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Thread: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

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    United States Avalon Member onawah's Avatar
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Annapurna III – Unclimbed

    David Lama
    Published on Dec 21, 2017
    “Annapurna III – Unclimbed” is an award-winning 12-min documentary featuring the 2016 expedition to the Himalayas of Nepal led by David Lama together with Austrian alpinists Hansjörg Auer and Alex Blümel. Join the team in their feelings of fatigue, anxiety, exposure and ordeal during their 5 weeks attempting one of the world’s greatest, unsolved puzzles of alpinism: The unclimbed south-east ridge of Annapurna III."
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Ed Viesturs: The Will to Climb | Nat Geo Live
    National Geographic
    Published on Jun 25, 2012

    "After surviving a terrifying avalanche, Ed Viesturs is the first American to summit all 14 of the world's highest mountains without supplemental oxygen."
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Lunag Ri – David Lama & Conrad Anker walk the line
    David Lama
    Published on Jul 29, 2018
    ( It says in the comment section on the youtube page that Lama finally succeeded in reaching the summit, solo, a couple of months ago.)
    "Already in 2016, David Lama and Conrad Anker had set out to climb Lunag Ri, a stunningly beautiful, unclimbed peak of 6.907meters on the borderline between Nepal and Tibet. As things didn’t go as planned the duo has to retreat just shy of the summit but returns one year later, determined to bring the project to an end. Despite prime conditions and all the knowledge gathered during their last attempt, their endeavor is stopped rapidly with Anker ’s life dangling between life and death, leaving Lama with some tough decisions to make."

    Stream David Lama’s feature film “Cerro Torre-A Snowballs Chance in Hell” here https://www.redbull.tv/cerrotorre

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    A staggering photograph taken just a couple of weeks ago. Here's the article:


    Trail to Everest is littered with bodies. But no one will say who is actually responsible

    Neither the people stuck in 'traffic jam' at Mount Everest nor the travel firms bothered to look back and learn from the incidents of 2012.

    2 June, 2019

    Mount Everest is a great equaliser. It doesn’t care how deep your pockets are or which country you came from. One usually pays for a mistake with life here, as it happened recently during the “traffic jam’’ at the roof of the world. It was the second such mishap, if it can be called that, in the past seven years but in reality it was triggered by the same old deadly cocktail of unchecked greed, misplaced pride and lack of respect for the world’s highest peak.

    Eleven people from India, United States, Nepal and England died during a single fortnight in May 2019. It was obvious neither the commercial mountaineering companies nor the Nepal Government had bothered to learn the lesson from the equally brutal tragedy in the spring of 2012, when 12 people had perished in the same region, on the same route and almost in the same fashion.

    What is particularly galling is that neither the people stuck in the `traffic jam’ of 2019 nor the travel companies which brought them here bothered to look back and learn from the incidents of 2012 before arriving in Nepal. In this age of super-quick dissemination of information on digital highways, it turned out to be a deadly lapse. A few clicks of the mouse could have saved some lives.

    (article continues)

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    This thread reminded me of my love for READING about mountain climbing. I guess it came about in my teens hearing my parents friends climbing Cotopaxi here in Ecuador. I got myself all the books there were out there ( you had to go to bookstores , no amazon.com remember ? ) about all the mountains and the different climbing expeditions.

    Then one day in 1979 or 1980 I got a book called Everest by Reinhold Messner and read he had the first climb to Everest with Peter Habeler WITHOUT supplemental oxygen. I just kept that in the back of my mind.

    A couple of weeks later my father invited me to have lunch with some foreigners ( americans and europeans ) businessmen friends of his in Quito. They are all in their fifties ( old men I thought ) and I was fresh out of college and we are sitting in this long table. The talk I do not know why it changes to mountain climbing in Ecuador and I told them what I had just read and silence .... everybody thinking I am crazy, nobody believed me , my father was even mad thinking I had it wrong. I was insistent what I was saying was true. It was before internet when we can google it immediately . So we went home ( I was fuming) to Guayaquil and I went directly to my bookshelve to prove what I was saying was true. My father was contrite.

    Next year he went and climb Everest alone and without supplemental oxygen ( first person ever )
    Sorry if this is off topic. I just remember this story. You remember him Bill ?

