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Mt. Everest's quiet conquerors: the Sherpas of Nepal
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What is certain is that Everest itself retains its allure. Fifty years after the first ascent, the region of Northeastern Nepal called Khumbu, where Everest is found, is one of most prosperous places in Nepal. This spring, a record 25 expedition teams are attempting to reach the summit from the southern Nepali slopes, with dozens more climbing the more perilous Tibetan slopes to the north. In a normal spring season, about 12 teams make the attempt.
To some, including Sir Edmund, Everest is turning into a rich man's amusement park. The average eight-member expedition team spends about $200,000 in Nepal. Some summiteers pay as much as $65,000 per ascent.
But you won't hear any complaints from the hundreds of Sherpa guides or the thousands of businessmen who have made Everest into a profitable way of life. With more than 60 percent of all mountaineers in Nepal traveling to the Sherpa's home region of Khumbu, the Sherpas now earn about seven timesthe income of the average Nepali.
Climb every mountain
Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, which regulates the expeditions on some 30 mountain peaks in Nepal, says that Sherpas owe their prosperity to Sir edmund and Norgay, no matter who reached the top first.
"Khumbu and the Anapurna region are very, very prosperous, and it's because of tourism," says Ang Tshering, who has done trekking all his life, but never scaled Everest. "It benefits the local people first, who get employment as guides and porters, who sell food, who provide campsites and lodging. It brings money to an area where roads and industry cannot reach."
But the tourism industry that Sir Edmund and Norgay spawned has not just benefited the Sherpas.
"Mountaineering is the mother of our tourism," says S.P. Koirala, joint secretary of the Tourism Industry Division for the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation. In this spring alone, the government is expecting to earn more in royalty fees from mountaineering expeditions than they earned from all of last year ($2 million and $1.8 million respectively).
With so many climbers scrambling up Everest this year, there are a lot of records being broken. One climber, a Sherpa of course, succeeded in making the fastest ever ascent of Everest from Base Camp to the top and back in just under 11 hours. A normal ascent takes about a week. This year also brought new records for the youngest and oldest climbers to reach the summit: 15-year-old Nepalese girl Mingkipa Sherpa and 70-year-old Japanese man Yuichiro Miura both reached the summit on Thursday.
But reaching the top and getting back down alive are two different things, says Ang Phurba Sherpa. In 1979, when he reached the top of Everest on his first ever mountaineering expedition, Ang Phurba says that the roughest part was coming back down. Two foreign climbers on his expedition died just after reaching the summit: an American from Alaska froze to death; a German climber collapsed from exhaustion. And Ang Phurba himself nearly fell into a huge 100 meter wide crevice where a trail had been just three hours earlier.
