Into Thin Air
...ave been successful summits of Everest without Sherpa help. Sherpa’s also take the positions of cooks and Base Camp Sherpa’s. Sherpa’s are needed on Everest. Many times they go not thanked and unappreciated because clients are so focused on the summit that they look over what the Sherpa’s do for them. A friend of a Sherpa told Jon after the disaster, “Ang Dorje sees his role on this earth as keeping people safe. It’s all important for him in terms of his religion and preparing for the next go-round in life. Even though Rob was the expedition leader, Ang Dorje would see it as his responsibility to ensure to safety of Rob and the others. So when they died, he couldn’t help but blame himself”. This shows how important it is to a Sherpa that the guides and clients of their team stay safe. Sherpa’s are very loyal to their employer and will often refuse to help another team unless directed by their guide. Summiting Everest is a huge accomplishment whether it be for sport or for commercial reasons. When climbers go up representing a country they seem to have more of a drive. They carry radios to report their status to Base Camp and Base Camp delivers the message to leaders of their country and their family. “Wilton notified the Adventure Consultants office in New Zealand, and a flurry of faxes went out to friends and families around the world, announcing the expedition’s triumphant culmination”. Every major country wants to summit Everest; after all it is the top of the world. To achieve this great feat is like getting a man on the moon. All the major countries want to send a man to the moon. It is a very high achievement. The dream in this book is to summit Mt. Everest and make it back alive. When performing high altitude climbing there are so many things to worry about. Health wise, there are issues such as HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema), HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema), hypothermia, frostbite and many other illnesses. Every climber is putting their life at risk when they climb Everest. When in the “so-called Death Zone, above 25,000 ft”, without supplemental oxygen, oxygen stored in canisters, a climber will not have as much energy and will be forced to stop every few meters for a breather. Mt. Everest can be summited without supplemental oxygen and it has been done many times. Guides who usually climb without the help of oxygen will use it when they are taking clients up. If they didn’t it would be considered irresponsible of them because they need to be able to use their brain fully in case of emergencies. A climber will breathe about 4 pints per minute and will use a whole canister in approximately two hours. Because climbers use supplemental oxygen, there are thousands of discarded canisters on the side of the mountain. These bottles have been accumulating since the 1950’s, when bottled oxygen began to be used while climbing. This is a huge problem to the Environmentalists. Thanks to an on-going litter-removal project started by Scott Fischer in 1994, there are fewer canisters up there now than there used to be. Sherpa’s ar...