This is an older video, from a 2006 Everest expedition, but it offers a great explanation of the Puja, a traditional religious ceremony performed by Sherpa mountaineers before climbing a mountain. This Buddhist blessing ceremony is performed at Base Camp, and asks the gods for permission to climb the mountain and for a safe and successful expedition. Often butter lamps are burned, and prayer books are read and chanted. The prayer flags are raised, to calm the gods, purify the air and spread prayers through the wind. Each color of the flags represents one of the 5 elements of the earth: wood, earth, water, fire, and iron. It is only after the Puja that climbers may proceed in their ascent.
Nice work. 24 year old Dawa Steven Sherpa has started a program to rid Mt. Everest of its massive quantities of trash, offering Sherpas 50 rupees, or $1, of his own money through his rekking company for every kilogram of trash they remove from the mountain. Read more about his program here.
Solu Khumbu in Nepal consists of three regions: Khumbu, Pharak and Shorong . The ancestors of the Sherpas came from the East Tibetan region of Kham about 500 years ago, and in later years many Tibetan families followed them to Khumbu where they were integrated into the Sherpa society.
Watch this sweet video of sherpa life with great pictures of children, filmed in the Solu Khumbu district of the Himalayas.
CRAIG HILL
Published: August 16th, 2008 01:00 AM
If all goes as planned this morning for Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, he’ll park at Paradise, dash to the 14,411-foot summit of Mount Rainier and then run back to his car.
All before breakfast.
Most people need two days to climb the mountain. Gelu, the first man to climb Mount Everest in less than 11 hours, plans to tackle Rainier in four.
If Gelu, a 39-year-old employee of Seattle’s Alpine Ascents International, even comes close to his goal, it will be a fitting chapter in Rainier’s summer of speed.
Prior to this summer, it’s widely believed that only one man, Chad Kellogg of Seattle, had made a round-trip summit in less than five hours. This summer, two local mountain guides say they have accomplished the feat.
On Aug. 4, a week before his first medical school classes at the University of Washington, 29-year-old Liam O’Sullivan set the standard with a self-timed trip of four hours, 46 minutes, 29 seconds. His time was three minutes, six seconds faster than the unofficial record fellow International Mountain Guides climber Justin Merle, 29, set July 9.
“I think Liam and Justin were sitting around talking about it one day and they set out to do it,” said George Dunn, IMG’s co-director. “They are both very fast, and I think they inspired other guides to try.”
Gelu hatched his plan for climbing Rainier as a way to raise money for schools in his homeland, Nepal.
He is considered one of the strongest and fastest climbers in the world. In 2003 he climbed to 29,035-foot Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, in 10:56:46.
“He’s a mutant,” Kellogg said.
O’Sullivan fully expects Gelu, whose Everest record has since been broken, to shatter the record if weather permits.
Weather.com is forecasting mostly clear skies and temperatures in the 60s between 5 and 9 a.m.
Yeti, The mighty Himalayan man, is a myth now. Tibet as a free nation and the existence of Tibetans as the rightful people of Tibet is being made into a myth by the Chinese government. Yeti is a symbol of hope for all Tibetans, praying to become the Mighty Himalayan Spiritual Nation once again. It’s the story of Tibetans born in India, living a dream of going back to their free country one day.
Yeti is a non-profit, collaborative film project that will be released online on 8th august 2008 when the Olympic Games start in Beijing. The objective of this film project is to reach student communities worldwide and to gather support for the peaceful struggle of the Tibetan people in the age of weapons and wars. It will also attempt to provide the viewer with an understanding of the Tibetan Uprising Movement at this critical point in Tibetan history. Can Tibetans get their country back from Communist China by using flags and prayers against their modern weapons?
The story of the Yeti has captured the imagination the Himalayan people since before any foreigner laid eyes on the forbidden land of Tibet or the Sherpa kingdoms around Mount Everest in the land of ice and snow where the Yeti is fabled to reside.
“It was at the Bottleneck that calamity struck on the descent. An ice pillar broke off, snapping the ropes and causing an avalanche. Confortola recalls how McDonnell’s body had been torn to shreds by the impact of the avalanche and all he could see were the separated parts tumbling down the mountainside. “Yes, it was very bad,” he says quietly.
Shortly afterwards, one of the Nepalese porters appeared and offered oxygen – which he gratefully accepted. “The Sherpa took me to meet Wilco and Cass,” he says, referring to the two Dutch climbers rescued a day before him. “When we were walking down another avalanche struck. It hit two Sherpas who were helping us. And an oxygen bottle came cascading down and hit me in the back of the head.” Confortola bends forward to reveal a round black mark near the base of his skull.
