SHERPAS
Sherpas are a Tibetan Buddhist people that are essentially Tibetans who have lived in Nepal long enough to develop some of their own unique traits and characteristics. They are quite different from Hindu Nepalese. The Sherpas of the Khumbu valley near Mt. Everest are famous mountaineers and guides. They have been nicknamed the "Tigers of the Snow." They are so famous that term Sherpa has grown into a generic term for loyal helper and guide. [Sources: T.R. Reid, National Geographic, May 2003; Desmond Doig, National Geographic, October 1966 ~; Robert A. Paul, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
There are about 75,000 to 120,000 Sherpas, depending on how they are counted. They live mostly in eastern Nepal but are also found in India. About 10,000 live in the Solu-Khumbu Valley region below Mt. Everest. In Nepal, Sherpas are classified as Tibeto-Nepalese or Bhote (Bhotia), the Tibetan-related ethnic groups that inhabit the high valleys of northeastern Nepal. The Sherpas language is a Tibetan dialect that has no writing system. Sherpas generally speak Nepali and can read and write in Nepali. They often have one name or use Sherpa as their last name.
Sherpa — Sharwa in their own language, shar pa in the Tibetan language — literally means “People of the East”, a reference to their origin in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. They first arrived in Nepal about 500 years ago and have a close affinity with Tibetans in terms of their language, culture and religion. The main Sherpa occupations are agriculture, animal husbandry, trade and portering. They are famous for their mountaineering and Mt. Everest climbing skills. Many make a living in the trekking and mountaineering businesses. They follow Tibetan Buddhism. [Source: visitnepal.com ]
Sherpas means “person of the east” as we said before. They believed to be have arrived in the Everest area in the 1500s from the Kham region of Tibet (now mostly in Sichuan Province of China) about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Mt. Everest by migrating across the Tibetan plateau and crossing 5,716-meter (18,753-foot) -high Nangpa La into the Everest area. The first group of migrants is believed to have been small and lead by a great lama.
The valleys the Sherpas occupied appeared to have been sparsely populated when they arrived. They settled first in the Khumbu and Pharak Valleys and canyons of the Bhote Kosi and the Duhd Kose River and gradually spread to the valleys south of Khumbu and Pharak, where the conditions are more conducive to farming. In the early days they subsisted mainly in barley and milk.
Sherpas took advantage of their nearness to Nangpa La, or “Inside pass” between Tibet and Nepal to earn income as intermediaries along trade and caravan routes between China and India. They used yaks as caravan animals and were specialists in long distance trade.
Three events had a profound influence of the development of the Sherpas: 1)The introduction of the potato in 19th century, which grew well at high elevation and allowed the Sherpas to become more settled; 2) the first Mt. Everest expedition in 1953, and mountaineering and trekking windfall that followed; and 3) the introduction of modern medicine which helped eliminate problems like goiter and small pox.
Book: “Life and Death on Mt. Everest, Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering” by Sherry Ortner (Princeton University Press). The book is more about Sherpas than mountaineering.
See Separate Article SHERPAS: THEIR HISTORY, RELIGION, LIVES, SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Sherpas and Climbing Mt. Everest
The Sherpas are know for their high altitude climbing skills. Residing it villages up to 14,000 feet, they are better acclimated to higher altitudes that non-Himalayan people. Traditionally yak herders and traders living deep in the Himalayas until Nepal opened its borders in the 1950s, they were initially hired by Mt. Everest expeditions primarily as load carriers. Their stamina and familiarity with the mountains quickly made them indispensable. They are now primarily employed as guides, camp workers and rescue workers. Among their main duties are preparing climbing routes and bringing down dead, injured or sick climbers.
Many Sherpas have summitted Everest, some many times. Many have also died on the mountain. Ironically, Sherpas have traditionally believed that climbing mountains is not a good idea. They consider it intruding among the angels. When Tenzing Norgay — the Sherpa who was with Sir Edmund Hillary on the first conquest of Mt. Everest — made it to the summit the first thing he did was to make name offering and say a prayer to gods of the mountain.
Apa Sherpa, a Sherpa who reached the summit of Everest 21 times, said, "Strength is not the only thing required when you scale Mt. Everest. You must also have nerves of steel and you need a lot of determination and dedication."
Many Sherpas complain they have not received the respect and recognition they deserve. Ang Rita Sherpa told Associated Press “that before climbers reach the summit to take their photographs announcing their success, there are months of hard work done by Sherpas. The Sherpas are the ones who take care of setting up the camps, carrying the loads on their backs, cooking food and carrying oxygen tanks. [Source: Associated Press, May, 15, 2019]
“Perhaps most important, it is Sherpas who each year fix ropes and ladders over crevasses and icefalls that make things safer for the hundreds of climbers who will follow them. “However, when these climbers reach the summit, only their names are highlighted and nothing mentioned about the hard work done by the Sherpas," Rita said last month.” In 2019 there were 41 different teams with a total of 378 climbers given permission to scale Everest during the spring climbing season. There were an equal number of Nepalese guides — many of the Sherpas — helping them to get to the summit. [Source: Associated Press, May, 15, 2019]
Sherpas and Oxygen
Sherpas are a Tibetan people. Tibetans have unusually low blood hemoglobin levels, which allows them to thrive at high altitudes. When low-landers visit Tibet the low levels of oxygen in the bodies can cause altitude sickness. Jichuan Xing of the University of Utah Medical School said, “Presumably Tibetans have developed a regulation mechanism to control hemoglobin concentration to prevent these negative effects."