    Edit:as always, spelling corrections.
    Last edited by Rosemarie; 5th June 2019 at 12:51.
    "Be kind for everybody is fighting a great battle" Plato

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  11. Link to Post #46
    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Quote Posted by Rosemarie (here)
    This thread reminded me of my love for READING about mountain climbing. I guess it came about in my teens hearing my parents friends climbing Cotopaxi here in Ecuador. I got myself all the books there were out there ( you had to go to bookstores , no amazon.com remember ? ) about all the mountains and the different climbing expeditions.

    Then one day in 1979 or 1980 I got a book called Everest by Reinhold Messner and read he had the first climb to Everest with Peter Habeler WITHOUT supplemental oxigen. I just kept that in the back of my mind.

    A couple of weeks later my father invited me to have lunch with some foreigners ( americans and europeans ) businessmen friends of his in Quito. They are all in their fifties ( old men I thought ) and I was fresh out of college and we are sitting in this long table. The talk I do not know why it changes to mountain climbing in Ecuador and I told them what I had just read and silence .... everybody thinking I am crazy, nobody believed me , my father was even mad thinking I had it wrong. I was insistent what I was saying was true. It was before internet when we can google it immediately . So we went home ( I was fuming) to Guayaquil and I went directly to my bookshelve to prove what I was saying was true. My father was contrite.

    Next year he went and climb Everest alone and without supplemental ocigen ( first person ever )
    Sorry if this is off topic. I just remember this story. You remember him Bill ?
    Yes, for sure. I followed all that very closely at the time. I was pretty sure Messner and Habeler could do it: they were the world's finest, and their physiology was exceptional. In the article below, though, Habeler's doubts (and fears) are well-described. It was Messner who powered them both through.

    Messner returning to repeat the oxygen-free ascent solo was astonishing. But he was the best mountaineer the world has ever known.

    That whole thing then became a little like Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile. No-one thought it could be done: then he showed it could, and after the mental barrier of belief had fallen, many others were able to repeat the feat, which is now routine at the highest levels.

    The same with Everest. The number of oxygen-free ascents of Everest now stands at a little under 200. It has to be said, though, that some of those have used drugs of various kinds to aid them. (In mountaineering, there's no dope-testing as in the Olympics.)

    This article is very interesting:
    It's Still a Big Deal To Climb Everest Without Oxygen

    When Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler trekked to Everest Base Camp in 1978, they were the only two people on Earth who believed they weren’t marching toward their own graves.

    Their goal was to reach the summit of Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen canisters, a feat that remains rare today but was, in 1978, actually considered scientifically impossible.

    Everest’s summit lies five miles above sea level at an altitude with effectively a third as much atmosphere due to lower air pressure. Doctors in the 1960s had studied the physiological demands of high-altitude climbing and determined that the atmosphere at Everest’s summit was so thin that it could only support a human at rest. They concluded that to even attempt such a feat would result in serious, irreversible brain damage (best case) or death.

    Try for one minute to imagine yourself in 1978 in Messner’s situation—or any situation in which a group of scientists is pleading with you to not do what you want to do because you’re going to die just as surely as a Newton’s apple will hit the ground.

    Messier and Habeler’s ascent of Everest in 1978 is the stuff of legends. At Camp 2, Habeler was heavily drugged up yet still couldn’t sleep. Fear poured from every inch of him—not to mention vomit and diarrhea from food poisoning courtesy of a tin of sardines. Habeler wanted to go down. Messner wanted to go up. Habeler was less worried about dying than returning home and being unable to recognize his family because his brain had been turned to porridge by the altitude, as all the doctors had warned.

    Upon reaching the South Col, Messner and two Sherpa guides were caught in a storm with 125-mile-per-hour winds. For two days, the trio was trapped here. When the storm broke, they retreated and picked up Habeler on the way down to Base Camp.

    Habeler was now totally convinced that the experts were right—climbing without oxygen is impossible. Messner, however, remained steadfast. After a few days recovering in Base Camp, he ultimately convinced Habeler to try again.

    During their second attempt, Messner and Habeler succeeded—barely.

