The Call of Everest Read online

  RISKY BUSINESS

  Historian Audrey Salkeld stresses that Sherpas have paid a disproportionately high price in lives lost on Everest. In 1922, seven Sherpa porters were buried under an avalanche on Everest’s North Col, and in 1974 six were swept away by an avalanche in the Western Cwm. In the first 70 years of Everest climbing, 53 Nepali and Indian Sherpas were killed—more than a third of the total climbing deaths in that period. Because of their contribution to route fixing and ferrying supplies, especially in the Khumbu Icefall, Sherpas are exposed to riskier parts of the mountain than their employers. Now expeditions are required to carry a $4,000 life insurance policy for every Sherpa who enters the icefall.

  If a Sherpa dies on Everest, the body is brought to a low ridge near 15,000 feet called Chukpo Lare (“rich man’s yak corral”) for cremation. Most expedition Sherpas have relatives who were cremated or memorialized here, and they always stop to recite a prayer for their benefit.

  “Climbing is exciting but dangerous,” a young Sherpa named Lhakpa says. “It’s best left to young, single men. We don’t gain much spiritual merit when climbing, unless we act selflessly in some way, or save someone’s life.” Like many, Lhakpa plans to build a lodge and invest in the “bigness”—business—end of trekking.

  VOICES

  PRESERVING CULTURE BY MANAGING PARKS

  I have seen a lot of changes in Nepal since when I was young. We had a traditional way of living that was simple. The forest was intact. There was no disturbance from outsiders. But when Hillary climbed Everest in 1953, everything changed. The flood of tourists has put pressure on the local population, which is only about 3,500 Sherpa. And the pressure is not only environmental, but also cultural. That’s why I chose to study park management.

  Linking culture and environment together is a strong message. To preserve culture and environment it is important to create systems that benefit both. I think the best way to do that is to make sure that local people feel and have ownership for their resources.

  MANY MORE VISITORS

  Between 1966 and 1970, the number of tourists quadrupled to 46,000, and by 1976 it had passed 100,000. Since 1997, annual tourist arrivals have averaged well above 400,000. Over 50 percent of these visitors go to protected areas.

  Tourism in Khumbu, the Everest region, has had a wide variety of impacts. With the closure of the northern border, the Sherpas’ centuries-old trade with Tibet has been replaced by tourism and international climbing expeditions as a source of cash income. Tourism has created new jobs and opportunities; it has boosted the living standard of local communities with better health care, education, and infrastructure.

  On the negative side, tourism has shared much blame for accelerating environmental problems in the mountains. Garbage produced by trekking and mountaineering in the Everest region poses a significant environmental problem, and has become highly publicized. This is more than an aesthetic issue, as environmental pollution is also involved—not least with the indiscriminate dumping of old batteries, and nonbiodegradable wastes.

  PARKS PROTECT THE CULTURE

  We have nine national parks, and eight of them are managed by the army. In Makalu-Barun National Park we did the opposite—we only hired staff from the community. Since they are from there, they have so much knowledge about the area. And we found that we could put a stop to poaching if we recruited poachers’ sons and daughters into the Scout program. Suddenly, everyone has a stake in the park that they want to protect.

  With The Mountain Institute (TMI) our goal with local communities is to provide the example of what can be done. We ask communities to list their needs in a community consultation: school support, infrastructure, et cetera. Then we help them see that to gain something you have to work and explore your options. All we need to do is guide them. Then they will feel empowered to act in the future.

  I developed a concept in 2003 called the Sacred Sites Trail. Instead of having all the tourists simply travel in a straight line from Namche to Tengboche and back again as it said in their 15-year-old Lonely Planet guide, I wanted all the communities to have a chance to benefit from tourism. We need to think through every aspect of the project in order to make it successful.

  —ANG RITA SHERPA The senior program manager of The Mountain Institute’s Asia (Nepal) Program, Ang Rita Sherpa works on ecotourism and sustainable development.

