Conducting an Everest expedition in takes a special plan, and we had one. From the very beginning we set the bar very high for our entire expedition team including clients and Nepal staff, with our goal to do everything in our power to isolate and prevent the spread of CV While some expedition teams worked on getting their flat screen TV's, queen beds and espresso machines to Base Camp, we worked on sourcing over 2, CV test kits.
Our sincere thanks go to one of our climbers, Dr. Kris Brickman, for his role in making that happen. Those test kits were a huge asset for our expedition and enabled us to repeatedly test all our team members, including our Sherpa staff, over the course of the entire expedition, starting on the trek to BC and right on through to the last day at Base Camp. By utilizing testing we were able to immediately isolate the very small handful of individuals who did test positive during the trip and immediately shift them to quarantine.
The results speak for themselves. We were able to put a solid group of climbers on the summit of Everest and Lhotse. This was due in part to our CV protocols, the diligence of our climbers to train, prepare and adhere to our protocols, and also due to an accurate and patient reading of the weather forecast by Jonathan, Ang Jangbu, and Greg. They timed our ascent to the upper mountain camps to take advantage of a small window of good weather, and our summit teams threaded the needle.
Again, I cannot give enough praise to the weather forecasters, the IMG leaders, and the summit climbers who patiently hung in there and waited until Mt. Everest said "Yes". After our beautiful Everest summit day on May 23, and with the expedition drawing to a close, our thoughts immediately turned to how we would responsibly reintegrate the IMG Sherpas back into their home villages and protect their families.
Before discharging any of our Sherpa staff from Base Camp, we did one final round of CV testing, and the entire IMG sherpa team 47 individuals tested negative. Then, we sent each of them home along with a generous supply of test kits to ensure that they could re-test over the next few days to prevent spread into their villages and also to test their families if that became necessary.
Had any tested positive, we were prepared to set up a fully supported camp for them down at lower elevation where they could safely quarantine before going home.
Another is Ang Tharkay, who went on the Annapurna expedition with the French and is now helping a group of young Californians scale Mount Makalu, a 27,foot peak not far from Everest.
Tenzing and Ang Tharkay began climbing at about the same time, and people often compared them. A Buddhist might argue that he was incarnated for that end, and it does almost appear that he was destined to climb it.
It seems as if barriers opened when Tenzing drew near. Tenzing and Hillary were not the first men in their group to try for the summit; two British climbers, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, went ahead of them, but had to stop because their oxygen was running out. The weather was perfect for Tenzing and Hillary, though there was every reason to expect it would be bad. Because of a siege of malaria, on top of the strain of the two climbs, Tenzing was run-down when he joined Hunt at Katmandu in March, , but between Katmandu and Everest he walked himself into shape.
On the other hand, I have been told that in January, , Tenzing vowed at a dinner that he would climb Everest or die. For the British, this was a rather revolutionary idea—a bit like commissioning a man from the ranks—but the Swiss, who have no colonies, had set a precedent for it by treating Tenzing as a mountaineer in their own class and assigning him, along with Raymond Lambert, an Alpine guide, to make the big try.
They nearly got to the summit. All this was in the background at the time Hunt asked Tenzing to be one of the climbers. When Tenzing and Hillary reached the top, on May 29th, it was the end of the climb and the beginning of the arguments. Issue No. This came from the outside world, from a public conditioned to thinking that there must always be a winner.
Mountaineers, especially when they are roped together, as Tenzing and Hillary were, seem to lack the zest for personal triumph. Soon after Hillary and Tenzing descended, they said they had reached the top together, and that is what they have been saying ever since. The next controversy came when the party rejoined the world, in Katmandu. Nepalese nationalists objected to the news that Hunt and Hillary were to be knighted and that Tenzing was only to receive the George Medal.
Tenzing objected publicly, and became estranged, for a time, from Hunt and the rest of the British in the expedition.
Feeling in Katmandu blazed high. After the party went back to India, the breach was patched up. There has been no objection to the climb, incidentally, from Tibetan or Chinese Communists, even though the border between Tibet and Nepal crosses the summit of Everest, and Tenzing and Hillary might have been accused of trespassing.
The Tenzing affair has worked the other way. But nowadays heroism seems to be a subjective matter and not an objective one; a hero is a man who has caught the public eye, as Tenzing has, and not one who meets an abstract standard.
Besides, if there is a standard in this case, it can only be the climbing of Everest itself. Over the years, the try at the ascent was a test promoted largely by men who believed in white superiority. In the end, Tenzing, a nonwhite, passed it. Inevitably, this made him a hero to Indian nationalists. Tenzing is a Cinderella who has shown them that they, too, can be belles.
Although Tenzing usually manages to keep above the conflict, he is hurt when, as has happened a few times, he hears Westerners say that many another Sherpa, if properly led, could have climbed Everest. I help to you. All same. We both together. To get much further, Tenzing needs an interpreter, and this is one way Rabindranath Mitra assists him. Mitra is a slight young Indian who grew up in Darjeeling and has a small printing shop here.