    On their final day of climbing, they resorted to hand signals to communicate, so as not to waste any precious breath. They fell to their knees and lay in the snow like beaten dogs in an effort to catch their breaths. Habeler began hallucinating. Messner experienced a sensation of “bursting apart.” He later said that his mind was fully dead and only his soul was pushing him upward. With less than 80 vertical meters left to climb, they collapsed every ten feet and literally crawled to the highest point on Earth.

    Later, writing about that moment of reaching Everest’s summit, Messner gave the world this gift of poetry: “In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.”

    Their ascent not only shook the climbing community but also the medical community, causing doctors to reevaluate what they thought they knew about the human body.

    (article continues)

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    An opportunity to bump this (for me!) very interesting thread.

    This is a UK Channel 4 documentary, very well done, about the death of an ambitious but inexperienced young man and what sure looks like a mixture of bad luck, bad decisions, incompetence and gross mismanagement by the guiding company, called OTT.

    Unfortunately, this kind of Everest story has often been told, or claimed. I started out thinking this was just one more. I didn't know most of the names involved, so there wasn't that much immediate impetus to care. By the end of the film, I cared quite a lot. That's the hallmark of a good documentary.


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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    China extends its claim on the world's highest mountain peak Mt. Everest
    64,544 views•May 10, 2020
    WION
    1.22M subscribers
    "China has extended its claim on the world's highest mountain peak Mount Everest.."

    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Quote Posted by onawah (here)
    China extends its claim on the world's highest mountain peak Mt. Everest
    64,544 views•May 10, 2020
    WION
    1.22M subscribers
    "China has extended its claim on the world's highest mountain peak Mount Everest.."

    Thanks! That made me smile. It's a tiny storm in an even tinier teacup.

    Every mountaineer knows that Everest lies smack on the naturally defined border. Teetering on the summit ridge, step down to the left a few feet and you're in Nepal. Step down to the right, and you're in China. The mountain belongs to both nations.

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Yes, but that's what China is now contesting, according to the report.
    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    The mountain belongs to both nations.
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Please forgive us. We love you.
    Goodbye. We are going to die.




    This is nothing to do with Sherpas, because there were none here. It's the story of many others, none of whom should be forgotten.

    But maybe primarily a testimony to Elvira Shatayeva, a striking blonde Russian Master of Sport, with filmstar looks but the strongest female mountaineer in the world — and how she perished in a once-in-25-years hurricane at 23,000 feet, because she refused to leave her dying Russian teammates.

    All this happened in 1974.

    Click here for an ingeniously interactive web page that's more like a powerpoint presentation. Recommended... this is truly an aspect of the Human Condition.
    Last edited by Bill Ryan; 27th April 2022 at 19:58. Reason: fixed broken link

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Readers may find this post very interesting.

    Elvira Shatayeva died, certainly the last one in her team to succumb, in a terrible storm just below the summit of Pik Lenin. As the team leader and the strongest climber, she was devoted to her friends, and even her own remarkable strength couldn't save her when she realized it was just too late.

    Here she is again.



    So today, I was wondering who she'd reincarnated to become in her next new life here. I figured the following:
    • She'd be a woman once again, and probably, again, a very attractive one.
    • She'd certainly be a mountaineer, active in the Himalayas.
    • She'd again become a national figure known both for her femininity and her strength.
    • She'd encounter the same disaster situations — but calling on her experience, this time she'd ensure she survived.
    So I wondered who she was. And suddenly, it hit me very strongly. She's Cecilie Skog.

    I posted earlier on this thread about her role, and narrow escape, in the 2008 K2 disaster, when her husband died on the climb — but she survived.

    Here's Cecilie, a Norwegian, and one of the country's national heroes. A year after the carnage on K2, she became the first, with an American colleague, to cross Antarctica with no aids of any kind. Blonde also, with filmstar looks once again, but her hair is wavy, not straight.



    But then I was immediately filled with doubt. OMG, it seemed so obvious. But I had absolutely no idea when Cecilie Skog was born. So I looked it up.
    • Cecilie was born on 9 August, 1974.
    • Elvira had died during the night of 7 August, 1974.
    She had come straight back to continue.


