Through the bond of the mountaineering experience the Sherpa people given their numerically small number and the degree of connection the Sherpas have with the international mountaineering community, no other people of the world have such a for-life bonding friendship experience at scale and in quality record. The most famous historical example of this exceptional phenomenon is of course that of Sherpa Tenzing and Edmund Hillary, but there have been and continue to be almost countless examples of this to date: the unaffected, natural friendliness of the Sherpas is undoubtedly one of their most outstanding and defining characteristics. Below we provide two instances of online articles that evidence this (one on the Hillary – Norgay conquering of Mt Everest story, and the other on that of the UKNFS’ Scotland Board Member, James Lamb and Sherpa monk Tashi Lama).
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay:
Everest 1953: First Footsteps – Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
‘By today’s standards, the 1953 British expedition, under the military-style leadership of Sir John Hunt, was massive in the extreme, but in an oddly bottom-heavy way: 350 porters, 20 Sherpas, and tons of supplies to support a vanguard of only ten climbers. …
… By the spring of 1953, the ascent of the world’s highest mountain was beginning to seem inevitable.
At first it seemed the Swiss would claim the prize. In 1952 a strong Swiss team that included legendary alpinist Raymond Lambert had pioneered the route up the steep Lhotse Face and reached the South Col. From that high, broad saddle, Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay then pushed all the way to 28,210 feet (8,598 meters) on the Southeast Ridge before turning back—probably as high as anyone had ever stood on Earth.
Now the British were determined to bring every possible advantage to their spring 1953 offensive—including hiring Tenzing, 38, as their lead Sherpa, or sirdar. …
… So it was that three days later Hillary and Tenzing set out for the top. Their pairing was hardly an accident. “It had always been Hunt’s intention, if feasible, to include a Sherpa in one of the summit teams, as a way of recognizing their invaluable contribution to the success of these expeditions,” Band says. “Tenzing had already proved he had summit potential by his performance the previous year with Lambert.
In fact, he had been at least 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) higher than any of us!” Indeed, Tenzing (who died in 1986) was the most experienced Everest veteran alive, having participated in six previous attempts on the mountain dating all the way back to 1935. (To those who criticize the practice of leading paying clients on Everest, Himalayan Experience founder and longtime Everest guide Russell Brice has a barbed, half-joking response: “You know who the first guided client on Everest was? Ed Hillary.”)
… With an earlier start from a higher camp than Bourdillon and Evans’s, Tenzing and Hillary reached the South Summit by 9 a.m. But the difficulties were far from over. After the South Summit, the ridge takes a slight dip before rising abruptly in a rocky spur some 40 feet (12 meters) high just before the true summit. Scraping at the snow with his ax, Hillary chimneyed between the rock pillar and an adjacent ridge of ice to surmount this daunting obstacle, later to be known as the Hillary Step. The pair reached the highest point on Earth at 11:30 a.m. on May 29.
The men shook hands, as Hillary later wrote, “in good Anglo-Saxon fashion,” but then Tenzing clasped his partner in his arms and pounded him on the back. The pair spent only 15 minutes on top. “Inevitably my thoughts turned to Mallory and Irvine,” Hillary wrote, referring to the two British climbers who had vanished high on Everest’s Northeast Ridge in 1924. “With little hope I looked around for some sign that they had reached the summit, but could see nothing.”
As the two men made their way back down, the first climber they met was teammate George Lowe, also a New Zealander. Hillary’s legendary greeting: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off!”
Their fame was spreading even as Hillary and Tenzing left the mountain. “When we came out toward Kathmandu, there was a very strong political feeling, particularly among the Indian and Nepalese press, who very much wanted to be assured that Tenzing was first,” Sir Edmund recalls today. “That would indicate that Nepalese and Indian climbers were at least as good as foreign climbers. We felt quite uncomfortable with this at the time. John Hunt, Tenzing, and I had a little meeting. We agreed not to tell who stepped on the summit first.
