Buddhist/Bon Sherpas of Mt. Everest (audio)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; David Leveille (The World, pri.org)

The mighty Himavanta/Himalayas (Raimond Klavins/artmif.lv/artmif/flickr.com)

Buddhist and Bon family members of the Nepali mountain-guides lost in the Mt. Everest avalanche wait for the bodies of loved ones to arrive at Sherpa Monastery in Kathmandu on April 19, 2014. The avalanche was the deadliest in eight years (Navesh Chitraka/Reuters).

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Pasang Y. Sherpa (Penn)

The avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas last week may be a turning point in the history of Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha) expeditions -- a time to reflect on the Western climbing culture and on the risks faced by the mountain's unsung heroes that make that culture possible, the Sherpas.
 

The World asked Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, an anthropologist and lecturer at Penn State Univ., to answer some questions about Sherpa culture. She didn't have any immediate family or relatives killed in the avalanche but says the tragic accident "is something that is really sad for every Sherpa." We've lightly edited the interview for clarity.

When you have Sherpa in your name, what does that indicate?

Beyond Everest in Bhutan (Soultravelers3.com)

It indicates that we belong to this ethnic group called Sherpas.

The term Sherpa is often used synonymously with expedition workers, or porters, because historically those were the jobs that Sherpas did. But it kind of takes our attention away from who Sherpas really are and does not differentiate the ethnic group from the job.

 

Buddhist Himalayas from K2 to Bhutan

Sherpas currently live in different parts of the world, but the largest communities are in Nepal and the Everest region. And there are large communities of Sherpas living in [metropolitan] Kathmandu and New York City. 

Why are Sherpas so skilled at mountaineering?

We have been living in the mountains for a very long time, and that's where we come from, so we know the area. We know how to live and survive and adapt. But we need to understand that Sherpas do not climb mountains for a hobby or as a sport. They do so to earn money for themselves and their families so the families can have a better life.
 

Buddhist novices of India behind the Himalayas, Ladakh (SylvainBrajeul/flickr.com)

 
How do Sherpas generally view the Himalayan mountains?

The devas' resort (kerdowney.com)

 The mountains are not just [inanimate] objects in front of them. The mountains are places where deities [devas and other shapeshifting creatures visible to shamans and mystics] reside.

So we go to the mountains and we actually pray [do puja to honor them] and make sure the mountain [or the being associated with the mountain] is not upset, and we make sure the mountains are happy to allow Sherpas, or anyone, to climb.

Sagarmatha Zone, Nepal

Every time one of the expeditions goes up, the Sherpas do a pujah -- a ritual to appease the deity and to make sure everyone's happy and it's okay for them to climb. But this time, because so many lost their lives, this was seen as a sign by the Sherpas that their god[s are] not happy. They thought it was a good reason to stop climbing [and risking their lives] this year. 

Does the worst accident in the history of Everest expeditions mark a turning point for Sherpas?

My friends and I are hoping this will be a turning point. The cycle of people feeling pressured to go to the mountain, then getting injured or dying, then the families grieving -- I think this cycle has to end. We think this incident should be a turning point for everyone. And for the expedition workers, in particular. More

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Mt. Everest to close for the season (audio)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; T.J. Raphael, The World (pri.org)

Dangerous Mt. Everest (Kristoffer Erickson/news.nationalgeographic.com)

  

Yeti hunters, Everest, 1954 (dailymail.co.uk)

Sherpas -- members of a Himalayan ethnic group renowned for their skill at high-altitude climbing -- are crucial to operations on Mount Everest.

They earn a mere $3,000-5,000 risking their lives helping others scale the mountain during each two-to-three-month climbing season. They do on a regular basis what others pay to accomplish just once in a lifetime, putting their lives at great risk for affluent clients due to poverty they are never able to emerge from.
 

