China to cap number of Mount Qomolangma climbers in cleanup campaign

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China is restricting the number of climbers attempting to scale Mount Qomolangma from the north side in 2019 as part of a cleanup campaign for the world's highest peak.

Trash collectors are desperately needed to deal with mountains of waste left by a growing number of visitors.

The number of climbers will be reduced by about one-third to around 300 for a climbing season and the season will be restricted to spring, according to Nyima Tsering, head of the Tibet Sports Bureau.

A view of Mount Qomolangma. /VCG Photo

Founded in 1960, the Tibet mountaineering team has just been upgraded to the national-level as China Mountaineering Team (Tibet), and it will undertake the large-scale cleanup this year.

As part of the campaign, the remains of those who succumbed to the harsh conditions at altitudes above 8,000 meters will be brought down from the mountain slopes.

View of a base camp at the foot of Mount Qomolangma. /VCG Photo

The team has received more than 20,000 overseas climbers from 40 countries in the past eight years.

The southwestern autonomous region's climbing team is known as China's top-class climbing side. Its members have reached the world's highest peak more than 300 times in the past six decades, and they scaled peaks higher than 8,000 meters in the region over 2,300 times.

An amateur climber undergoes training ahead of a planned expedition. /VCG Photo

Every year, about 60,000 climbers, guides and tourists visit the region of Mount Qomolangma, with hundreds attempting the climb from both northern and southern sides.

Efforts in the clean-up of mountaineering sites of Tibet Autonomous Region have become a normalized practice in recent years, and a new legislation has been enacted to preserve the environment surrounding the world's highest peak.