[The mountaineering companies pay Sherpas, who
generally outnumber foreign climbers by two to one. In a country where the
average per capita income is around $700, Mount Everest ’s
Sherpas can make $3,000 to $5,000 in a season, supplemented with bonuses if
they reach the summit. But they face extraordinary risks, and some have
expressed frustration as life on the mountain has changed. Two years ago, after
a harrowing season, a guide named Pemba Janbu Sherpa complained that foreign
clients, coming “with money but without technical training,” were forcing him
and his colleagues into dangerous situations.]
By Ellen Barry, Bhadra Sharma and Nida Najar
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| Three days after an avalanche killed 13 Sherpas on Credit Narendra Shrestha/European Pressphoto Agency |
KATMANDU, Nepal — Over the years, as Mount
Everest attracted larger crowds of amateur climbers from the West, the Sherpas
adjusted: to a slower ascent, to traffic jams, to bulging loads of gear. Every
spring some new frustration would get them talking, then recede with the end of
the season.
This was the year that frustration boiled over.
The avalanche that killed at least 13 Sherpas last Friday has prompted an
extraordinary labor dispute, as Mount Everest’s quiet workhorses took steps on
Tuesday to shut down the mountain for the season, demanding that the government
share proceeds from what has become a multimillion-dollar business.
Tensions were coursing through Mount
Everest ’s base camp on Tuesday after a rowdy meeting where,
according to people who were present, two-thirds of the Sherpas opted to cancel
planned ascents. As a few teams of climbers packed their bags and began the
long journey out of the Himalayas , two veteran
expedition leaders left the camp by helicopter for an emergency meeting with
Nepalese officials in an effort to avert a shutdown.
“I would like to go back to my Sherpas and say,
‘Look, guys, I got what you wanted,’ ” said Phil Crampton, the owner of
Altitude Junkies, a mountaineering company, in a telephone interview. “We want
the Sherpas happy, we want the government happy and we want our clients happy.
The bottom line is that if at the end of the day the Sherpas aren’t happy, we will
comply and cancel our expedition.”
Mount Everest is now far more popular than most
of the world’s other high peaks, with as many as 600 people a year reaching the
summit, more than half of them Sherpas, who are mostly members of a small
ethnic group renowned for their skill at mountaineering.
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| The New York Times; 2008 photograph by Grant Dixon/Hedgehog House via Getty
Images. Source: Alan Arnette, a professional mountaineer who has climbed |
Foreign climbers pay professional Western guides
as much as $100,000 to ease their path up the mountain. Altitude Junkies, for
instance, charges $42,500 for a 60-day expedition, which includes extras like
helicopter flights and “two personal Sherpas on summit day.” Of that, $11,000
goes to the Nepalese government for a climbing license, and issuing such
licenses has netted the government $3 million to $4 million annually in recent
years. Money also pours into the local economy, including hotel rooms, nights
in teahouses, local cellphone use, and the hiring of yaks and porters to carry
supplies up the mountain.
The mountaineering companies pay Sherpas, who
generally outnumber foreign climbers by two to one. In a country where the
average per capita income is around $700, Mount Everest ’s
Sherpas can make $3,000 to $5,000 in a season, supplemented with bonuses if
they reach the summit. But they face extraordinary risks, and some have
expressed frustration as life on the mountain has changed. Two years ago, after
a harrowing season, a guide named Pemba Janbu Sherpa complained that foreign
clients, coming “with money but without technical training,” were forcing him
and his colleagues into dangerous situations.
“Climbers actually say, ‘I’ve paid $50,000, you
are here to work for me, and you have to accompany me,’ ” he told an analyst
studying Mount Everest . “The mountain itself feels like
it is losing its value. Just about everyone seems to want to climb it by paying
a Sherpa who will ensure reaching the summit.”
The Sherpas killed in Friday’s avalanche — 13
bodies were retrieved, and three remain missing — were crossing the Khumbu
Icefall, a notoriously dangerous ice field. Foreign climbers keep their time on
this section to a strict minimum, but Sherpas cross it many times a season,
ferrying gear up from one camp to another. It was the largest single-day loss
in Mount Everest ’s history, and an unprecedented blow
for the Sherpas.