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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Breathtaking: K2 - The World's Most Dangerous Mountain | Eddie Bauer
    6/1/20
    Eddie Bauer
    17K subscribers

    “K2 is a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” That is how climber George Bell described the infamous peak after the first American expedition in 1953–forever giving the mountain its nickname–The Savage Mountain. Sixty-six years later, Eddie Bauer mountain guides Adrian Ballinger and Carla Perez aim to summit the 8611-meter peak and join a community of explorers fewer in number than those who have been to outer space. Even more incredible, they both will attempt the feat without the use of supplemental oxygen. Every step of the way the team faces hazardous conditions, terrifying setbacks, and crushing misfortunes. But as Ballinger puts it, “I'll go until the mountain tells me I can’t go anymore.” "

    Last edited by onawah; 22nd June 2020 at 06:00.
    Each breath a gift...
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    To whomever it concerns: please accept my humble condolences 🙏

    It only reached my ears today that the senior lama of Khumbu, abbot of Tengboche Monastery , most venerable Jamyang Ngawang Tendzin Jangpo Rinpoche passed away at the age of 85 in Namche Baxar on October 9 this year.

    Great spiritual father of the monastic and lay community, friend of pilgrims and travelers, born on the same day as the 14th Dalailama,
    patron of the Himalayas, protector of nature and all living beings,

    one whose continuous presence will remain written in people’s hearts

    https://www.buddhistdoor.net/news/re...che-dead-at-85

    https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now...tts-last-wish/




    May his mind Rest In Peace 🙏🌟🙏
    Last edited by Agape; 2nd November 2020 at 15:28.

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Interesting Sherpa rescue story.

    Turns out not everyone is as enthusiastic as you would have expected about showing gratitude to the person who saved your life.









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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Quote Posted by pueblo (here)
    Interesting Sherpa rescue story.
    Turns out not everyone is as enthusiastic as you would have expected about showing gratitude to the person who saved your life.
    Yes, many thanks. Climbing Everest with a commercial expedition company, costing maybe $40,000-$60,000, is barely mountaineering any more. It's merely a strenuous (and dangerous) ego-trip that sometimes brings out the very worst in people.

    Here's a 60-second video of Gelje Sherpa, who is a devout Buddhist, carring this man on his back down Everest. He descended 600m (2000 ft), carrying him all the way, and it took him 6 hours. (Jeez.) The Malaysian climber's name has not been released.

    Do watch this... it's hard to believe. The stricken climber must have weighted at least 160 lbs, maybe as much as 200 lbs with clothing and equipment.


    And here's just one of many mainstream articles... the headline says it all.
    Nepali sherpa praised for ‘almost impossible’ rescue of Malaysian climber in Everest’s ‘death zone
    Last edited by Bill Ryan; 5th June 2023 at 08:36.

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Bumping this thread with another story that's far more about commercialism and sponsorship than real mountaineering. In the climbing world, this is now attracting a lot of attention — and criticism.

    This is Kristin Harila, a Norwegian athlete (a former cross-country skier), quite young (37) and highly photogenic, who was never a 'real' mountaineer. But she's now smashed Nirmal ('Nims') Purja's record by climbing all 14 peaks over 8000m in a span of just 92 days.

    Her photo is all over the mainstream news and women's websites and videos, promoting what a remarkable heroine she is, an example of what women can do, and so on. The photos and articles are easy to find: they're everywhere.



    Of course, she's a genuine athlete, and a remarkable one. Yours truly could never ever have done what she did.

    But what very few mainstream news article show is this photo:



    On the right is Tenjen Sherpa, who did it all alongside her at the same time, and basically guided her, holding her hand all the way. She had complex and expensive logistical support, including helicopter transport from mountain to mountain, large teams of Sherpas fixing all the ropes in place for her (she's not a climber and couldn't have done any of that herself!), carrying all the supplies needed (including substantial amounts of supplemental oxygen), and more.

    She has exceptional strength and stamina, and is also clearly a extremely nice and totally honest person. (She was 100% transparent about the way she accomplished it all.) But there's no way she could climb any sizeable mountain alone. She worked hard — extremely hard — but she was carried all the way.

