Mountaineering in Nepal - He Ain't Your Sherpa (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2001

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True EVEREST
He Ain't Your Sherpa (Cont.)


	Babu's mother, older brother Dawa, and father at his parents' house in Chhulemu. (Teru Kuwayama)

ANG RITA SHERPA lives in the village of Thamo, two hours up the trail from Namche on the ancient trade route to Tibet. Like Babu, he is a national hero in Nepal, but his glory days are over. Now in his mid-fifties—he's not certain what year he was born—he was the biggest Sherpa mountaineering star for the better part of a decade in the late eighties and nineties.

He retired three years ago, not because he could afford to stop working, but because he has serious health problems. "It's my liver and my lungs," he says, attributing his chronic illnesses to climbing without oxygen. When he's not convalescing, he herds a few yaks and sits in his not-quite-finished guest lodge drinking chang, Nepal's sour-tasting, grain-mash home brew, and offering up reminiscences about accomplishments that have already been eclipsed by the two Sherpas sitting in the room with him.

Joining Babu and me for our visit is Apa Sherpa, 41, who is as slim as Babu is stout. His presence makes this a minor historic occasion: Sitting around Ang Rita's dining room are the only three men ever to have climbed Everest at least ten times. (Ang Rita and Babu have ten ascents each; Apa has 11.)

At one point I ask Apa if he knows that Babu intends to climb Everest twice this season, to get 12 ascents, which would leave them tied for the record if Apa summits once, as he intends to. "No, I didn't know that," he says quietly, offering a wan smile.

"Well, what do you think?"

"It's no problem," he says, with a nearly imperceptible shrug. "I don't do climbing for myself, or for records—only for clients."

Babu does compete with the records of these men, and he has far outstripped them in the realm of self-promotion. Apa, who speaks proficient English&#!51;crucial to sponsors—runs a lodge an hour up the trail in Thame but has so far been unable to leverage his résumé the way Babu has.

There are three ways for Sherpas to make money on the mountain. First, there's salary. In return for humping loads, fixing lines, setting up camps, and carrying extra oxygen bottles for clients, a Sherpa earns between $7 and $10 a day. Second, when he signs on to an expedition he receives an "equipment allowance" of between $1,500 and $2,000; since many Sherpas already own a full complement of climbing gear, this often goes straight into the pocket. Third, Sherpas can earn bonuses for shuttling loads between camps and sometimes for helping clients summit. Add it all up, and a Sherpa might walk off with $4,000 for a couple of months' work. An American guide, on the other hand, can make $20,000 to $30,000 leading clients on Everest.

Thus the perennial, seesawing quarrel among mountaineers over what's fair pay for Sherpas. "Babu is risking his life to get people up there and not getting paid shit, really," says Jared Ogden, an American climber who has twice hired Nomad Expeditions as his outfitter. "He's not making what Western guides are making, and that's grossly unfair." The per capita income in Nepal is $210, goes the other side. "These guys are my friends, and I pay them well," says veteran American climber and guide Eric Simonson. "I don't buy in to the idea that Sherpas are poor and downtrodden. Some of them get paid top dollar."

Either way you look at it, Babu is starting to chip away at the disparity in income, and I have never heard him complain about it. His real breakthrough was in striking a sponsorship deal with Mountain Hardwear for cash as well as gear. According to his current contract, he receives more equipment than he could ever use, plus $5,000 a year. And that's not all.

Babu spent two months last summer doing entirely different work for his sponsor. In an extended guest appearance that thrilled both his supervisor and Babu, he earned $15 an hour working in Mountain Hardwear's distribution center in Richmond, California, as a common laborer, stocking shelves, breaking down cardboard boxes, and cleaning up.

"I liken him to the Tiger Woods of mountaineering," says Joe Stadum, Babu's boss at the warehouse. "But you'd never know it, because he's so quiet and calm. Most of the guys don't have a great interest in climbing, but he was on the cover of our catalog, and they liked asking for his autograph." According to Stadum, he showed up early every day and had to be asked to go home at night.

To Babu, there's no irony here. "That's good money," he told me. "I don't think because I'm famous I can't do manual labor. I don't see the connection.

"I make more than I do on Everest."

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