It was at this point that Confortola was certain he would die. “I was falling,” he says, gesturing animatedly. “The avalanche would have taken me away with it. But I was lucky. One of the Sherpas, his name was Pemba, grabbed me from behind. He was holding my neck. He saved my life.”
Dawa Steven Sherpa stood on the top of Everest late last month, (as did Apa Sherpa for the 18th time!) as part of the Eco Everest Expedition 2008. Their expedition was about the highs and lows of humankind’s achievement. For not only can we stumble through the rarefied, oxygen depleted, air of the world tallest peak , we can pump the higher atmosphere full of climate changing greenhouse gases.
Apa Sherpa on the summit of Everest
It was this latter achievement that Dawa Steven Sherpa is determined to do something about. For a year ago, whilst descending from another successful Everest summit attempt, he, along with some fellow sherpas, nearly came to a very sticky end, when the famed Khumbu icefall turned to slush and collapsed. Global warming had come to the Himalaya in a very personal way.
So he returned in 2008 with the with International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in tow to carry out a scientific investigation of the long Khumbu valley.
Glacial Lake Outburst Floods
One of the studies made was related to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), where the water mass becomes to great for its natural dam wall of rubble, otherwise known as a terminal moraine, and breaks through, resulting in massive downstream flooding. (similar to the earthquake lake problem that China recently experienced. Were the glacial lakes at the foot of Everest, and elsewhere in the Himalaya, to breach their moraines, it could have catastrophic consequences for the sherpa people living down the valley. And the lakes are growing in mass as glacier ice melts become more prevalent. (Wikipedia reckons that a glacial lake outburst flood created the English Channel in days of yore, so they are not events to considered lightly.)
Solar Ovens
A ten point “Eco-Code of Conduct” (ECC) for mountaineering expeditions was also being road tested on this climb to see it if could be applied to expeditions around the world. For example, the base camp kitchen used parabolic solar heaters rather the usual kerosene or cooking gas. Sherpa reckoned they worked fantastically. “They would melt and boil 10 litres of snow in 35 minutes, and we used it for cooking, making tea, washing dishes and having showers,” he said.
The French climber presumed dead, Hugues d’Aubarede, relayed an account of the climb that was posted on a blog. His last message, from the foot of the Bottleneck, was: “I would love it if everyone could contemplate this ocean of mountains and glaciers. They put me through the wringer, but it’s so beautiful. The night will be long but beautiful.”
A fund has been set up with the help of Nazir Sabir of the Alpine Club of Pakistan and many others including the Mountain Fund to help the families of the 2 Sherpas and 2 Pakistani porter climbers who died in this tragedy. Click here for information and to donate. Please consider helping …
Usually half dead reach the summit
As I read the news, and watched it on Television, memories of my mountaineering days came back and deprived me of my sleep bringing nightmares of my own struggle on K2 the Savage Mountain, and nostalgia of teamwork during our dangerous descent. This tragedy also faced the same challenges but in contrast
we are alive to tell the ordeal graced by human will, endurance, team spirit and luck.
K2 towering 8,611m (28,251ft) is indeed a formidable mountain. Most expeditions prefer using the traditional route via Abruzzi Ridge, Pyramid, Spider Ridge and then the summit. On this route Camp III is located above 7000m and this is the closest you can reach to safety. It also means that in case of bad weather expeditions have to wait days before making a halfway attempt to summit. This midway is Camp IV at 8000m and only halfway to the mountain. Most, it is the Death Zone. Any prolonged stay at this camp results in very fast physical deterioration. Climbers usually descend to camp III or advance base camp to climb up once again. This means extra strain on lungs, sinews and limbs.
In clear weather, expeditions prefer a dash from Camp IV past midnight if the moon is in the second or third quarter. These expeditions have a higher rate of success and survival because they descend from the summit while it is still day. But the not so lucky ones make the dash 2-3 hours later, meaning the descent has to be in darkness. The summit of K2 with Gashebrum I (Hidden Peak that I reached), Broad Peak, Gashebrum II and IV and Chogolisa make a gulley that creates spiralling wind gusts. If this wind blows (100-150 KMPH, with chill factor of over minus 50C), the expeditions on top are doomed. Normally, just below the summit, K2 has a ring of clouds just like the Saturn Planet, with the peak clearly above it. It is this cloud that lurks like an angle of death and strong winds accounting for over 27% mortality rate on this Savage Mountain.
The route from Camp VI follows a ridge which is very deceptive. The slope is gradual, glaciated with seracs and hard loose rocks. At some places, both ascent and descent without ropes is impossible. There is a web of ropes abandoned by past expeditions both lucky and unlucky. Successful expeditions have usually relied on their own fixed ropes. The fatal ones have erred using old ropes, or fixed themselves to wrong ones in the darkness. The most unfortunate ones have plummeted to death.