Grayson Schaffer wrote in Washington Post: “Sherpas have genetic advantages over their Western clients. A study released in 2010 by the University of California at Berkeley identified more than 30 genetic enhancements among Tibetans that make their bodies well-suited for high-altitude exertion. One of them, EPAS1, is known as the “super-athlete gene” because it’s associated with a more efficient use of oxygen by the body. [Source: Grayson Schaffer, Washington Post, April 24, 2014]
Tom Sjogren wrote in mounteverest.net: “In 1999, we climbed Everest with a Sherpa named Babu. He stayed on the summit for 22 hours with no supplementary oxygen. That year, no other sherpa climbed on the south side without oz. Babu had an extraordinary genetic ability even for a sherpa (together with a strong mind) to climb without oxygen. In addition, a safety net had to be built around Babu for his attempt. [Source: Tom Sjogren, mounteverest.net]
“Babu had then a history of seven Everest summits without oxygen. The attempt was prepared for a full year with added sherpas, ropes and oxygen for rescue. During the night of the attempt, we stayed at Camp Four with additional rescue sherpas positioned at Camp Two. We monitored Babu all through the night, continuously asking him his name, age, number of children and other things, to check him for signs of AMS [acute mountain sickness] and HACE [high-altitude cerebral edema]. Even with all these precautions in count, Babu's attempt was still highly dangerous (and actually looked pretty bad for a while). Babu made it against all odds and Nepals first international climbing hero was born. A few years later, Babu sadly died in a crevasse at Camp Two.
Sherpas and Their Skill as Climbers
Grayson Schaffer wrote in Washington Post: “Sherpas sometimes lack training, experience and appropriate equipment. Historically, their focus has been on carrying loads. Until the late 1990s, it was common to see Sherpas in tennis shoes and cotton clothing. “That is changing. Better training and gear have become more accessible since about 2000, a result of vocational climbing programs. And a handful of Sherpas have earned certifications that allow them to guide clients, not just carry equipment. Dawa Steven Sherpa, who runs the Kathmandu-based outfitter Asian Trekking, says that, these days, “sometimes there is no difference between a Sherpa and a Western guide.” [Source: Grayson Schaffer, Washington Post, April 24, 2014]
Mark Jenkins wrote in National Geographic: In the early 2000s. Conrad Anker, with his wife, Jenni, founded the Khumbu Climbing Center (KCC) in the village of Phortse to improve the mountaineering skills of Sherpas and thereby increase the safety margin for everyone on Everest. Many of the center’s 700-plus graduates are now working for outfitters on the mountain. The Sherpas, after all, are the ones who perform most of the rescues. Sherpas typically take a courses in basic and advanced mountaineering. [Source: Mark Jenkins, National Geographic, June, 2013]
“Danuru Sherpa, a KCC graduate who has summited Everest 14 times, told me he has dragged at least five people off the mountain to save their lives. “One of the obvious problems is that clients don’t respect the knowledge and experience of Sherpas,” Anker says. The Sherpas are, in a way, partly to blame. Most of them are Tibetan Buddhists whose culture and religious principles discourage confrontation. “Clients sometimes disregard their advice and die,” Anker says. “Last year was a case in point. We’re trying to help the Sherpas become more assertive.”
Sherpa Mountaineering Work
The tradition of hiring Sherpas for mountaineering expeditions began in Darjeeling in the early 1900s, where some Sherpas had gone in the 19th century to seek construction jobs and work in surveying expeditions. When the first mountaineering expedition went to Mt. Everest they were hired because the were familiar with the area and adapted to high elevations. On these expeditions they proved themselves to be the toughest and most reliable porkers, guides and climbers. The were called "Tigers" and awarded medals.
The term "sherpa" in the trekking and mountaineering trade has come to mean a mid level camp assistant or anyone who carries loads. The Sherpas who work on the high altitude expeditions can earn anywhere from US$4,000 to US$30,000 a season, according to the Washington Post. Guides can make US$2,000 for each expedition. Experienced cooks and camp staff earn up to US$5,000 a year, quite a bit money in Nepal where the annual per capita income is around US$700. Highly-respected guides can make up to US$10,000 for a single expedition.
Sherpas rarely carry loads on tourist treks. For that they hire seven-dollar-a-day Nepalese porters, who carry almost everything on their back — bags of cement, baskets filled with coke and beer, tired and injured trekkers, goats and thick electrical cables. I once saw a small boy carrying five full trekkers backpacks in his basket and it is not unusual to see women carrying 25 foot long 6-x-6-inch posts.
Some works is ver dangerous. Alan Arnette wrote in Outside: In May 2018, “two Sherpa climbers fell into a crevasse on Everest when the ladders they were crossing collapsed. The incident was captured on video by Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki’s film crew. Ladders are used to cross the deep crevasses in the Khumbu Icefall. Because the Icefall is constantly moving, the ladders need to be adjusted daily. In this case, it appears the ladder was too close to the edge. When the second Sherpa moved towards it, the ladder slipped into the crevasse and pulled the two climbers with it. This is an extremely rare occurrence on the world’s highest peak, and it’s lucky that no one was hurt. There’s a reason that climbers always clip into the safety lines — here it probably prevented a disaster. [Source: Alan Arnette, Outside, May 11, 2018]
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “Like most Sherpas, Dawa Finjhok Sherpa did not love working as a guide, carrying heavy loads and the hopes and demands of foreigners — and sometimes the foreigners themselves — up and down the world’s highest peaks. But it paid better than anything else. Many of the guides came from remote villages, and there was little work there. Some, like Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, were from Kathmandu. They knew that more conventional jobs, in construction or retail or finance or anything else, wouldn’t give them the same money for the same amount of work. But it did not mean they liked it. “I’ve almost quit this job,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said over a beer in Kathmandu one evening, “because there are so many ways to die.” [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
According to anthropologists who have studied the Sherpas the main reasons the Sherpas do the work they do, and maintain a "cheerful" countenance while doing it, was because they were well paid and ascribed to a kind of mentoring principal with a “zhindak” (a patron or protector in this case the mountaineers that hired them), which also explains how they could be devoted workers but resent being treated like servants.