  PAST WAYS

  In 1963, Sherpas led lives vastly different from today. “Most Sherpas bathed only once a year—at the start of the monsoon, during a two-week period known as Maal-chu,” recalls Sange Dorjee, who now lives in Wyoming. “Before the summer festivals we washed virtually everything—clothes, personal items, and our bodies. It had a wonderful purifying effect.” Maal-chu is followed by the festival of Phang-ngi, in June—when the naks (female yaks) and cow-yak crossbreeds produce the richest, most delicious milk, which is churned into phangmar, an exceptionally rich butter.

  Kancha, of Namche—a veteran of the 1953 and ’63 Everest expeditions—recalls making countless trading trips with yak trains to Tibet. Since then the flow of people and goods has reversed direction. “Sherpas used to endure hardship to make a small amount of money from the Tibetans. Now poor Tibetan traders climb over the Nangpa La to earn a small amount of money from us.” But trade between Khumbu and the Tibetan Plateau may have entered a long slide. Sherpas can get all the (iodized) salt they need from India. And the Tibetans are connected by a paved road to the rest of Tibet, and China.

  There are barely enough yaks in Khumbu to form a trading caravan, anyway. The word for “yak” used to be synonymous with the term for “wealth,” and the families who owned the most yaks were the richest and most respected people in Khumbu. In an about-face, they are now the poorest. The youth needed to herd yaks have realized that foreign visitors are easier to care for than livestock, and tourists don’t need attention year-round.

  “Sherpas fear that the day will come when we no longer raise yaks,” says Ang Rita. “When I was young, 16 families from my village—Khumjung—raised yaks. Now only three do.” It’s no longer profitable to keep yaks for seasonal load carrying, or for milk. Most milk now comes from outside Khumbu; powdered varieties from Holland and Denmark are preferred.

  Many young Sherpas have forgotten—or aren’t keen to speak—their tribal languages. In Sherpa homes in the cities, Nepali, English, and Hindi are becoming more frequently spoken than the native Sherpa tongue. The culture, and attachment to it, remain strong, but so are opportunities and distractions. Partly through cinema and satellite television, Sherpa youth have seen extraordinary, beguiling new worlds. The existence of these bountiful lands has been confirmed by newly rich relatives’ tales of odysseys to the West.

  Education and wealth mean that many Sherpas can hire lowlanders to till their fields and harvest their barley and potatoes. They no longer need to carry loads, guide trips, or even run their trekking lodges. Increasingly, they lease their wayside inns to lowlanders of ethnic groups with names such as Rai, Tamang, and Gurung—many of whom are perfectly happy to quietly adopt the higherstatus “Sherpa” name as their own.

  PRESENT CHALLENGES

  In a development that is slowly tugging at the fabric of their culture, Sherpas have come under pressure to sell their family tracts to outsiders. Nepal forbids discrimination in the sale of land, so the Sherpas are obliged to honor reasonable offers. Preserving Sherpa cultural heritage in this context is difficult, however, because the lowlanders have no historic link to the deity-animated landscape, to the valley’s sacred sites, or the forests and pastures that have been stewarded for generations.

  Modern life has introduced modern challenges. Ngawang Karsang, a former doctor at Kunde, links some of the current diseases and afflictions to changing socioeconomic conditions.

  “In the 1960s and ’70s, alcoholism was common,” he says. “Expedition Sherpas would drink before the expedition to get their courage up, then drink after the expedition to celebrate.” Recently, however,
he has noticed higher incidences of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, hypertension, and strokes. Packaged, processed foods have found their way into Khumbu—indeed, into many high Himalayan valleys.

  PRESERVING SHERPA WAYS

  Some Sherpas, concerned by these losses of tradition, have made laudable efforts to preserve them. Former park warden Lhakpa Norbu has written a book documenting Sherpa ceremonies and material culture, and he is co-authoring a Sherpa language dictionary with the Tengboche Lama. Likewise, a young man named Lhakpa Sonam has turned a traditional house, furnished with original brass and wooden utensils, into a museum—even though many similar houses remain in active use. Other Sherpas have established funds and foundations that channel support for preserving monuments.

  Meanwhile, in a village in Japan, an exact replica of the Takshindu monastery has been constructed by five Sherpa carpenters; the Tengboche Lama and a group of his monks traveled there to consecrate the structure and perform the traditional Mani Rimdu dance-drama ritual.

