KATMANDU, APRIL 20 (AP): The rescuers moved quickly, minutes after the first block of ice tore loose from Mount Everest and started an avalanche that roared down the mountain, ripping through teams of guides hauling gear.
But they couldn’t get there quickly enough. No one can move that fast. Not even the people who have spent their lives in Everest’s shadow, and who have spent years working on the world’s highest peak.
In this tragic disaster, several Sherpa guides have been taken from the mountain. For the Sherpas, the once-obscure mountain people whose name has become synonymous with Everest, and whose entire culture has been changed by decades of working as guides and porters for wealthy foreigners, it was a brutal reminder of the risks they face.
“The mountains are a death trap,” said Norbu Tshering, a 50-year-old Sherpa and mountain guide who now lives mostly in Katmandu. “But we have no other work, and most of our people take up this profession, which has now become a tradition for all of us,” he said.
The avalanche happened early Friday morning at about 5,800 meters (19,000 feet), as Sherpa guides were hauling gear through the Khumbu icefall, a treacherous terrain of crevasses and enormous chunks of ice. The men were near an area known to climbers as the “popcorn field,” when an enormous piece broke away from a high glacier and came tumbling down the mountain, setting off an avalanche of ice.
A day after the disaster, many Sherpa guides spoke of their work in ways that reflect the complexities of poor people working in a deeply hazardous place.
The work is dangerous — a year rarely passes without at least one death on Everest — but the Sherpas, who were once among the poorest and most isolated people of Nepal, now have schools, cell phones and their own middle class.
All that is the result of the Mount Everest economy, which brings tens of millions of dollars to Nepal every year. “We have no problem with what we do. It is a job which helps feed our families, sends our children to school,” Dawa Dorje, 28, a mountain guide from Everest’s foothills, said in Katmandu, where he was picking up equipment for clients. “We make more money than most people in the country. If the foreigners did not come, then we would be out of a job. They need us and we need them — it is a win-win situation,” he said.
While the average annual income in Nepal is just $700, a high-altitude Sherpa guide can make $5,000 during the three-month climbing season. Climbers, meanwhile, can pay $100,000 for a chance to reach the summit.
And some of what happens on the mountain, Dorje noted, comes down to sheer luck.
“There have been concerns why so many Nepali Sherpas were killed in the avalanche. But they were there at the wrong time. If the avalanche had struck a few days later (when climbing teams begin working their way up Everest), then there could have been many foreign fatalities too,” he said.
However, on well-traveled, high-prestige climbs like the Everest, the Sherpas are the ones who go first up the mountain. They break the deep snow, lay the fixed ropes and carry the heaviest loads. They face avalanches, altitude sickness, lack of oxygen and brutal cold.
“The risks for Sherpas on the mountain are twice that of the Western climbers,” said Nima Tenzing, a 30-year-old guide who also runs a shop for trekking gear in Katmandu.
Still, he shows no resentment.
“Death and injury on the mountain is part of our lives now. We have lost many of our people to the mountain. But we have to pull ourselves together and continue our work,” he said.