Sherpas on the Move
Describing the part of the climb above Camp 2 on the South Col route of Everest by a Sherpa team in a hurry,John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “It was late May, the tail end of the Everest climbing season, when five hired Sherpas quietly left Camp 2 at 1 a.m. Into the dark they carried ropes and oxygen canisters, but no food, only a little bit of water and a plastic half-liter bottle of Coke. The Coke froze quickly in the bitter temperatures, even inside their packs. When they wanted a sip, they used a small stove to melt ice and put the bottle in the warm water to turn it back to liquid. They turned their oxygen on low at what they called the “crampon point,” an hour above Camp 2, where the trail becomes predominantly ice and climbers attach crampons, with fang-like spikes, to the soles of their boots. Sherpas typically use oxygen only in the death zone, at Camp 4 and above, but they wanted to move quickly. Oxygen was fuel, feeding the lungs and the blood, and it allowed them to keep a brisker pace than usual. Each man had two bottles, enough to last about 24 hours, they figured. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“The leader was Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, a 29-year-old guide who had been to the summit of Everest five times. About 11 a.m., the retrieval Sherpas reached Camp 4, a ghost town of abandoned tents and gear so late in the season. They heated their Cokes and sipped from the plastic bottles, but did not dawdle. Once rested, the five men stood in the midday light, put on their packs, secured their oxygen masks and kept moving, up the Triangular Face toward the Balcony of Everest, looking for a frozen man who had waited a long time for someone to take him home.
“A few hours behind them, following the same route, six more Sherpas left Camp 2 and headed to Camp 4. Their mission was to recover Paresh Nath. The danger increased with every foot of altitude toward the summit, where the air grew thinner and the chances of rescue, should anything go wrong, grew slimmer. The same threats faced by climbers from around the world were faced by Sherpas from Nepal. Above the South Summit, from the South Summit to the summit, we might have to think about it,” Mingma Sherpa said. “But below the Balcony, the only question is weather. I cannot fight the weather. The technical part, we can handle. The weather can kill us.”
Sherpas Carrying Stuff on Everest
Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic: On “the world’s highest mountain, Nima Chhiring, a 29-year-old Sherpa from the village of Khumjung with sunburned cheeks and a thatch of black hair, marched to work at 3 a.m. He had a 65-pound canister of cooking gas on his back. Behind him was the temporary village of Everest Base Camp, where the members of some 40 international expeditions were asleep in their tents or tossing restlessly in the thin air of 17,290 feet. Above him a string of headlamps flickered in the darkness, as more than 200 Sherpas and other Nepali workers filed through the Khumbu Icefall. Considered among the most hazardous sections of any regularly climbed mountain anywhere, the icefall is a steep, constantly shifting labyrinth of teetering seracs, crevasses, and contorted ice that spills 2,000 feet down a gorge between Mt. Everest’s west shoulder and Nuptse, the 25,791-foot peak that looms over Base Camp. [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, November 2014]
“Many of Nima Chhiring’s fellow Sherpas had trudged into the icefall even earlier on that morning, April 18. They’d had their typical breakfast of tea and a barley-flour porridge named tsamba, and shouldered loads packed the night before. Some were hauling ropes, snow shovels, ice anchors, and other gear they would use to set a handrail of fixed lines all the way to Everest’s summit at 29,035 feet. Others were lugging the equipment with which they would establish four intermediate camps higher on the mountain — sleeping bags, dining tents, tables, chairs, cooking pots, and even heaters, rugs, and plastic flowers to pretty up mealtime for their clients.
“On some Sherpas were traces of the roasted barley flour they had rubbed on each other’s faces during the puja ceremonies the previous day, when they petitioned Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma, the goddess who dwells on Everest, for safe passage and “long life.” A number of the climbers already had made several round-trips since the route had been opened in early April by the Sherpa specialists known as the Icefall Doctors. The line of fixed ropes and aluminum ladders spanning cliffs and seams in the ice was not markedly different from the route of recent climbing seasons, though it was closer to the avalanche-raked flank of the west shoulder, where a hanging glacier bulged ominously a thousand feet above.
“Even with loads of up to a hundred pounds, most of the Sherpas were fit enough to make the 2.1-mile climb to Camp I in three and a half hours or less. An hour above Base Camp, Nima Chhiring, who was working for a Chinese expedition, reached the area known as the Popcorn, where the route steepened through a hash of broken ice, and ladders were numerous. Further on, at a flat area known as the Football Field, climbers often paused for a rest, and it was common to hear ice groaning as the Khumbu Glacier shuddered forward at the rate of a few feet a day. Above the Football Field was another especially dangerous zone of mansion-size ice blocks and precarious towers, past which Nima Chhiring’s trip would get easier as the Khumbu Glacier leveled out in the massive white plain known as the Western Cwm.
