Sherpa Hospitality as a Cure for Frostbite: A Personal Perspective on the Tigers of Himalayan Mountaineering

SHERPA HOSPITALITY AS A CURE FOR FROSTBITE

A personal perspective on the tigers of Himalayan mountaineering

By Mark Horrell

Published by Mountain Footsteps Press

Copyright © Mark Horrell, 2021

www.markhorrell.com

All rights reserved

Except where indicated, all photographs copyright © Mark Horrell

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy via the links at www.markhorrell.com/SherpaHospitality. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Front cover: Design for Writers

www.designforwriters.com

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-912748-10-5

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-912748-11-2

ISBN (audiobook): 978-1-912748-12-9

SHERPA HOSPITALITY AS A CURE FOR FROSTBITE

About this book

Ever since Europeans started exploring the world’s highest mountains and trying to reach their summits in the early 20th century, Sherpas have been an integral part of mountaineering expeditions to the Himalayas. In this anthology curated from his popular Footsteps on the Mountain blog, Mark Horrell explores the evolution of Sherpa mountaineers, from the porters of early expeditions to the superstar climbers of the present day.

Writing with trademark warmth and humour, he starts by bringing to life the Sherpa characters of the early days, describing their customs and superstitions, and putting their contributions and achievements into context.

In the deeply personal second section of the book, he covers some of the conflicts of the 21st century, when a series of high-profile controversies highlighted the tensions between Sherpas and western climbers on Everest. He was a witness to a devastating avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall that killed 16 Nepali mountain workers and led to a labour dispute, and he describes the events that followed from a commercial client’s perspective.

In the final section of the book, he brings the story up to date and looks to the future, as Sherpas have moved out of the limelight of westerners, running successful mountaineering expedition companies and becoming celebrated climbers in their own right.

SHERPA HOSPITALITY AS A CURE FOR FROSTBITE

Contents

Foreword by Alex Roddie

Note on the text

Part One – Emergence

1. Sherpa hospitality as a cure for frostbite

2. An early history of the 8,000m peaks: the Sherpa contribution

3. Ten great Sherpa mountaineers

4. How to escape from a yeti

5. Is it OK for mountaineers to miss a puja?

6. Nawang Gombu: Heart of a Tiger – a review

7. Following the Everesters

Part Two – Conflict

8. All you need to know about the Everest fist fight

9. A tribute to Sherpas, the tigers of the snow

10. Expedition dispatch: the Sherpa sacrifice

11. Lhotse 2014: the world’s most expensive Everest Base Camp trek

12. The Everest Base Camp summit meeting: an eyewitness account

13. Leo Houlding does his bit for the Sherpas

14. The cod science of Everest hate

15. My review of Sherpa – Trouble on Everest

16. Everest’s deadliest day – debating Everest’s future

Part Three – Triumph

17. On summit certificates, liaison officers and funny mountaineering rules

18. Are western operators right to complain about cheap Nepali operators on Everest?

19. In memory of Chongba Sherpa of Tate, a high-altitude superstar

20. Nirmal Purja’s ascent of all fourteen 8,000m peaks: why is it controversial?

21. Is the first winter ascent of K2 a turning point for Sherpa mountaineers?

22. Why Tenzing is the greatest Everest climber

Foreword

I can remember the first time I came across Mark Horrell’s writing. The year was 2010, I was a climbing-obsessed barman living in Glen Coe, and Mark was blogging about expeditions to high, cold places: Cho Oyu, Aconcagua, and more. Here’s a blog worth watching, I thought, and I added it to my RSS reader. Other blogs have come and gone, but Footsteps on the Mountain has always remained.

Ever since those early years, Mark’s mountain writing has stood apart for me. At first glance, many of his blog posts seem pretty simple: informal trip reports and expedition dispatches, delivered in a straightforward, easy-going style, with plenty of jokes and light-hearted banter along the way. But it took me a couple of years to realise that there’s a lot more to his writing than this.

In 2012, the media was in full-blown attack mode against Everest climbers, with all the familiar tropes: entitled rich commercial climbers, downtrodden noble Sherpas, queues at high altitude, maybe Everest should be closed, things just aren’t as good as they used to be in the 1950s. Many well-respected mountain writers amplified these ideas. Meanwhile, Mark Horrell, who had actually climbed Everest that year, provided an alternative perspective and tried to set the record straight by showing what a commercial Everest expedition is really like.

In the years since, I’ve edited many of Mark’s books about his expeditions, and I’ve seen his writing evolve to tackle those more challenging subjects with a characteristic flair. Although a hint of nuance has crept into the media’s coverage of Himalayan climbing since 2012, the old myths remain stubborn – and Mark’s dedication to offering alternative perspectives has only grown. So, when he approached me for editorial help with his latest project, aiming to tell the story of how the role of Sherpas has transformed from high-altitude porters to world-class climbers in their own right, I had a hunch that his insights would result in something well worth reading.

It has been a fascinating and rewarding project to work on. Footsteps on the Mountain may have provided the raw material, but his blog is more than just a blog, and this is more than just a collection of blog posts. Not many mountain bloggers have consistently written such in-depth and high-quality essays about the subject. The pieces in this collection include historically significant eyewitness accounts of the 2014 Everest Base Camp disaster and its aftermath – which, politically, was every bit as consequential as the disaster itself, and continues to have implications for Sherpas and high-altitude mountaineering in Nepal to this day.

As editor of Sidetracked magazine, I see a wide variety of stories about adventure and big mountains cross my desk every day. It’s still uncommon to come across stories that truly look beneath the surface to investigate deeper issues while still remaining accessible and humorous in tone. Sherpa Hospitality as a Cure for Frostbite achieves this, but it hasn’t come out of nowhere – it’s a result of many years of work and experience.