Nepalese authorities infuriated many of the
Sherpas by offering 40,000 rupees, or about $410, as compensation to the
families of the dead. Tempers flared on Monday when a group of Sherpas marched
in a procession with the bodies of six of the dead, said Mukunda Bista of the
Nepal Youth Foundation.
“When it ended in the middle of town, they were
very, very angry with the government,” Mr. Bista, who is based in Katmandu ,
said in a telephone interview. “This time, it really is a crucial moment. If
the government is not taking it seriously, there might be more agitation and
fighting.”
By Sunday night, some of the Sherpa guides at the
base camp were advocating canceling the rest of the season’s expeditions on
Mount Everest, confronting international climbers with the prospect of
abandoning plans that had cost them tens of thousands of dollars and had been
years in the making. Many, in their initial comments on social media, were
sympathetic to the Sherpas.
“We clients, Western climbers, are here by
choice,” Isaiah Janzen, an engineer from Iowa ,
wrote on his blog. “We pay to come here and test ourselves. The Sherpas, the
people that carry our loads, set up our tents, cook for us, set up the ropes on
the mountain, they are here because they are paid 10-15 times the average
annual Nepali salary to do this for two months.”
He added, “I would still like to climb this
mountain, but there are things at stake more important than my selfish,
arrogant and egotistical summit ambitions.”
But various people at the camp, both foreigners
and Nepalese guides, said tensions were growing as the prospect of abandoning the
ascent became real.
After a prayer meeting on Tuesday ended in a show
of hands in favor of canceling, Roshan Bhattarai, a climbing guide with
Himalayan Ecstasy, said foreign climbers “pointed out that they have spent so
much money, so how can we leave?”
“There
were so many Sherpas in numbers, and I think foreign climbers couldn’t express
what they want clearly,” he added.
Tendi Sherpa of the Nepal National Mountain Guide
Association said 200 of the roughly 300 Sherpas at Tuesday’s meeting were in
favor of canceling all planned ascents. “Everyone is working hard not to have
any violence,” he said.
Other popular summits in Nepal ,
like Annapurna , were unaffected by the Sherpa agitation.
A list of demands presented to Nepal ’s
Ministry of Tourism gave officials until Monday to respond, according to Alan
Arnette, a climbing expert who runs a respected mountaineering website. On
Tuesday, the ministry announced that it would satisfy some of the demands put
forward by Nepalese guides at the base camp, including raising minimum
insurance rates for Sherpas to about $15,000, erecting a memorial to lost
guides and creating a relief fund from climbers’ fees to help support the
families of the dead.
Some groups were already leaving the base camp on
Tuesday, including about 30 of the 341 foreign climbers on the mountain, Mr.
Arnette said. But most, he added, were waiting to see the results of
negotiations between the guides and the government.
Tenzing Sherpa, 28, was among those who did not
wait. In his group of five climbers, there were two Sherpas who no longer
wanted to climb the mountain. He described watching on Friday as helicopters
lifted the bodies of the dead tethered to a rope. He said he unhooked the
bodies of the dead one by one.
“That really shook the local people,” he said.
“We have never seen this much.”
Although he had heard of the government’s
concessions on Tuesday, he was skeptical. “It’s Nepal ,”
he said. “Unless you see the money with your eyes, you can’t be sure.”
Mr. Crampton, a British-born expedition leader
who has ascended Mount Everest 11 times, said he was
hoping that he and his clients would also not be forced to leave camp. If this
season’s ascents were canceled, he said, the government would keep fees already
paid, and the fear of losing future investments could deter foreign climbers
for years to come.
At an emergency meeting scheduled for Wednesday
morning, which will also be attended by Russell Brice, a veteran Mount Everest
guide from New Zealand, Mr. Crampton said he planned to remind Nepalese
officials that “we put an awful lot of money into the economy, and we feel that
the Sherpas have been given a very, very hard time in the past.”
“We had a historic accident, and now we’ve got a
historic moment, where we could close down the whole season,” Mr. Crampton
said. “I feel like I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago.”
Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New
York , and Rajneesh Bhandari from Katmandu .