“About 6 a.m., above the Football Field, Nima Chhiring reached the base of an ice cliff about 40 feet high. There he began the awkward task of climbing three lashed-together aluminum ladders with the heavy pack on his back, metal crampons on his boots, and an ascender in his hand that he had to clip and unclip as he moved past the anchors of the fixed rope. When he reached the top, he was dismayed to see scores of mountain workers backed up on a sloping ledge of ice about the size of a teahouse dining room. Some were standing around smoking. Some were queued up and waiting to climb down a trench on two lashed-together ladders. At least once that morning, shifting ice had caused the anchors on the low end of the down-climb ladders to come loose and had backed up traffic on the route. Those who had arrived at this section at 5 a.m. had noted long delays, even though the ladder had been reanchored. When Nima Chhiring got there an hour later, he found the anchors had come loose again. “I think there were more than a hundred people stopped there; many were down-climbing, holding on to the rope. It would take half an hour to get past the backup. At that moment I became very scared,” he said.”
Icefall Doctors and Fixing Ropes
Perhaps most important Sherpa duty, one they do start the climbing season and continue to do so climbing routes are passable and well-maintained, is fixing ropes and setting ip ladders over crevasses and icefalls that make things safer for the hundreds of climbers who will follow them. [Source: Associated Press, May, 15, 2019]
Alan Arnette wrote: “Simply put, a thin nylon rope aka “fixed line” is anchored to the mountain side marking the path aka “route” climbers should take. The rope is about the thickness of your thumb and is attached to the climber’s harness using a carabiner and a jumar. To see how the rigging is set up, Tim Mosedale has a nice description on his site. While it may seem silly that mountain climbers need a rope to mark the trial, there’s more to it than marking the path. In addition to marking the route, which is extremely useful in whiteout conditions, the fixed line also provides a safety net for a climber in the event of a fall. [Source: alanarnette.com, April 21, 2017]
“The way the ropes is attached is by using ice screws, primarily in the Icefall or very icey areas but more often by driving an aluminum picket into the snowy mountain side and attaching the rope using another segment of rope. All in all this is very time consuming and it takes days to get the route set to the summit. That is why we rarely see summits in April as the Tibetans and Sherpas are busy establishing the route while the climbers are acclimatizing.
“In general the route is set by dedicated teams of Sherpas on the Nepal side and Tibetans on the Tibet side. On the south side, the Icefall Doctors, a team of eight dedicated Sherpas install aka “fix” the route from Everest Base Camp to Camp 2 in the Western Cwm each year. They first scout the route for the safest and most direct path, then they carry on their backs hundreds of pounds of rope, ladders, ice screws and pickets into the Icefall and the Western Cwm to create the route.
“The ropes must be reset each season because the ultraviolet rays from the sun will rot the ropes causing them to fail under the weight of a climber’s fall. In addition, the route must be maintained daily through the season given the Icefall is a moving glacier and can move up to three feet a day. This movement will cause ladders to drop into crevasses, bend them or move them into a dangerous area. The Doctors inspect the route at least once a day throughout the season to keep it open and safe.
“From Camp 2 to the summit on the south side, a coalition of Sherpas from multiple commercial teams work together to set the route. This is more of tradition to have the commercial teams do this work but there are calls to have the Icefall Doctors assume responsibility from EBC to summit. Again, they carry ropes and the anchors on their backs and work together to fix the “fixed rope” aka safety lines to the mountain side. In 2017, a major change occurred when the Nepal government allowed the ropes and anchors to be helicoptered to Camp 2 thus saving an estimated 78 Sherpa loads thru the Icefall. This was a pure safety decision. On both sides the labor and material are funded thru climbing permits or collections from the teams.
Describing how it was done on Everest in the late 2010s, John Branch wrote in the New York Times: “Every spring, as hopeful climbers from around the world trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, an elevation of about 17,500 feet, to begin acclimating for a summit push in May, a team of local Sherpas is hired to create the season’s route up the mountain. They establish the course up more than two vertical miles that hundreds of others will follow. First, the “icefall doctors” set ropes, ladders and makeshift bridges through the notoriously dangerous, ever-shifting Khumbu Icefall immediately above Base Camp. Others keep moving upward, setting anchors and stringing ropes until they reach the summit. The process can take weeks, and is often delayed by bad weather. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
The route to the summit of Everest changes slightly each year, depending on variable conditions, like the snowpack or snow slides. In 2017, it opened on May 15, later than usual. The new route was strung near previous ones, and the worn, faded ropes of past seasons could be seen threaded among the rocks and through the snow.“Only when the ropes are fixed to the top does the Everest climbing season open. It usually lasts only a few weeks, squeezed between the route opening in early May and the projected start of the monsoon at the end of the month.”
Looking for Dead Climbers
John Branch wrote in the New York Times: When climbing season begins, “among the first on the slopes are Sherpas with their oxygen masks and ice axes looking for the dead” from the previous year “and figuring out how to bring them down. The leader of team looking for two dead Indian climbers Goutam Ghosh and Paresh Nath,Ghosh was Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, a 29-year-old guide who had been to the summit of Everest five times. “He received a call a couple of weeks before from Mingma Sherpa, the owner of Seven Summits. The company needed an experienced guide to lead an expedition to retrieve a pair of bodies, he was told. Guides often did two, even three, major expeditions in the Himalayas each spring. By late May, many were either already home or exhausted. Mingma Sherpa dangled a US$3,000 payout for a few days of work and scrounged up about a dozen men. He promised beer if they were successful. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
But Mingma Sherpa, an experienced climber himself, said no mission to recover bodies was off limits, if the price was right. ““If it all went right, then, the bodies of the Indian climbers would return from Everest. They would be among the highest-altitude recoveries ever made. The first they found was Paul... He was steps from the well-worn route below Camp 4, roughly 26,000 feet above sea level. He was faceup, but only the toes of his boots stuck out of the fresh snow. It took four hours to chip and pry him from his icy grave and another 12 to drag him to Camp 2, where a helicopter carried the body to Base Camp. A few days later, thousands crowded Bankura’s rough and narrow streets for a miles-long procession of Paul’s body, which was carried on the open bed of Paul’s small truck. The procession led to the banks of the Dwarakeswar River, where the body was cremated and the soul set free, according to Hindu tradition. There was heartache, but also closure.