    But now she's a heroine, a showcased role model for women, and a global media celebrity. She'll be famous for the rest of her life. Tenjen Sherpa? Only specialist mountaineers, and his many friends in Nepal, will remember him.

    Much of mountaineering now is all about the money. Tenjen himself wouldn't have done it if he'd not been well paid. Let's hope it was enough for him to take good care of his family and children for a little while.



    For those interested to know more, this is one of many excellent articles — not mainstream at all, but for specialist mountaineers.

    Here are just a few extracts from the long and detailed report. Of course, I agree with all of it.

    This is not personal against Kristin. She's just a product of her times.
    Most critics focus on the logistics, the heavy support, the use of ropes which Harila herself has not fixed, and the helicopters to gain time in a sport that formerly reveled in long weeks immersed in the wilderness. That’s not adventure, some say. Others conclude that she wouldn’t be able to do anything in the mountains without her team.

    “She's not an alpinist,” has been a common phrase. It’s true that Harila is not Wanda Rutkiewicz or Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner. She might not even know who these women were. But to be fair, she has never compared herself to mountaineering’s female pioneers.

    Kristin Harila has become a symbol for the expansion of commercial mountaineering. New methods, goals, and styles have taken over our highest mountains. Harila is a target for those frustrated by the replacement of traditional mountaineering with experiential tourism.
    Last edited by Bill Ryan; 30th July 2023 at 16:28.

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  35. Link to Post #58
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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Bumping this thread with another story that's far more about commercialism and sponsorship than real mountaineering. In the climbing world, this is now attracting a lot of attention — and criticism.

    This is Kristin Harila, a Norwegian athlete (a former cross-country skier), quite young (37) and highly photogenic, who was never a 'real' mountaineer. But she's now smashed Nirmal ('Nims') Purja's record by climbing all 14 peaks over 8000m in a span of just 92 days.

    Her photo is all over the mainstream news and women's websites and videos, promoting what a remarkable heroine she is, an example of what women can do, and so on. The photos and articles are easy to find: they're everywhere.

    ~~~

    More on this story, which isn't going away.

    Record-breaking mountaineer denies climbing over dying porter on K2

    Kristin Harila has now been barraged with more criticism. We can't know whether the dying Pakistani porter (not technically a 'Sherpa', but doing the same job) could have been saved — maybe not. But the different responses of all those around him (a few valiantly tried their best to help, while 70 other climbers stepped over his dying body!) are a testimony to the rampant ego and competitiveness in much of modern commercial mountaineering.



    https://theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/record-speed-mountaineer-denies-climbing-over-dying-sherpa-on-k2

    Fellow climbers say video footage shows Kristin Harila’s team walking over body of frostbitten man during record ascent


    Mohammed Hassan, seen lying prone on the ground, had fallen from a sheer ledge during the ascent.

    A record-breaking mountaineer has denied allegations that her team climbed over a dying porter to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan to become the world’s fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000 metres.

    Kristin Harila climbed the world’s second highest mountain on 27 July along with her Nepali sherpa Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa, 35, to complete her 14th highest peak in just over three months to secure a new world record.

    During the Norwegian’s ascent, porter Mohammed Hassan fell off a sheer edge at a height of about 8,200 metres. Harila, 37, has insisted her team did everything they could to save Hassan but conditions were too dangerous to move him.

    Images have emerged of climbers clambering past Hassan on a ridge during Harila’s ascent.

    Austrian climbing duo Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, who were also on K2 that day, said footage they later recorded using a drone showed climbers walking over his body instead of trying to rescue him.

    Flämig told Austria’s Standard newspaper: “He is being treated by one person while everyone else is pushing towards the summit. The fact is that there was no organised rescue operation although there were sherpas and mountain guides on site who could have taken action.”

    Steindl added: “Such a thing would be unthinkable in the Alps. He was treated like a second-class human being.

    “If he had been a westerner, he would have been rescued immediately,” he added. “No one felt responsible for him. What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set.”

    Mountaineers clamber over injured Sherpa to set Everest record

    Last edited by Bill Ryan; 12th August 2023 at 23:36.

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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    More on this story, which isn't going away.

