\n<\/p>\n
In July 2023, the mountaineer Tenjen Lama Sherpa guided a Norwegian climber to summit the world\u2019s 14 highest peaks in record time. In a sport that demands an alchemy of sinewy resolve and high-altitude faith, Mr. Lama did everything his client did and more. But she received most of the money, fame and attention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The kind of lucrative endorsements enjoyed by foreign athletes are not usually given to Nepal\u2019s ethnic Sherpas. For them, the profession of Himalayan guide offers a path out of deep poverty, but also a possible route \u2014 strewed with avalanches and icefalls \u2014 to a premature death.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lama could not afford to rest after guiding the Norwegian, he told The New York Times. Life in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, was expensive. He could not read or write, but he wanted his sons to get the best education, a costly endeavor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So only three months after climbing the 14 peaks, Mr. Lama was back working as a Sherpa \u2014 his name, his ethnicity, his profession and, ultimately, his fate. Another foreigner chasing another record had hired him as a guide. This time, it was Gina Marie Rzucidlo, who was trying to become the first American woman to climb the world\u2019s tallest mountains. Another American woman, also guided by a Sherpa, was climbing separately in pursuit of the same record.<\/p>\n
But on Oct. 7, avalanches broke loose on Mount Shishapangma in Tibet. Both pairs of climbers were killed.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lama\u2019s death was the latest in a series of tragedies to shear his family tree of siblings. In 2021, Norbu Sherpa, the oldest of the four mountain-climbing brothers, ended his life after a love affair went wrong. And last May, Phurba Sherpa, the second oldest, died during a rescue mission on Mount Everest.<\/p>\n
The last remaining brother, Pasdawa Sherpa, learned about Mr. Lama\u2019s death after returning from an expedition to the world\u2019s seventh- and eighth-highest mountains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For three days, Mr. Pasdawa traveled by foot, bus and plane to Mr. Lama\u2019s apartment in Kathmandu. He knelt before his brother\u2019s Buddhist altar, eight candles flickering above. Marigolds and a ceremonial cloth surrounded a portrait of Mr. Lama, grinning in an orange snowsuit.<\/p>\n
Mr. Pasdawa closed his eyes and prayed for his dead brothers. He said he prayed for himself, too. He would have to persevere in the only life he knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will keep climbing mountains,\u201d Mr. Pasdawa said. \u201cI have no other options.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This is what a Sherpa does: He lugs heavy packs and oxygen cylinders for foreign clients. He cooks and sets up camp. He navigates through snowstorms and clears piles of trash. He wakes before dawn and spends hours driving metal pickets into the snow so a rope line can protect foreign climbers. He trudges past icefalls where bus-size slabs have buried other Sherpas in frozen graveyards. (On the mountain, he is usually a he; female Sherpas don\u2019t tend to work as guides.)<\/p>\n
Compared with the client, a Sherpa spends far more time in the so-called death zone: elevations above 26,000 feet, or 8,000 meters, where human cognition slows without supplemental oxygen and altitude sickness can quickly turn fatal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Walung, the village in northeastern Nepal where Mr. Lama and his brothers grew up, has produced about 100 expedition guides over the past couple of decades.<\/p>\n
Of those 100, 15 have died on the job, locals said.<\/p>\n
The high mortality rate highlights the inequity of a life-or-death sport. Roughly one-third of the more than 335 people who have died on Everest are Sherpas. Yet their expertise earns them wages that, while high by local standards, are only a fraction of what most of their clients shell out for their expeditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe help the foreigners,\u201d said Makalu Lakpa, an experienced guide from Walung and a close friend of Mr. Lama\u2019s. \u201cIt is very dangerous, but we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Nepal\u2019s mountaineering industry, a crucial money earner for an impoverished country, caters to those willing to spend upward of $100,000 to summit a single Himalayan peak in luxurious style. Almost all are foreigners. In recent years, their numbers have surged, as have logjams at high-altitude choke points and icefalls, increasing the chance of accidents. Some expedition leaders also believe that climate change is leading to unpredictable weather patterns, increasing the risk of deadly avalanches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