“To a mountaineer, it’s of no great consequence who actually sets foot first. Often the one who puts more into the climb steps back and lets his partner stand on top first.” The pair’s pact stood until years later, when Tenzing revealed in his autobiography, Tiger of the Snows, that Hillary had in fact preceded him.
Neither man anticipated how much, in the wake of their success, the appeal of that patch of snow more than five miles in the sky would grow. “Both Tenzing and I thought that once we’d climbed the mountain, it was unlikely anyone would ever make another attempt,” Sir Edmund admits today. “We couldn’t have been more wrong.”
Source link — National Geographic revisits the 1953 British summit to Everest when the first people stood atop the world’s highest mountain. Excerpts above from National Geographic article “50 Years on Everest,” by Contributing Editor David Roberts, National Geographic Adventure, April 2003: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/everest/sir-edmund-hillary-tenzing-norgay-1953/
James Lamb and Tashi Lama:
James Lamb (UKNFS board member) has a deep, many years duration, connection with the Sherpa people, and especially with monk Mr Tashi Lama. The results of this special Scottish – Sherpa special friendship have produced some exceptional educational and humanitarian, educational results. Excerpts from the article below bring this into focus.
Perthshire man’s film from Nepal ‘Sherpas Speak’ is a big hit at international film festivals — ‘Sherpas Speak’ wins people’s choice award at Dundee Mountain Film Festival
A Perthshire man’s film about Sherpas in Nepal has been making waves across the globe.
James Lamb, who lives in Little Dunkeld, has made a documentary film called ‘Sherpas Speak’ with the BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Richard Else.
Not only has the film won the people’s choice award at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival, it is to be shown at the Trento Film Festival in Italy and the pair have been invited to screen it at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival.
For the last few years, James has split his time between Perthshire and Nepal where he runs a trekking business called Tengboche Trekking with a local monk called Tashi Lama, and a charity called The Little Sherpa Foundation.He spends his time in the Asian country trying to rebuild the Sherpa communities affected by an avalanche which hit Mount Everest in 2014, and the devastating Gorkha earthquake which struck a year later, killing 9000 people.
The film saw James and Richard travelling out to Nepal to capture what life is like for the Sherpa people, an indigenous group who live 4000 metres above sea level, using guides from Inspire Trek and Travel.
James said: “The film has done incredibly well. “We won the people’s choice award at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival. “To be the only film of all the ones submitted and watched to be chosen is really big.
“We have submitted the film to Trento, the oldest mountain film festival in the world, and Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival has asked us to submit the film too – just to be invited is huge.”
James said the film is important not only because it raises money for his charity, but because it spreads awareness of who the Sherpa
people are. He continued: “Richard Else and I put the film together. “When we went out to Nepal to do the filming, I was doing the interviews – because of the charity work I do out there, the Sherpa people trust me.
“It is all about Sherpa life, what pressures they have, their worries, and about their cultures and beliefs.
“The Sherpa people have narrated the film as well. “There is no one else in the film apart from Sherpas, so it is the only film of its kind in the world that we know of.
“It is important because people think Sherpas are just climbers, particularly if you go to America or Canada – I still know people who have been out to the Himalayas and trekked and climbed with them, and still don’t know they are an indigenous group of people.
“We wanted to give Sherpas their voice.”
The film is also raising money for James’s The Little Sherpa Foundation.
The music in ‘Sherpas Speak’ was written and performed by fellow Dunkeld resident Dougie Maclean, who along with Jamie Maclean is currently writing an album inspired by the film to try and raise even more money.
One of the next projects James is looking to take on is to build an earthquake resistant primary school and he is also hoping to bring running water to a village of 550 people.
James and Richard are both now looking to make more documentaries on the Sherpa people in Nepal, and are hoping to go back out later this year to do even more filming. Source: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/perthshire-mans-film-nepal-sherpas-21614219