Back on Everest, above where Paul’s body was extricated, two of the Sherpas moved up to Camp 4. At roughly 26,000 feet, higher than all but about 15 of earth’s peaks, it sits at the edge of the oxygen-depleted death zone and is the last rest stop for climbers before their final push to the summit. The Sherpas searched the abandoned tents, some shredded to ribbons by wind, until they found the body of another of the missing Indian climbers. They knew it was Nath, the tailor, because he had only one hand, the other lost in a childhood firecracker accident.
“The rope-fixing team returned down the mountain and reported seeing a body most of the way up the Triangular Face, below the Balcony — just where Goutam Ghosh’s body was last seen, about 360 days before. “I think that was the body of the Indian climber,” Chime Chundub Gurung, one member of the team, said at the airport in Kathmandu a few days later. “The body was upside down with legs up. It was very close to the new rope. I didn’t touch it, and I didn’t see the face. I only saw boots, and he was wearing mountaineering clothes.”
“The hundreds of climbers below, eager for the route to open and seeing a forecast for good weather, began to stream toward the summit. Within days, dozens reached the summit and came back again. Few of them saw Paresh Nath’s body, stashed away on a far side of Camp 4. But every one of them climbed within feet of Ghosh’s body.
Bringing a Dead Body Down from the Death Zone and Camp 4
Branch wrote: “The men were able to pry Ghosh’s hood loose and pull it over his face. They tied the hood with rope so they would not have to see the face. “At first when we saw him, we were a little bit afraid,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “If we don’t see the skin, it’s easier.” The Sherpas connected Ghosh to a new rope, anchored in a rock about 30 feet uphill, and used ice axes to dig and pry the body from the snow. When the body moved, it moved as one piece, without torque, all the limbs, muscles and joints frozen solid. Pulling on a wrist turned the body all the way to the toes. Once the body was freed from the mountain’s grip, the men hammered blocks of ice from it. Dawa Finjhok Sherpa estimated the load weighed more than 300 pounds, double Ghosh’s weight when he was alive. Two men could not lift the body. Three struggled to maneuver it.. [Source: John Branch, New York Times, December 19, 2017]
“They tied ropes through Ghosh’s carabiner. They lowered him by rigging a pulley-type system through the same anchors used for climbers attempting the summit. They used Ghosh’s jumar, a ratcheting device used in climbing, to help belay the load, sliding it downhill one stretch of rope at a time. They had the mountain to themselves above Camp 4, which they could see far below in the saddle between Everest and Lhotse. “It was easier because there was a lot of snow this year, so the rocks were covered in snow and we could slide him,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “But the snowy, flat areas were hard. He was heavy.”
“Not far from where they found Ghosh’s body that morning was another body that Dawa Finjhok Sherpa estimated had been there for five or six years. And somewhere nearby, they knew, was the body of a doctor from Alabama who had died a few days before. There was no plan to bring it down.
“It took an hour to drag Ghosh’s body to Camp 4...The recovery team had a rolled-up plastic toboggan that it intended to use as a stretcher, but Ghosh’s body was too stiff and contorted to fit on it properly. So the men found an abandoned blue plastic tarp, wrapped it around Ghosh’s lower body and lashed it tight with mismatched pieces of rope. They found a thin, gray foam sleeping pad and did the same thing for his upper body.The men tried to keep the body on its back, but it slid better facedown. Soon the snowsuit was ripped open at the elbows, spilling down feathers. By nightfall, the team was pulling, lifting and sliding Ghosh down the mountain
“They rested in the middle of the night at Camp 3, which is carved into the precipitous ice of the Lhotse Face. A Seven Summits cook had hiked up from Camp 2 to meet them, and fed them noodles and juice. The Sherpas trudged downhill from there. “I started to make a system to belay the body below Camp 3,” Dawa Finjhok Sherpa said. “My partner was holding the rope, but he fell asleep. He let the rope slip just as I was hooking up our system. Three of us held on as tight as we could and we screamed. We all got rope burns. If we wouldn’t have held on, the body would have slipped down the mountain.” At dawn, Ghosh’s body arrived at the crampon point. The Sherpas assigned to get his body had been working nearly 28 hours.” Not long after that it was loaded on a helicopter near Camp 2 at more than 21,000 feet, the highest spot on the mountain that most helicopters can reasonably reach, and was flown to Kathmandu.
Fistfight with Sherpas On Everest
Ueli Steck, a famous Swiss speed climber broke many records and died after falling around 1,000 meters on Nuptse near Everest in 2017, was involved in an infamous brawl with Sherpas around Camp 2 in 2011 during attempt with professional climbers Simone Moro and Jonathan Griffith. According to the Washington Post: Sherpas were working to repair rope lines on the mountain, but” Steck “and his fellow climbers didn’t intend to use them. They wanted to climb to Camp 3, where they already had tents, and sleep. [Source: Katie Mettler, Washington Post, May 1, 2017]
The Sherpas became upset that Steck’s group was bypassing their request to keep climbers away while they repaired the ropes. The narrative gets fuzzy after that. The climbers and the Sherpas offer differing accounts, but Steck told Outside that Moro swore at the Sherpas in Nepali during a heated moment, further escalating tensions. Eventually they rappelled back down to Camp 3 to talk things out, Steck said, but were met by a seething crowd of 100 Sherpas with covered faces. “When I saw they had their faces covered, I knew this was going to be really bad,” he said.