During last year\u2019s spring climbing season at Mount Everest, the Nepali government issued permits to 478 foreigners, the most ever. Eighteen people, including six Sherpas, died on the mountain, another record.<\/p>\n
So far this spring, six people have been confirmed dead<\/a> in their quests to summit Mount Everest, and three are missing.<\/p>\n The boom in expeditions has brought both inexperienced climbers, who are more likely to need rescuing from high elevations, and record-driven mountaineers, who push themselves and their teams to the limits. Each foreign trekker, whether beginner or expert, depends on at least one Sherpa, often several.<\/p>\n Beyond the economic imbalance, Sherpas are often relegated to the footnotes of mountaineering history. With the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Edmund Hillary comes first in the global consciousness, Tenzing Norgay second. One exception is the airport near Everest Base Camp, the Tenzing-Hillary Airport.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the spring of 2023, Kristin Harila, a Norwegian professional mountaineer, began her race to beat the record for the fastest ascent of the world\u2019s 14 highest peaks. At the time, the record stood at six months and six days. Before that, the record was eight years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The slogan of Ms. Harila\u2019s sponsored expedition, a 92-day sprint across the high Himalayas, was \u201cShe Moves Mountains.\u201d To succeed, she needed the guidance of Sherpas, especially Mr. Lama.<\/p>\n The first mountain was Shishapangma, where Mr. Lama would die half a year later. Trouble struck early, in the form of paperwork. China refused visas to six of the 11 Sherpas on her team. Mr. Lama lugged and hammered and pulled and hefted, making up for the missing half-dozen men. He was fast and efficient, with no unneeded movements in the thin air, Ms. Harila said.<\/p>\n \u201cLama did all the jobs,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one would have summited if Lama wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Next was Cho Oyu, the world\u2019s sixth-highest mountain, also climbed from Tibet. With weather threatening and the weight of their supplies too great, the pair decided to leave the others and charge from base camp to the summit, skipping acclimatization stops along the way. What can take other climbers 10 days, Mr. Lama and Ms. Harila accomplished in about 30 hours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cA Sherpa\u2019s fitness comes by birth,\u201d Mr. Lama told The Times a few weeks before his death.<\/p>\n The pair scaled Nepal\u2019s Annapurna 1, where 476 climbers have made successful ascents and 73 others died trying, according to the Himalayan Database. In Pakistan, they ascended Broad Peak, where Ms. Harila and two Sherpas had nearly been swept away by an avalanche the year before. They summited Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Manaslu, Kangchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and II.<\/p>\n In late July, only one mountain remained: K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, where, just 1,300 feet below the summit, climbers must clamber at a 60-degree angle and squeeze past a gully menaced by huge columns of glacial ice. Nearly all the deaths at K2 have occurred around this bottleneck.<\/p>\n Mr. Lama and Ms. Harila, accompanied by a videographer, reached the choke point around 2 in the morning. Horror awaited them: They found a young Pakistani porter hanging at the end of a rope, upside down and barely alive. The young man, named Muhammad Hassan, was wearing neither gloves nor a snowsuit.<\/p>\n Ms. Harila, Mr. Lama and the videographer clipped themselves ahead of the rest of the team on the rope line and approached the man. Ms. Harila said she stayed there for more than an hour, trying to help. Eventually, Mr. Lama and Ms. Harila continued with their ascent. The videographer and others stayed to try to save Mr. Hassan, feeding him oxygen and attempting to keep him warm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Hassan, who had been transporting spools of rope despite warnings that he was not equipped for such high altitude, died. Soon after came criticism that Ms. Harila had chased her record over saving a man\u2019s life.<\/p>\n But a witness who was there that day said it wasn\u2019t clear what Ms. Harila and Mr. Lama could have done. Too big a crowd in the narrow passage would have brought its own dire risks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did, and other people did, everything we could to save him, and it was impossible,\u201d Ms. Harila said. \u201cEveryone tried. Many risked their lives to save him.