  Khumbu has enjoyed a fragile cultural and environmental balance for decades. But the late Trulshig Rinpoche, abbot of Rongphu monastery in the 1940s and ’50s, long ago predicted that much attention would be focused on Everest, and that people would “suffer hardship as a result of negative deeds generated in her vicinity.” The Tengboche Lama, too, has suggested that the noise and the fumes of helicopters can disturb the deities of the hidden valley, which can result in calamities. Helicopter and plane crashes occur with greater frequency—though this could be attributed to the greatly increased air traffic.

  Yet the land and people are remarkably resilient. Some of those who deeply respect the Buddhist traditions also regard the conservatism of the high lamas as antiquated in the modern age. At the same time, the monasteries benefit from the wealth that tourism and new enterprises have generated in their communities. Remarkably, the enrollment of monks and nuns has not declined over the past few decades.

  SHERPAS IN AMERICA

  The first Sherpas to visit the United States came on a State Department-sponsored goodwill tour that was tacked on to the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. The five wide-eyed high-altitude Sherpas began their trip at the White House, where President Kennedy awarded them (and the American team members) National Geographic’s Hubbard Medal.

  A generation later, descendants of several of the 1963 Sherpas have settled in America, where they are thriving. Typically, Sherpas land first in Queens, New York. They drive taxis, wash dishes, or pump gas—entry-level jobs on a socioeconomic ladder formed of ambition and hard work. A number now work as commercial airline pilots, doctors, and businesspeople.

  Everest gave the Sherpas a towering head start. But few have returned to Nepal, which still suffers an unstable political and business climate. Over time, this one-way emigration trend may reverse as new opportunities arise in the natural- and tourism-resource-rich Himalaya.

  Already a handful of Sherpas have questioned whether relocating to the U.S. is the right choice. “I think some of us are becoming too much like Americans,” says Daya Yangji Sherpa, a resident of Jackson Heights. “Now divorce has happened among Sherpas here—and it can be bitter and expensive, with lawyers getting involved endlessly. It’s crazy.”

  To weather the special challenges—many of them financial—that go with life in America, a group of expatriate Sherpas bought and renovated a church in Queens. It houses a social welfare organization called the Sherpa Kyidug and provides a gathering place (online and in Queens) and cultural tent pole for American Sherpas. (Kyidug is said to be a combination of kyi, happiness, and dug, suffering—referring to weddings and funerals, the milestone events that mark the principal times the American Sherpas are drawn together.) Still, some of the elders and middle-aged talk of returning to Khumbu to retire—rather than die in a foreign land.

  TRADING PLACES

  Ching Drolma is a Namche Bazar innkeeper with an animated smile. Like many middle-aged Sherpa women, she was a part-time farmer and yak herder and now works day and night tending to trekkers’ needs. As she pounds away on a slab of male water buffalo meat with a wooden mallet—tenderizing it into shape to become a “yak” steak—she pauses. A gleeful smile creeps onto her face.

  “I have an idea,” she announces buoyantly. “All of you Americans seem to like our mountains and our houses and culture. Why don’t you all come here and live in our houses—and we’ll all move to America and live in your houses?”

  SHERPAS AT BASE Camp are all smiles as they watch a movie after a day spent working to support the climbers. Sherpas summit the mountain in higher numbers than other climbers, and they are also more likely to have multiple summits.

  This has been suggested before, but the line is always good for a laugh. This time, though, she is serious. She is sharing a recognition that we are all part of a global community, with few insurmountable boundaries. She is also underscoring how we all tend to idealize the world in which the other lives.

  VOICES

  GIFTS FROM A GODDESS

  Standing at the lhap-so, our makeshift Buddhist shrine at Everest Base Camp, I thanked Miyolangsangma, the goddess who lives here, for welcoming me into her home. Then I headed upward through the icefall to meet the members of our expedition at Camp II. Bounding across ladders over deep crevasses, I noticed ice screws loosening in the late May sun. On Everest, sunshine is a blessing and a curse. The sun’s warmth is welcome, but it causes the ice to melt. Large seracs crumble, overhangs avalanche, and pinnacles topple.

  We had spent almost eight weeks waiting for the summit window, the longest delay I had ever experienced. Climbers had lost weight and muscle strength, and they spoke increasingly of changing weather patterns and global warming. Perhaps Miyolangsangma, weary of playing the perennial hostess, needed a rest.