“Punches and rocks were thrown, Steck said, claiming the Sherpas tried to kill them. “They said we had one hour to pack up and leave, and that we should not come back to the West Face, West Ridge, or Lhotse,” Steck told Outside. “They said that if we weren’t gone in an hour, they were going to kill all three of us. That was the worst thing.” Both sides later signed a peace treaty and left the mountain. “I’m not saying I’m never coming back, but give me time,” Steck told Outside. “I need to figure it out. There are many other mountains I can climb. Everest is Everest, and Everest lost a lot, but it’s still the highest mountain in the world.”
Outside reported: Climber Melissa Arnot acknowledged that she stepped between the western climbers and a large group of Sherpas, but declined to go into details. Guide Garrett Madison came forward and wrote that, before the altercation, expedition leaders had a meeting and agreed that no climbers would distract or disrupt the Sherpas as they fixed rope above Camp 2, which sits at 23,000 feet. The Sherpas said Moro’s team took them by surprise by climbing above them that day, and claimed that members of the team insulted and threatened them. On Monday, a Nepal army major stood witness as both sides signed a peace agreement and agreed to move on. After that, Steck left the mountain for the season and returned to Kathmandu, where he met with Everest record-keeper Elizabeth Hawley.
Ueli Steck’s Side of Everest the Fight
Ueli Steck told Tim Neville of Outside.online: “They did not leave right away. I was talking with them for a while when Simone came across. He was close to the belay and hadn’t said anything yet when the Sherpa leader starts shouting and waving his ice axe at him, trying to hit him. Simone said to him in Nepali, “What are you doing motherfucker?!” Maybe that wasn’t the best word to use, but I can understand in this moment that Simone would be pissed off. If you are on a 50-degree face and someone is swinging an axe at you, you might get at a little, you know, loud. [Source: Tim Neville, Outside.online, May 2, 2013]
“It went back and forth and I was out of this discussion. Then the leader said they were done fixing ropes. I tried to convince them to stay and finish the job, but they packed up and left. We were like, shit, what do we do now? The commercial expeditions wanted to go up the next day. So we waited until they left and then we started fixing the rope to Camp 3 for them.
“On the way down, Simone was radioing to Greg [Vernovage, leader of IMG’s Everest expedition] that, yes, we are coming down, and we want to discuss this. Greg knew it was not a good situation. He said it’s really bad. So when we got there, we sat down in our tent to discuss it with him. He said the Sherpas were really pissed about Simone swearing. Then Melissa Arnot [an American climber with four Everest summits] comes to our tent and says the Sherpas will be here in 30 seconds. I said, OK, I’ll go out and talk to them. We all three went out and this whole crowd was there, maybe 100 people. When I saw they had their faces covered, I knew this was going to be really bad.
“They had big rocks and I think the leader was in front. I went to say something but couldn’t because I got punched in the face and hit in the head with a rock. By this time, Simone and Jonathan were already running away. After I got hit by the rock, Melissa stepped in between me and them—which was good for me, because otherwise they would have killed me for sure.
“There was no discussion. It was just, No! No! No!...When I got punched, I was like, fuck, do I fight back? But with 100 people, if you fight back it will make it worse. I just hoped they wouldn’t punch too hard. But when you get hit with a rock, you know they’re just trying to kill you....There was absolutely no control. Imagine 17 people, talking some bullshit, I don’t know what they told them, but in two hours there are 100 people trying to kill three people. This is insane and totally unacceptable.
“It went back and forth, and then someone was pushing me into the tent and saying for me to hide. From inside, I could just see Melissa and Greg standing in front of the tent with all these people who were saying to get me out and that they were going to kill me first. In the meantime, they were throwing huge rocks into the tent, the kind that, if they hit you in the head, you’d be dead immediately....Somebody went to go get Simone and brought him back to the tent, because the Sherpas wanted him to apologize. Jonathan was hiding behind a rock. When Simone got there, they immediately punched him, and then someone pushed him back into the tent. They then wanted him to come out on his knees, which he did, saying, “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” Then they started kicking his face and someone tried to stab him with a pen knife. They used rocks to hit us, crampons even. I tell you, they tried to kill us.
“Simone got back into the tent again and you could hear them saying that we weren’t supposed to be up there, that we didn’t have a permit for Lhotse. But we did. They tried to find a lot of small things to cause us trouble. They said we had one hour to pack up and leave, and that we should not come back to the West Face, West Ridge, or Lhotse. They said that if we weren’t gone in an hour, they were going to kill all three of us. That was the worst thing.
“There were people in the mob who climbed summits with me last year...We had this chance to retreat, and we were thinking, how do we get out of here as fast as possible? We tried to find a way down where no one could see us. We were on a mission, going into deep valleys and crevasses and checking over our shoulders to see if they were coming after us. We crawled on our knees so they couldn’t see us. Then we snuck down the route as far as possible to a big ladder, because if they chased us, I knew we could cross that ladder and then cut it loose so they couldn’t follow. That was the plan....If this had happened on the north side in China, those people would be in jail, no question. But here in Nepal? We made an agreement, and the companies with the Sherpas said they would take action. You just have to trust that they will, but it’s not my problem. I don’t need to come back to Everest.
Sherpa Everest Records
Highest number of times to reach the summit: 24 by Kami Rita Sherpa from Nepal on May 20, 2019. Both Apa Sherpa and Phurba Tashi Sherpa reached the summit of Everest 21 times.