\u201d<\/p>\n Only when they were scaling the final incline of K2 did Mr. Lama\u2019s faith waver, he told The Times afterward. The Pakistani porter\u2019s plight made stark the dangers of K2. Avalanches tore down the mountain. Sheets of ice shivered and crackled above. Near the summit, Mr. Lama had to clear the snow by hand, each step a soft crunch into potential nothingness.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was one of the hardest moments of our climbing,\u201d Mr. Lama said.<\/p>\n At the summit, the 14 peaks traversed in a world-record 92 days, Mr. Lama and Ms. Harila touched hands and cried, he said. They sent triumphant news down by walkie-talkie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the death of Mr. Hassan chilled their success. At base camp, someone had organized a celebratory cake.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one was in a mood for a party,\u201d Ms. Harila said. \u201cWe took this cake and went to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n Whenever he could, after his exploits \u2014 37 summits of the world\u2019s tallest mountains by the time he died \u2014 Mr. Lama would return home to Walung, an isolated hamlet in northeastern Nepal. Walung sits in a high-altitude valley below barley and millet fields, where shaggy yaks graze, hunched against the cold. Mr. Lama and his brothers grew up herding livestock. They played soccer with a knot of worn socks serving as a ball.<\/p>\n Three of Mr. Lama\u2019s brothers died in infancy, a common arithmetic in these Himalayan foothills. As the second-youngest child, Mr. Lama was dispatched to the local monastery, which could be counted on to feed an extra mouth. There, he picked up the name Lama, given to monks of the Tibetan Buddhist faith.<\/p>\n At the time, Sherpas who became professional mountaineers mostly came from another part of northeastern Nepal. But in the early 2000s, a climber from Walung, Mingma Sherpa, became the first South Asian to summit the world\u2019s 14 tallest mountains. (Most Sherpas use the surname Sherpa, but that does not mean they are related.)<\/p>\n Mr. Mingma and his three brothers eventually started Seven Summit Treks, which now organizes about a third of all Everest expeditions. Mr. Mingma hired most of his guides from Walung.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lama\u2019s oldest brother was too old when the climbing craze began in the village. But the four other brothers joined Seven Summit Treks, turning the company into a true Walung fraternity. Mr. Lama, who had given up the monkhood and married, joined the mountaineering industry about a decade ago. He started as a porter and rope fixer, then graduated to guide.<\/p>\n \u201cWe ate the same food, the same tea, but those brothers, they were extra strong,\u201d said Mr. Lakpa, Mr. Lama\u2019s friend from Walung. \u201cLama was the strongest.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2019, Mr. Lama and his three brothers entered the Guinness World Records, when they climbed Kangchenjunga, the world\u2019s third-highest mountain. In a photo taken at the summit, the siblings smiled, each in a bright suit, the air light with their exhilaration.<\/p>\n Breaking records, as Mr. Lama did, means substantially more earning power. An average summit earns a guide less than $4,000; an 8,000-meter mountain can bring about $7,500. Mr. Lama, because of his 14-peak achievement, was poised to make about $9,700 per climb, some of the highest fees a Sherpa can command. Still, it is far less than what a top foreign climber can raise through endorsements \u2014 and Sherpas\u2019 jobs involve more danger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the days after his record-breaking summits, Mr. Lama said that Ms. Harila had not originally wanted to take him along for all 14 peaks.<\/p>\n \u201cShe wanted to change the climbing guide every time,\u201d he told The Times. \u201cMaybe she was thinking I would also set the record.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mr. Mingma, the head of Seven Summit Treks, said he persuaded Ms. Harila that this way both a man and a woman, a Sherpa and a foreigner, could set the record together.<\/p>\n \u201cKristin accepted my idea very easily,\u201d he said. \u201cOne Sherpa man and one Norwegian lady, it was good for us and good for her.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Harila said that she wanted to share the achievement with a Sherpa from the start. And since Mr. Lama\u2019s death, she has been working to raise money for his family<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey really deserve to be part of a record like that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s their land and their mountains.\u201d<\/p>\nRacing for a Record<\/h2>\n
Climbing out of Poverty<\/h2>\n