garbage was segregated into burnables, tin and glass, and the garbage was transported down by yaks. Tin and glass were flown to Katmandu and recycled, and oxygen bottles were shipped back to the U.S.
“The program worked so well because nobody was going up the mountain just to collect trash,” says Bishop, a Washington, D.C. native who got his M.B.A from the UW in 1993. “The Sherpas who got the trash would have been coming down from the mountain empty-handed. So we just paid them to bring garbage down. It was a perfect way to combine environmental and economic goals.”