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The First Sherpa to Climb to the Top of Mt. Everest (1954)
- latchkey 3y agoI just saw a short video of one of the basecamps completely full of trash.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoTo get one tent to your last stage before attempting the summit, 70 tents are brought (or so I understand). First base your tents are full of other tents, oxygen bottles etc to get you to the next base. That one has fewer tents holding fewer supplies. After a handful of iterations, you've spread $100000 of gear over the mountain so you can have that one chance at a summit. The mountain is huge, but it adds up.
- Georgelemental 3y agoLike the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation, but with tents instead of fuel?
- etskinner 3y agoSlightly more like the Jeep Problem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_problem
- latchkey 3y agoFound the clip: https://twitter.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1663454524118560768 https://twitter.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1663454524118560768
- memalign 3y agoSomething morbid that comes to mind when I see something about Mt. Everest: “There Are Over 200 Bodies on Mount Everest, And They’re Used as Landmarks” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-over-200-bodies-on-mount-everest-and-theyre-used-as-landmarks-146904416/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-over-200...
- saiya-jin 3y agoWell results of extreme popularity (so that total noobs from ie California or China would show up in base camp, paid for full expedition with personal sherpa, and start asking how this weird alpinism equipment like crampons should be used), extreme environment due to altitude killing your brain and rest of body well below 8000m and Nepal's leniency on climbing permits. Thus you have repeated stories of big egos bagging popular peaks, ie part of 7 summits, who simply refused to turn back even after hours of pleading by their personal sherpas due to their poor state, and they simply collapse up there. The mentality of 'pushing through the pain' which gets you to finish marathon fast will kill you up there. People don't understand what it means to have mental capacity at 10% and barely be able to slowly walk and keep balance, while doing life & death decisions where 1 wrong step can kill easily. Also its extermely hard to bring a body down, they say its around 20 well-faring people per body. As per stats you basically have high risk of 1 death by bringing 1 dead body, so its rarely done. Not all of these 'landmarks' have same story, some were good seasoned professionals with bad luck, but most have some trivial, or stupid mistakes attached to them and refusal to turn back. Even though most die on the way down, the seed for it is planted in slow ascent. I am pretty sure this is well known, but just to be 100% sure - in elite/professional alpinism circles, going up Mt. Everest via 2 standard routes by throwing bunch of money around as part of huge 300-500 group gains 0 respect, quite a lot of contrary and puts you firmly in 'rich fool' bracket. Sherpa community deserves help, but this is very bad (since its super selective to few individuals in vast region who take all the profits) and very very dangerous way of improving livelihoods. /rant
- tppiotrowski 3y agoModern day Tenzing's last name is Norgay but in this article it's Norkay. I wonder when the change occurred and why... Edit: part of the article hints at the answer, "when Tenzing Norkay, or Tenzing Norkay Sherpa, came to Darjeeling in 1933, he was treading a well-worn path. This is the way he has decided to spell his name—he now has business cards—but a European anthropologist who knows Tibetan says that “Tenzin Norgya” would be a better phonetic rendering, and that an accurate transliteration would be “bsTan-aDzin Nor-rGyas,” the capital letters representing the stresses."
- resolutebat 3y agoSherpas are Tibetan, and romanizing Tibetan is notoriously difficult because the modern pronunciation diverges wildly from the writing and there are many dialects to boot. “bsTan-aDzin Nor-rGyas" is the Wylie transliteration, which represents the script accurately and is useful for scholars, but completely unpronounceable to the lay reader.
- pookha 3y agoSherpa's are also Nepalese and it's typically a last name (occupation). And I thought (could be off) that most of the Sherpa's on Everest are nepalese?
- q845712 3y agoTheir language is "Tibetic" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetic_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetic_languages
- sdwr 3y agoLove the writing style of this article. Simple sentences, evenly paced, plain yet descriptive. It's an article about class, and does a great job of showing without telling. Workman-like in the best possible way.
