Monday, 21 April 2014 – Everest Base Camp, Nepal
At one point last night I heard angry Sherpa voices debating a few metres away from my tent. Jay heard it too, and this morning we discuss what it means.
‘Hopefully it was one of the Sherpa agitators arguing with our guys, rather than our guys arguing among themselves,’ Jay says.
But Phil is more downcast than ever at breakfast. The stresses of the last few days have taken their toll on him.
‘Pasang Tenzing has done what he wanted. IMG’s Sherpas are leaving, and Dorje says some of our Sherpas want to leave now too.’
Our Sherpas have always greeted me warmly as I’ve walked around camp over the last couple of days. On the surface our relationship has remained the same, and nothing much has changed, but this may be because the Sherpas I know well are the older ones. They have been working for Phil for longer, and are the most loyal. Phil believes most of them still want to stay, but if a critical mass of Sherpas from other teams ends up leaving then things could fall apart quickly. Every departure from another team tests the loyalty of our guys, making Dorje’s job harder.
Our Sherpas are great; I’ve seen them in action on many previous expeditions. But they can’t fix the Khumbu Icefall, Lhotse Face and summit ridge on their own. It requires 10,000m of rope for a start. We need a few teams to stick around, or it’s going to be impossible to continue.
‘This thing’s becoming a shit show,’ Phil says. ‘The dominoes are falling over, and our boys can’t stay if the rest of the Sherpa community leaves. I’ve told Dorje if we quit now that’s the end of Manaslu and Cholatse in the fall, maybe even Everest next year. I’ve got 1,000 kilograms of equipment in the Western Cwm. If we end up having to leave it there then Trish and I may have to file for bankruptcy.’
It’s been a stressful time for Phil and I’m sure he is under a lot of financial pressure to keep going, but I don’t believe things are quite as bad as he imagines. Sometimes expeditions don’t go to plan. Usually we climb higher than we have here, for sure, and on most mountains it’s the weather that stops us, rather than human frailty. But in both cases the expedition fails because of things outside our control. That’s part and parcel of mountaineering.
Emotions are running high at the moment. The Sherpa agitators don’t seem to be aware that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Whether this year’s Everest season can still be salvaged we don’t know. But it’s just one season, and common sense and the natural order have to prevail in the end.
We have a pessimistic discussion over breakfast. The situation, as described by Phil, suggests there is little chance of the season continuing. Too many Sherpas will be leaving to make a route up both Everest and Lhotse practical.
The bigger picture is that there are already a smaller number of tourists in the Khumbu this year. If this season gets cancelled because of a fatal avalanche and a Sherpa strike, then the outlook for next year looks gloomy too. Some of the team members are talking as if it’s the end of mountaineering in Nepal. Things aren’t quite as bleak as that, but it’s possible some operators will pull out for a few years.
We can foresee this, and so can the older, wiser Sherpas like Dorje, but the youngsters don’t understand. More cynical members of our team say that they are just looking for an excuse to quit work and get paid for it. We are unanimous that our own Sherpas should receive full pay whatever happens. We know that none of this is their fault, and there is no reason they should suffer for it.
My feeling is that, if the season gets cancelled, then sixteen people will have died in vain. It’s the Sherpa mountaineers who have raised the Sherpa people above the norm and made them great. Since they moved to Darjeeling to work with expeditions, they have worked hand in hand with western mountaineers over the years, sharing the losses and risks to varying degrees. This year the loss was theirs; on Manaslu westerners bore the brunt of the tragedy. We shouldn’t let these changing fortunes drive a wedge between the two communities.
It’s Sherpa mountaineers who have made the Khumbu region prosperous in comparison to the rest of Nepal. Many Sherpas own teahouses and trekking agencies now, and they can afford to send their children to good schools. They gain qualifications. Some become teachers, and there are even some doctors. This trajectory is continuing, and those who died in the Icefall on Friday are part of that tradition. That’s not to say we shouldn’t do more to prevent these disasters – they have also become a part of Sherpa history. But we need to draw positives from tragedy, for each one can be a lesson too, and have a silver lining. It would be sad if the great tradition of Sherpa mountaineers takes a setback because of the actions of a few. It would compound the tragedy if the Sherpa community loses much of the goodwill that has built up over the years.