Most ascents by a woman: 9 by Lhakpa Sherpa from Nepal
Most summits without supplemental oxygen: 10 by Ang Rita from Nepal on May 23, 1996
Most summits by a foreigner (non-Nepali or Tibetan): 15 by Dave Hahn from the United States
Most deaths in one day at Everest: 22, 16 of them Sherpas, in the Everest base camp area on April 25, 2015 as a result of the avalanche caused by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed about 8,000 people, mostly in Nepal. [Source: Wikipedia]
Fastest ascents: Fastest ascent from Everest South Base Camp (with supplemental oxygen): 10 hours 56 min and 46 sec by Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa from Nepal on May 26, 2003
Fastest ascent without supplemental oxygen and fastest ascent from Everest North Base Camp: 16 hours and 45 minutes by Hans Kammerlander from Italy on May 24, 1996. [Source: Wikipedia]
Longest stay on the summit: 21 hours by Babu Chiri Sherpa from Nepal on May 6, 1999. According to Guinness World Records: Babu Chhiri Sherpa of Nepal completed a stay of 21 hours at the summit of Mt. Everest without the use of bottled oxygen in May 1999.
In 2003, Mingkipa Sherpa, a girl who had just turned 15, became the youngest person to scale Mt. Everest at the time. Ignoring a ban on climbers under the age of 16, she climbed the mountain with her 24-year-old brother and 30-year-old sister and beat the record set by a 15-year-old Sherpa eight-grade student named Temba Tsheri, who reached the summit in May 2001. He lost five fingers to frostbite during an attempt the year before when he was forced to turn back only 50 meters from the summit. He lost his fingers after he bared his hands for 45 minutes to tie his shoes.
See Separate Article MT. EVEREST RECORDS AND FIRSTS: MOST CLIMBS, WOMEN, WITH AND WITHOUT OXYGEN
Sherpa Deaths
Sherpa work is dangerous and often fatal. According to Outside magazine the annual fatality rate for Everest Sherpas from 2004 to 2014 was 4,053 per 100,000 compared 25 in 100,000 for miners and 124 in 100,000 for commercial fishermen.. The figure included to the 16 Sherpas who died in the 2014 avalanches. The fatality rate was 1,332 per 100,000 from 2000 to 2010. Many Sherpas have died needlessly, in many cases falling into crevasses in the process of rescuing foreigners and falling to their deaths because they were not secured to a rope. [Source: Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, May 23, 2016]
A total of 304 people have died attempting to reach the summit of Mt. Everest as of 2020, including 12 in 2019 and five in 2018. The first to die were seven Sherpa porters working for reckless British explorer George Mallory in 1924. As of 2017, 288 people (173 Westerners and 115 Sherpas) had died on Everest from 1924.
In 1984, an attempt to recover the corpse of a German mountaineer ended with two Sherpas being killed. In 1997, nine people died on Mt. Everest. On the Southwest face a Sherpa porter with a Korean team slipped and fell 3.050 meters (10,000 feet) to his death after his rope apparently snapped.
In May 2001,Baba Chiri, a Sherpa who broke the world's record for the fastest trip up Mt. Everest and stayed the longest on the summit without oxygen, died in a fall. In 2016, twenty-five-year-old Phurba Sherpa plunged to his death while attempting to fix a route for climbers about 160 meters (500 feet) below the summit.
As of the early 1990s, Sherpas accounted for about a third of the 175 climbers who have died on Everest up to that times. Near the end of the Khumbu icefall is a series of Buddhist shrines with stone tablets engraved with the names of the dead Sherpas and the expedition they were on. Many older Sherpas have lost the children on the slopes of Everest.Mingma Tsering, a climbing patriarch who was 73 in 1992 and had won about every mountaineering distinction a Sherpa could achieve, lost one son in an avalanche that swept him down 3,000 feet. He lived for two days after the fall. After he died rescuers asked Mingma Tsering if he wanted the body of his son recovered. "I don't want someone else to die carrying him down," he said. The body was lowered into a crevasse. On 1991 his other son fell 13 meters into a crevasse on the Khumbu icefall, but luckily, he escaped with only a broken ankle. [Source: "Gatekeeper of the Himalaya" by Jim Carrier, National Geographic, December 1992].
Sixteen Sherpas Killed in Khumbu Icefall Avalanche
In April 2014, 16 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche on the Khumbu Icefall. It was Everest’s deadliest event ever. Soon after it happened, Gopal Sharma of Reuters reported: An avalanche swept down a slope of Mt. Everest, killing nine Nepali mountaineering guides at the beginning of the main climbing season, a Tourism Ministry official said. The avalanche hit the most popular route to the mountain’s peak and three Nepali guides were injured and some people may be missing, Tilak Ram Pandey, an official at the ministry’s mountaineering department, told Reuters. The avalanche hit the sherpa guides between base camp and camp 1 Pandey said. Madhusudan Burlakoti, a senior official at the ministry, said helicopters and rescuers on foot had been sent to the site. [Source: Gopal Sharma, Reuters, April 18, 2014]
Video captured the Sherpas minutes before they were killed in the avalanche.Ellen Barry wrote in the New York Times: “The Sherpas setting off up the Khumbu Icefall on the morning of April 18 were young, strong, healthy men. They were also, it is clear from the video that one of them shot that morning, a little nervous. When they move forward, you can see why: Heavy, clanking loads are strapped to their backs, and they are waiting in line to climb a ladder, inching their way up an ice field known to be one of the most dangerous places on Mt. Everest, under a “hanging glacier” that mountaineers have been eyeing anxiously for years. “Are you happy?” Ang Kaji Sherpa asked his friend. His friend’s responding laugh is not happy; it has an edge to it. Then Ang Kaji turns his viewfinder to the mountain peaks, blindingly white as light from the rising sun slides down them. [Source: Ellen Barry, New York Times May 8, 2014]
“Nearly all of the men in the video would be killed around 30 minutes later, their bodies smashed under house-sized chunks of ice that broke loose from the glacier and barreled down the ice field. Last month’s disaster set off a reassessment of the labor contract at the center of the Everest tourist industry, in which Sherpas, who are mostly members of a small ethnic group renowned for its mountaineering skills, receive extra pay (high by Nepali standards, not by Western ones) in exchange for incurring extra risk to their lives.
Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic: “So vast is the amphitheater of mountains around Everest Base Camp that climbers often see avalanches before they hear them. The sound follows like thunder after lightning, an oceanic hiss as cataracts of snow and ice and rock pour down steep gullies or over the lip of hanging valleys. But the avalanche of April 18 sounded different, especially to Sherpas who heard it while in the icefall itself. Almost all of them described it the same way: a deep tuuung, like the blow of a hammer against a muffled bell or a plucked string from some titanic bass. A section of ice shaped like an enormous canine tooth, 113 feet tall and weighing 16 to 30 million pounds, exploded off the great ice mantle on the west shoulder of Everest and came hurtling down, fracturing into pieces and driving before it a wall of wind. As it gathered momentum and material, some Sherpas thought the avalanche took minutes to reach them; others said it struck in a matter of seconds. About two dozen climbers were directly in the path of the avalanche, and many others were at the margins above and below. [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, November 2014]
“At 6:45 a.m. Kurt Hunter, the Everest Base Camp manager of Madison Mountaineering, was on a radio check with Dorje Khatri, the company’s 46-year-old sirdar... Khatri had just gotten to the top of the triple ladders. Suddenly over the radio Hunter heard “shouting and yelling” and then “absolute silence.” As the roar of the avalanche reached Base Camp directly, he dashed out of the communications tent to see the upper icefall consumed in a boiling cloud.
Sherpa Survivors of 2014 in Khumbu Icefall Avalanche
Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic: “Hustling down for ten minutes, Nima Chhiring had reached the Football Field when the sound of the tuuung confirmed his worst fears. In seconds he was plastered in freezing rime, one of many survivors who staggered to their feet cloaked like ghosts in snow and ice. Pemba Sherpa, a young Everest veteran from the village of Phortse who had departed Base Camp at 4 a.m. on an acclimatization hike with a client from Alaska, had just reached the Football Field. Hit by a rush of wind, he looked up to see “a block of ice as large as a big house” bowling off the west shoulder. He bolted downhill with his client, and they threw themselves behind an ice formation as the sky was blotted out. [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, November 2014]
“Karna Tamang, a 29-year-old guide with five Everest summits, had left Base Camp at 3 a.m. He was less than five minutes above the broken ladder when he heard the tuuung. “I had no chance to run,” he recalled. “There was a shocking wind. To protect myself, I got down on my knees by a large block of ice and tried to save my face. I was covered by two inches of snow.” Babu Sherpa was about a minute above the broken ladder in a group of six Sherpas. “We huddled together. When the snow cleared, I looked down, and there was nobody below me,” he said.
“Fifteen minutes before the avalanche, Chhewang Sherpa, a 19-year-old working for New Zealand-based Adventure Consultants, had scraped through the section where the broken ladder had been. He was on his first Everest expedition and traveling with his brother-in-law, Kaji Sherpa, a 39-year-old father of three. Kaji clambered up a small ice cliff, secured to the fixed rope by his safety line. When the avalanche hit, Chhewang unclipped from the fixed rope and ran, and then crouched under his pack. As he later told his uncle Chhongba Sherpa, the Nepal-based director of the Khumbu Climbing Center, ice severed Kaji’s safety line and knocked his brother-in-law unconscious. Chhewang was able to catch him and drag him to a safer spot. He poured a hot drink from Kaji’s thermos, hoping to revive him. “Kaji slowly woke up. He had a radio, I pressed the speak button because both of Kaji’s arms were not working at all. He said, ‘Please save me!’ If I hadn’t caught him, he would never have been seen again, because the crevasse was so deep.”
“Pasang Dorje Sherpa, a 20-year-old working for Seattle-based Alpine Ascents International, was climbing with two other AAI Sherpas, Ang Gyalzen and Tenzing Chottar. It was Pasang’s second season on Everest. He was carrying a large dining tent pole, a thermos, and a coil of tent rope. When he heard the tuuung, he and Ang Gyalzen were about 45 seconds beyond the broken ladder — Tenzing Chottar only steps behind them. Tenzing, 29, was another Everest rookie. “I saw the ice coming, and I thought, We are gone, I am going to die,” Pasang Dorje recalled. “The wind was pushing me. I dived behind a big serac. If I hadn’t been clipped into the fixed rope, I would have been swept away.” The ice slammed the tent pole against his head. It shattered his thermos and cut the rope. Flying ice punched a hole in Ang Gyalzen’s down jacket. When the devouring cloud cleared two minutes later, the two Sherpas hugged each other, then looked around in horror. What had been a yawning chasm in the icefall requiring ropes and ladders to cross was now filled in with ice blocks as big as tables and couches. “Tenzing! Tenzing!” they shouted in vain.
“Countries and Their Cultures”UTAN: TIBETAN INFLUENCE AND INVASIONS, BUDDHISM AND NGAWANG NAMGYAL
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022