Last Friday, an avalanche roared down a climbing route on Everest, killing 13 Sherpa guides and leaving three others missing. When it occurred the Sherpas, who have centuries of history in Nepal's alpine region, were working at 21,000 feet, fixing ropes and preparing the path ahead of peak mountaineering season.

 

Tibet's Rongbuk Buddhist monastery with Mt. Everest in background (wiki commons)

 

Who climbs Mt. Everest without a Sherpa?

As the Sherpa community mourns the loss of family members and friends, the group is considering an unprecedented move: a strike.

On Sunday, disappointed by the Nepali government’s offer of 40,000 rupees ($408) as compensation for the families of each of the dead, some Sherpas gathered at Everest’s base camp to propose a “work stoppage” that could disrupt or cancel the 334 expeditions planned for the 2014 climbing season.

Ellen Barry, South Asia Bureau Chief for The New York Times, says while Sherpas have lived with these conditions for many years, last week's accident changed things.

"I think just the magnitude of the loss of life from Friday's accident has prompted very unusual decisions," she says. More

To climb Mt. Everest, clean Mt. Everest (audio)

Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Siobhan Wornell, Jonathan Kealing, Global Scan (PRI)

Mount Everest as seen from a Drukair flight (Shrimpo1967/pri.org)

  

Mt. Everest (peterwestcarey/flickr.com)

Climbers who want to summit Mount Everest, pictured from the south, looking north, will now have to help clean up the mountain, too. 

 

The government of Nepal is taking action against the impact of tourism on Mount Everest -- [allegedly] the tallest, and probably most famous, mountain in the world.
 

Starting in April, climbers ascending beyond base camp will be required to bring back eight kilograms (more than 17 pounds) of garbage -- or officials may fine them. This rubbish does not include each climber's own personal garbage generated during the course of their climb, according to The Guardian newspaper.

 

No respect for Sherpas or mountains

Years of expeditions have left the mountain littered with refuse, such as abandoned oxygen cylinders and human waste. There are already measures in place to try and curb the environmental toll, such as a refundable $4,000 deposit that is returned when climbers prove they have carried out all of the trash they brought in -- but enforcement is proving difficult. More

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Tyler, 9, dad, and Sherpa scale tallest peak

Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; KPCC FM (SCPR.org)

(BBC) No Sherpa means no success on mountain: The Sherpa's Story (2013 documentary)

Aconcagua (Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images) and Tyler Armstrong (Kevin Armstrong/AP)

  

Our hero Buddha Boy (dharmasangha.info)

A 9-year-old boy from Orange County has become the youngest person in recorded history to reach the summit of Argentina's Aconcagua mountain, which is the tallest peak in the Western and Southern hemispheres.

Tyler Armstrong of Yorba Linda reached the summit on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th) with his father Kevin and a Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa, Lhawang Dhondup, who has climbed Mt. Everest multiple times.

I challenge you to karate, Tyler!

"That really hit my heart because me and my dad [and my Sherpa] did it together," Tyler said. "Most 9-year-olds...usually play video games, so they don't expect a 9-year-old to climb a 22,841 foot mountain."

 

They were in fine spirits Friday as they left Aconcagua, whose sheer precipices and bitter cold have claimed more than 100 climbers' lives.

"You can really see the world's atmosphere up there. All the clouds are under you, and it's really cold," Tyler said, describing the summit to The Associated Press. "It doesn't look anything like a kid's drawing of a mountain. It's probably as big as a house at the summit, and then it's a sheer drop."

(Journeyman Pictures) Climbing Mt. Everest with Nepal's Sherpas

 

Palestine-Israel at peace

Only 30 percent of the 7,000 people who obtain permits to climb Aconcagua each year make the summit, said Nicolas Garcia, who handled their logistics from down below. No one under 14 is usually allowed, so the family had to persuade an Argentine judge that Tyler could safely accomplish the feat. In their case, they took the "Polish Glacier" route, which doesn't require climbing, and roped themselves together only when crossing steep ice-covered slopes.