We are gloomy over breakfast, but better news emerges as the morning goes on. Before breakfast IMG’s climbing sirdar told Phil that their Sherpas wanted to leave. Later in the morning Robert goes over to speak to IMG’s expedition leader Greg Vernovage. There he meets Ang Jangbu Sherpa, a wealthy Nepali who owns a company called Beyul Adventure. They are the local agency that IMG subcontract their expeditions to.
‘Your sirdar told our leader your Sherpas are leaving,’ Robert tells him.
Ang Jangbu turns and pats his chest.
‘I’m the sirdar!’ he says.
IMG are key to whether the season continues. They are a huge team, with around fifty Sherpas. If they stay, then the rope fixing will happen, and everybody’s expedition can continue.
Expedition base camps are hives of rumour and gossip. Very little information can be relied upon. Another rumour reaches us that Alpine Ascents have ‘definitely’ confirmed they are leaving. They lost seven Sherpas in the avalanche, so it would be no surprise if it were true, and no one would begrudge them this decision. It would be difficult to continue after such a loss of personnel. More importantly, in these circumstances it would be the right thing to do.
We believe this news is more reliable, because we receive it directly from its source. Two Alpine Ascents clients come over to ask if they can join our team. None of us knows who they are, and Phil is sympathetic, but he feels duty bound to turn down their request. He has hired resources for seven Everest climbers and five Lhotse climbers. With two more members these resources would be stretched.
Other good news arrives with a message from Phil’s wife Trish. She tells him that Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism has said it will accept most of the demands in the petition. The only item likely to be rejected is the one calling for expeditions to be cancelled – of course this would be unacceptable to them. If they cancel the season before anyone has climbed out of Base Camp, the local climbing agencies might sue them, demanding the return of permit fees, Icefall Doctor fees, and liaison officer salaries. Expeditions must pay the government these expenses. Permit fees alone earn the government over $2 million a year. Very little of this windfall filters down the chain, and this is one of the things fuelling discontent. The Ministry of Tourism has a reputation for incompetence, but even they must realise such a thing would be harmful for tourism.
Our evening ends on a bizarre, worrying note that might have put Sherpa politics into perspective.
Mel doesn’t arrive for dinner, and nobody knows where he is. At first no one is concerned. We know he has Chinese friends in other teams. As an artist and photographer, he has often stayed out after dark to film the lights of Base Camp penetrating through tent fabric. But by the time we finish dinner and head off to bed, he still hasn’t returned. Some of the team become a little worried about him, and this worries the rest of us too.
Robert and Peter say they saw him leave camp with his pack at two o’clock. A couple of our Sherpas then say they spotted a lone figure above the second ladder of the Icefall at 2.30.
‘No, he wouldn’t go into the Icefall alone!’ Edita says. ‘When we started walking through the Icefall after the avalanche, Mel wouldn’t cross the first ladder. He is too cautious.’
Besides, he would need to be a superman to reach the second ladder of the Icefall from camp in only half an hour.
‘If he’s gone into the Icefall on his own then he’s clearly deranged. In which case we’ve got sod all chance of finding him,’ I say, making my own diplomatic contribution.
It didn’t come out quite the way I’d intended. I meant to suggest that I was quite sure Mel wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there on his own. The figure must have been someone else. The darkness of evening in Everest Base Camp isn’t the time for sarcasm, though, and other team members are still imagining the worst.
But Robert and a handful of Sherpas bring the evening to a happy conclusion when they walk out of camp in the direction of Gorak Shep. They’ve not gone far when they notice someone a few metres off the trail making signals with the light of their mobile phone. It’s Mel. He had underestimated the amount of time it would take to get to Kala Pattar and back, and lost his way navigating the trail in the dark without a head torch.
With our mini drama over, we go to sleep and prepare ourselves for a fresh batch of Sherpa politics tomorrow.