  For Sherpas, Miyolangsangma is the traditional supplier of food and wealth. But by allowing us to climb Everest, she has provided us with more than this. She has given our people education, medicine, and opportunities to work, and she has opened our eyes to a world beyond our valley. Without her blessings and without mountaineering expeditions, we would have remained isolated in our Khumbu villages with little means of improving our future.

  A FICKLE GODDESS

  At Camp II, I heard the summit weather forecast for the coming days: 50 mph winds, snow, and a windchill factor of 20 degrees below zero. It would require another two days of climbing for our expedition members to be in place for a summit attempt and, given the weather predictions, it did not look favorable. Miyolangsangma, however, often changes her mind.

  Two days later we climbed to the South Col, Camp IV, the last stop before the summit. The team members rested fitfully in tents blown nearly flat by a freezing wind, while I peered out at clouds that broke like ocean waves across the peaks below us. It would be a cruel and unforgiving night—the worst I had seen high on the mountain. A few hours after sunset, the wind calmed—slightly—and my team, along with other expeditions’ climbers, departed Camp IV for the summit.

  I prayed to Miyolangsangma for guidance and could hear the oxygen mask-muffled chants of Dawa, a former monk, also requesting permission to continue. In 1990, when I first climbed Everest with veteran climbers Rob Hall, Gary Ball, and Peter Hillary, Miyolangsangma welcomed me into her lap. Her invitation, however, is temporary.

  Sitting on the Balcony, the responsibility of making the decision to continue up, or to turn around, weighed heavily on me. Yangji had urged me to come on this expedition with our friend John, to “keep him safe.” Now I was caught by indecision—by a feeling that Miyolangsangma might be withdrawing her invitation.

  As if sensing my dilemma, John gently reached a hand over to me and said, “Apa, are you okay? Are you warm enough?” The wind carried his words away, but I could see in his eyes that he was feeling strong, ready to push on. We would continue to the South Summit and, if conditions didn’t improve, we would turn around.

  Two hours above the Balcony, an amber dawn rev
ealed the triangular shadow of Everest stretching to the western horizon—Miyolangsangma’s welcome mat. It was now clear that we were invited guests and not interlopers.

  John, Dawa, and I ascended the exposed slope to the South Summit, where we again switched oxygen bottles. We scrambled up the Hillary Step, traversed the final snowy humps, and, at 6:35 a.m. on May 31, John, Dawa, and I stood on the summit. I thanked Miyolangsangma for her hospitality once again. Then the three of us began the journey to our true destination: safe return to our families.

  —APA SHERPA Assisting Western climbing expeditions since 1985, Apa Sherpa made his first of 21 summits of Mount Everest in 1990.

  AN ENDANGERED SNOW leopard triggers a remote camera trap. With only a few thousand left in the wild, these nocturnal cats are a rare sight in the Everest region, but their numbers are increasing thanks to intelligent park management.

  On a beautiful, clear morning in May 2012, I headed through a forest high above the Imja khola (river) in the Sagarmatha National Park. Rarely used by trekking groups or visitors, it was a trail I discovered years ago while living in this region of Nepal, known as Khumbu. I was spending a year conducting the fieldwork for my Ph.D. in geography. Once a week for ten months I would trek the 30-mile round-trip from our home in Khumjung village (at an altitude of 13,025 feet/3,970 meters) to the seasonal alpine village of Dingboche (at 14,500 feet/4,420 meters). As I monitored my soil-erosion plots, I had the unparalleled opportunity to study the landscapes, landforms, plants, and animals along the way.

  THE LANDSCAPE TODAY

  The trail contours along steep, north-facing slopes that are blanketed by a thick cloud forest of Himalayan fir, silver birch, and numerous tree and dwarf rhododendrons. Lali guras, the lavish bloodred flower of Rhododendron arboreum and national flower of Nepal, was in full bloom. Old-man’s beard lichens draped the limbs, catching moisture from the early morning mists that were beginning to lift. On either side of the trail bloomed purple and yellow primroses and blue star-shaped gentians. These pioneers of spring foretold the arrival of the many hundreds of flowers to come.