He got interested in Tenzing in , was struck by his personality, and, in , began to publicize him, writing stories for the Indian press and advancing the legend that Tenzing had three lungs, which caused Mitra to be accused in Himalayan Club circles of money-making sensationalism.
After coming down from Everest, Tenzing experimented with other secretaries, or advisers, but he has apparently settled on Mitra. It is an executive job, for whoever holds it controls access to Tenzing and thereby governs him to a large extent. Mitra is a warm, idealistic young man who seems to be devoted to Tenzing, but he is also an ardent Indian patriot and a Bengali—Bengalis are traditionally impassioned—and he may contribute tension as well as advice to his employer.
His closeness to Tenzing is resented, of course, but Tenzing is evidently unmoved by that. The exhibit room is large and light, with windows looking out over a veranda toward the peaks. The wall opposite holds the main display. There is a picture of Gandhi at the top center, with Nehru below at one side and Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh at the other.
A long table stands under the pictures, and on it are plaques, medals, mugs, and a silver relief map of the Himalayas. On the wall to the right is a smaller exhibit devoted to the climb and consisting of photographs and gear, including the nylon rope Tenzing and Hillary used.
At the top is the well-known shot of Tenzing on the summit. Scattered about the room are dozens of other items—knives, ice axes, primus stoves, climbing boots, and so on. In this room, Tenzing receives the public and tries to keep up his end of whatever conversations he gets into. The other day, I listened in on a chat he had with an American, who started by offering Tenzing a cigarette.
Tenzing refused, saying he never smoked. The American began to light one himself, then stopped and asked if it was all right. There was a pause. The caller looked out the window. The day happened to be clear, and he could see the distant snows. He remarked on how splendid they were, and Tenzing agreed.
Tenzing thought this over and said it would. Some people think Mrs. Tenzing, who is less high-strung than he, likes it better. She has expanded her collection of the treasures Sherpa women go in for, and she keeps them in a room that is, according to custom, set apart as a Buddhist shrine. This room, where visitors seldom penetrate, is adorned with Tibetan rugs, paintings, and images, and lined with shelves of brassware and crockery, including a set of fine Chinese teacups, for which Mrs.
Tenzing has had Tibetan lids and saucers of silver made by local artisans. She runs a big household, for an Asian who does well usually attracts relatives, and Tenzing is generous; he feeds twenty mouths in the slack season now, Mitra says. One of his dependents is a retired Sherpa guide, a strong-featured man, who acts as doorman and guard for the museum.
Tenzing wore a red turtleneck sweater, gray plus fours, plaid stockings, and brown shoes, and looked extremely handsome as he sat quietly in his chair on the stage. The first applause came when Mr. A plan is now under way to remedy this by founding a government mountaineering school in the town, and Tenzing has been hired as its chief instructor.
This scheme looms large in his affairs. Tenzing differs from the Lindbergh style of hero in being accessible, and from the Jack Dempsey style in having no head for business. He is an intelligent man, and he has been helped by Mitra and other friends, but it is doubtful that he knows where he stands in a business way. The governing factor in his life now is a contract he signed last year with the United Press, calling for an autobiography, if he can write one.
Tenzing and Mitra have been working on this, and James Ramsey Ullman, the mountaineering writer, is expected to lend a hand soon. The contract, Tenzing and Mitra say, restricts his other activities, and they prefer interpreting it strictly, more strictly, it seems, than is necessary. Not long ago, Tenzing was invited to fly to New York, all expenses paid, for the fiftieth-anniversary dinner of the Explorers Club, but he refused on the ground that it might conflict with the U.
While Hughes awaits an appropriate weather window to make a bid for the summit, he has ample time to reflect on the twists and turns that nearly derailed his trip — which, if he completes his summit successfully, will make him one of only 40 or so people to reach both summits on a single climb and one of only or so people to complete the so-called Seven Summits, or the highest mountain on each continent.
Even as he trudged up and down the stairs during AtHomeEverest, Hughes kept the Himalayan climbing season in his sights. He continued to train throughout the year at home in Fremont and, when gyms reopened, at the Olympic Athletic Club in Ballard.
Hughes scrambled to find another team and landed a spot with Madison Mountaineering, with whom he had previously climbed Mount Vinson, the tallest peak in Antarctica.
In March, the Chinese government canceled all climbing permits for the spring season from the north side of Everest, which sparked fears that Nepal might do the same. Once back in Nepal, Hughes reacquainted himself with the humbling Himalayan vistas. In , he was evacuated by helicopter from Camp 2 elevation of 21, feet to a Kathmandu hospital with a case of trail pneumonia. After an exceptionally dry year, Hughes returned to find an intimidating scene on the infamous Khumbu Icefall, a treacherous stretch of seracs and crevasses between Everest base camp and the various high camps.
The crowds of trekking tourists are all but nonexistent and climbing teams keep to themselves to practice social distancing.
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