- cratermoon 3y agoWithout Tenzing Noragy, GM OSN, Sir Edmund Hillary wouldn't have made it. In fact, Norgay is the one you see in the only photo on the summit. He himself was not familiar with the operation of the camera. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Norgay_summit_Everest.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Norgay_s...
- Daz1 3y agoWhat a ridiculous statement. They both needed each other, it was a mutually supporting effort. However in saying that, Hillary could have theoretically made it to the summit without Norgay (who would have died of asphyxiation if he tried the same).
- saiya-jin 3y agoTenzing saved life to Ed, maybe more than once, but specifically once Ed made a careless jump over crevasse in lower parts of the mountains and started falling into it. If you saw photo of both together you must see Ed was almost twice the weight of Tenzing, so quite an effort to catch and save him. There were some less-than-stellar reactions in media and politics, west mostly ignored Tenzing, in India Ed was ignored completely. You are right, they both needed each other and I think after coming down they knew pretty well how much luck they had to just survive this (ie climbing Hillary steps barely 100m below summit, must have been extreme... now there are permanent ladders installed by Chinese expedition, often a choke point where people get frostbites from long waiting to pass up or down)
- sinuhe69 3y ago...Norgay (who would have died of asphyxiation if he tried the same) What makes you think that? Many Sherpas climbed Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen because of their genetic uniqueness. In fact, one did it even 10 (ten!) times without bottled oxygen. Lot of other Sherpas can do the same. https://omgnepal.com/ang-rita-sherpa-climbed-everest-10-times-without-oxygen-tank/ https://omgnepal.com/ang-rita-sherpa-climbed-everest-10-time...
- 3y ago
- vrtnis 3y agoNASA has a good approx of the route taken that day, the final push to the summit took 5hrs. Wonder with the lines up there today if it might take much longer. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8396/edmund-hillarys-everest-route https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8396/edmund-hillary...
- shortcake27 3y agoI’m a pretty serious hiker. A few days ago I got an ad from an Everest tour guide. In the photo was a queue of 350 people within arms length of each other. The idea of doing Everest is awesome, but it’s so heavily commoditised that I feel it would suck all the joy out of it for me personally. Good on the people who can look past that though.
- thejackgoode 3y agoUsing sherpas is cheating yourself out of reality. Normalising using sherpas is a display of deep corruption.
- hef19898 3y agoSo, you are generally advising against the use of local guides? And propose to cut the sherpas out of the considerable Mt. Everest business all together? Why?
- carlosjobim 3y agoIs that what the poster is saying? No, and you know it. Just call it for what it is: assisted climbing. The persons didn't climb the mountain in a sense of the sport, they were assisted. You can't claim you ran a marathon if you hitched a ride along the way.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoSome kind of purist attitude? Marathon runners run the whole way, but a community of support accompanied them for years beforehand (and on the actual route!) Likewise, nobody is using a sedan chair to get to the summit. Everybody walks every step of the way?
- francisofascii 3y agoWell, not everyone. Sally Pittman was short roped for a few hours by a Sherpa. But still an achievement for her to reach the top. So your overall point is well taken.
- carlosjobim 3y ago> Some kind of purist attitude? Absolutely! That is what sports, exploration and alpinism is about. People who had others to carry their stuff do not deserve to be mentioned together with those who climb by their own force. I've always found it ridiculous reading articles about this or that adventurer who conquered a mountain or peak, or the local alpinist who's back from climbing Everest - then as a side note "by the way, some sherpas carried all his/her stuff". I'm from a society where stolen valour is the norm, not the exception. For any accomplishment there will always be persons from certain families or a certain political party put forward and given all the merit and glory in media for the accomplishment, while those who actually did the work are to stay in the shadows and be quiet. Last year I watched the documentary "14 Peaks" where Nepalese led by Nirmal Purja where setting some mountaineering records as climbers, and they were extremely bitter for the lack of recognition, which I fully understand. Corruption is the right word.
- dagurp 3y agoI recommend The Conquest of Everest it's a documentary with footage from Hillary and Tenzing's climb. It's on Netflix (where I live at least).