    Record-breaking mountaineer denies climbing over dying porter on K2

    Kristin Harila has now been barraged with more criticism. We can't know whether the dying Pakistani porter (not technically a 'Sherpa', but doing the same job) could have been saved — maybe not. But the different responses of all those around him (a few valiantly tried their best to help, while 70 other climbers stepped over his dying body!) are a testimony to the rampant ego and competitiveness in much of modern commercial mountaineering.



    https://theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/record-speed-mountaineer-denies-climbing-over-dying-sherpa-on-k2
    ~~~

    And more. This kind of thing is NOT uncommon in high-altitude mountaineering. There are literally dozens of stories of climbers stepping over dying colleagues on their way to the summit — usually of Everest. The ethics are complicated, because it's a fact that very often almost nothing can be done to help a dying climber in such a place.

    But Joe Simpson, famous for his near-unbelievable role in the documentary film Touching the Voidin the Avalon Library here, and highly, highly recommended — and who was extremely close to death himself, totally alone in a fully impossible situation, has written angrily (many times) that the least one might do is stay and hold the hand of a fellow human being as their life slipped away.

    The story, while arguably unfortunately focused on Kristin Harila (who was just one of many climbers on the mountain that day, but who had chosen to make herself a celebrity), continues to reverberate. It's possible that this may do a great deal to focus on the extraordinary inequality between the Sherpas (or Pakistani porters, same thing), and the well-to-do, hand-held, wealthy western clients.

    Mohammad Hassan, the man who died, was earning $5 a day carrying 25 kg loads to base camp. He had almost no high mountain experience, but was offered the chance to go high on the mountain, with poor equipment, for a 4x pay rise of $20 per day.

    He did that solely to try to pay for his children's education, and for medical bills for his mother.

    He died because he was trying to earn $20 a day.

    Kristin Harila has done little except give media interviews. She's clearly quite upset. And she's also out of her depth. She's a nice person, but she's absolutely not a real mountaineer.

    But the two experienced climbers who broke the story by posting drone footage of the incident on social media, Austrian Wilhelm Steindl and German Philip Flaemig, personally visited Hassan's family after the incident and also started a crowdfunding campaign. (Here it is: https://gofundme.com/f/3-kinder-brauchen-dringend-hilfe.)

    After 4 days, donations have reached 127,243 euros, nearly $140,000. One woman, a name I don't recognize, donated 5,000 euros. (Kristin Harila donated 1,000 euros, now that she's famous and had commercial sponsors paying probably close to $1 million for her whole project. A churlish remark, but maybe she'll donate more.)

    The local Pakistani authorities have opened an investigation, which in my awareness is a first in this kind of incident. It'll be interesting to see who they may find fault with, if they do at all. It feels like that might be a bit of a watershed.

    But in the meantime, in the most Shakespearean, tragic way, Hassan's death has now provided more than everything needed for the education and medical care for his family that he had always earnestly wished for.


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    Default Re: Sherpas on Everest: the real mountaineers who make it all possible

    I'd like to add an addendum to the above 3 posts, with something to remind us that not all humans are selfish and ego-driven. Last month, there was a second stricken climber, on Nanga Parbat, another huge mountain with a fearsome reputation.

    Asif Bhatti of Pakistan (a climber, not a porter), was climbing solo but had become exhausted, frostbitten, and snowblind. He couldn't see a thing and was stranded high on the mountain alone, facing certain death.

    But another climber, Israfil Ashurli of Azerbaijan (wiki page here, and a well-known professional mountain guide), came to his rescue. He abandoned his own goal to reach the summit, and stuck with Asif — who was as blind as a bat and very weak — through thick and thin for three days and nights in appallingly bad weather.

    Eventually, against all odds, he got him down to base camp, all on his own, sustaining bad frostbite himself in the process, also needing to be hospitalized.

    To describe what he did as selfless and heroic doesn't even begin to describe it. He didn't know Asif at all — he was a stranger, not even speaking the same language — but he said that he had to do what he did. He never questioned it. Mountaineering can sometimes bring out the worst in people... but sometimes the very best.

    This is Israfil Ashurli of Azerbaijan, the finest of men.


    (Photo by Israfil Ashurly, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...curid=68349794)

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