 

"Any kid can really do this, all they have to do is try. And set their mind to the goal," said Tyler, who worked out twice a day for a year and a half to prepare for the climb. He also held fundraisers...

Aconcagua's previous record-holder was Matthew Moniz of Boulder, Colorado, who was 10 when he reached the summit in 2008.

7-y.o. Incan mummy (AcEx)

There was one younger boy who climbed the lower slopes of Aconcagua, Garcia noted: An Inca boy was sacrificed some 500 years ago at 16,400 feet on Piramide ("Pyramid"), one of the mountain's lower peaks. Scientific tests on the mummy, recovered in 1985, put his age at about 7.

Tyler had already climbed the 19,341-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at the age of 8, and with Aconcagua conquered, is determined to reach all "seven summits," the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. More

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"The Summit" of the most dangerous mountain

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Pat Falvey and Pemba Gyalje Sherpa (thesummitk2book.com, Beyond Endurance Publishing), ImageNowFilms.ie

The film The Summit, produced and directed by Nick Ryan. In US theaters Oct. 4, 2013. (DVD and downloads available early 2014).
 

Not all Westerners respect Buddhist Sherpas

It was the deadliest day on the world's most dangerous mountain, K2. This is an early trailer for the feature book and documentary film "The Summit."

On August 1st, 2008, 18 climbers from around the world reached the summit of K2, the world's second highest (some argue the highest) and most dangerous mountain. It is a peak which claims the lives of one in every four climbers who attempt it. Over the course of 28 hours, however, K2 had exacted a deadlier toll: 11 lives were lost in a series of catastrophic accidents.
 

Beware: mountains do not exist to be climbed

Standing at 8,611 meters and attracting a climbing elite along the Pakistan-China border, K2 is known as the "Mountaineer's Mountain" (much like Denali in Alaska) because of its extreme technical challenges, its dangerously unpredictable weather, and an infamous and hazardous overhanging wall of glacial ice known as the Serac.

Snowbound at Base Camp for weeks on end and increasingly despairing of their prospects for success, an unexpected weather window finally gives the climbers the opportunity they were waiting for. In their collective desire to reach the summit, seven expeditions agreed to coordinate efforts and share equipment. Triumph, however, quickly turns to tragedy when a seemingly flawless plan unravels with lethal consequences.

Over the course of three days, a Nepalese Sherpa called Pemba Gyalje, along with five other Sherpas, was at the center of a series of attempts to rescue climbers who had become trapped in the Death Zone (above 8,000 meters), unable to escape its clutches and debilitated by oxygen-deprivation, chronic fatigue, delirium, and a terrifying hopelessness.

The tragedy becomes a controversy as survivors walk away from the catastrophe on the mountain into an international media storm. Countless stories emerge, some contradictory and many simply untrue.

More recent trailer of "The Summit" to be released in US on Oct. 4, 2013

Mahakala, Yeti, a fierce spirit, Tibet (MTP)

Based on Pemba Gyalje's eyewitness account and drawing on a series of interviews with the survivors, which were conducted for an award-winning documentary. "The Summit: How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2's Deadliest Days" is the most comprehensive interpretation of one of modern-day mountaineering's most controversial disasters.
 

Also at the heart of The Summit lies a mystery about one extraordinary man, Ger McDonnell. By all accounts, he was faced with a heartbreaking dilemma -- at the very limit of his mortal resources, he encountered a disastrous scene and a moral dilemma: Three climbers were tangled up in ropes and running out of time.

In the Death Zone, the body is literally dying every passing second. Facing one's mortality, morality is skewed 180 degrees from the rest of life off the mountain. When a climber falls or wanders off the trail, the unwritten code of the mountain is to leave them for dead. Had Ger McDonnell stuck to the code, he might still be alive.
 
"The Summit" is about the very nature of modern adventure, one that remains contentious and fiercely debated. The book "The Summit" deals with the logistics, excitement, fears, successes, rescues, and fatalities of ill fated days on the world's most dangerous mountain.