Helping Mark to curate and edit this book, drawing threads together and working out what to include (and what not to), has been a pleasure and a privilege. Over many years, Mark’s personal experiences with Sherpas, the ‘tigers of the snow’, has given him a worthwhile perspective that he combines with his knowledge of mountaineering history and literature to weave a compelling narrative. This is the story of how Sherpas, long a vital part of western-led climbing expeditions, stood up and took control of their own destiny – but it’s a bumpy road, Nepal continues to face many problems, and there are no easy answers.

Alex Roddie, October 2021

Note on the text

The articles in this collection first appeared in Mark Horrell’s Footsteps on the Mountain blog. They have been edited slightly from the original to avoid repetition and to help the flow of the story from start to finish. Although each article can be read separately, they are best read in the sequence presented here. The original publication date appears at the top of each article to provide context.

PART ONE – EMERGENCE

1. Sherpa hospitality as a cure for frostbite

27 March 2013

‘The healing property of alcohol was the last thing we thought of as we submitted to the feasting and hospitality of the Khumbu and Solu Sherpa villages on the way down from Cho Oyu.’

—Herbert Tichy, Himalaya

Mountaineering history is full of stories of heroic ascents that have come at a cost, especially the loss of fingers and toes (or worse) due to frostbite. We understand how to treat frostbite injuries much better now, and mountaineers who suffer severe frostbite during a climb often manage to survive with all their bits intact. But one method of treatment, discovered by a little-known Austrian mountaineer in the 1950s, seems to have been neglected by the medical profession, and it’s one that sounds quite appealing.

When the Frenchman Maurice Herzog arrived back at Camp 5 after the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950, his hands were like icicles after losing his gloves during the descent. His teammate Gaston Rébuffat immediately took him into the tent and began whipping his fingers with a bit of rope and vigorously massaging them in an attempt to get some feeling back. Down at base camp and during the trek out, expedition doctor Jacques Oudot subjected him to a series of agonising novocaine injections, lasting for hours, which caused him to writhe in pain as his climbing partners held him still. Oudot managed to prevent the onset of gangrene, but eventually all of Herzog’s fingers and toes had to be amputated.

Nowadays we know that the rope treatment and vigorous massage only aggravate frostbite and make amputation more likely. Standard treatment now is to gradually thaw out frozen body parts by placing them in warm water, or warming them against a teammate’s chest, armpit or even crotch (though it’s worth noting that the latter can be sensitive to extreme cold – a patient in America recently sued his doctors over a frostbitten penis after they left ice strapped to his member for longer than necessary).

What has not been studied is why Sherpas are often able to withstand severe cold much better than western climbers, and the Austrian Herbert Tichy discovered a possible reason for this by chance in the 1950s.

In 1954 Tichy made the first ascent of 8,201m Cho Oyu, the sixth-highest mountain in the world, with his compatriot Sepp Jöchler and the Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama. A small, lightweight expedition with only a handful of members, it was an unusual ascent by the standards of the time – very different to the huge siege-style assaults of 8,000m peaks prevalent until then. When Italians made the first ascent of K2 the same year they had a party of 30 mountaineers and scientists and around 16,000kg of equipment. By contrast Tichy, Jöchler and geographer Helmut Heuberger had just 800kg.

Tichy was already suffering from frostbite after diving onto his tent with gloveless hands to prevent it being blown away in a gale. However, when he discovered they were in a race for the summit with a team of Swiss climbers who had appeared on the mountain without a permit, Tichy realised that if he wanted to make the first ascent then he would have to make a bold strike for the top without giving his hands a chance to recover.

They reached the summit on 19 October, but Tichy’s hands were severely frostbitten, and he assumed that he would lose fingers. When Indian customs officers inspected his baggage at the border and found it to be missing 180 pairs of socks, which had been in his inventory when he left, they thought he must have sold them and tried to charge duty. With black humour, Tichy held up his frostbitten hands and asked if they wanted to charge duty on his fingers as well.

But when he eventually presented himself for treatment at a clinic back home in Vienna, he was in for a surprise. His doctor looked at the photographs of his hands taken in the Himalayas; then he looked at the hands themselves, and remarked in amazement:

‘You should by rights have lost one or two fingers, but I don’t think we shall have to operate. Did you use any particular preparation?’

‘I had the usual Padutin and Ronicol injections, plus ointment and massage,’ Tichy replied.

‘I have never seen anything like it in all my long experience of frostbite on the Russian front. Did you keep to any particular diet or regime?’

‘Yes,’ Tichy admitted, ‘on the way down we were either tipsy or completely sozzled for two whole weeks.’

‘Well, that’s what saved your hands,’ the doctor said. ‘As you know, alcohol dilates the blood vessels and stimulates the circulation.’

Pasang Dawa Lama is one of the most celebrated of all Sherpas behind Tenzing Norgay, who made the first ascent of Everest. In 1939 Pasang climbed almost to the summit of K2 with the American Fritz Wiessner; his decision to turn around short of the top probably saved both their lives. He lived in the Sherpa capital of Namche Bazaar, and had been promised a bride there if he reached the summit of Cho Oyu. When the team returned to Namche across the Nangpa La pass, they were invited to join the two weeks of Sherpa festivities in Pasang’s honour. The chang (millet beer) was paid for out of expedition funds, and Tichy said in his book Himalaya that they were obliged to ‘comport ourselves according to the laws of hospitality’.¹

Luckily I’ve never experienced frostbite myself, but perhaps I too have Sherpa hospitality to thank for this. In 2004, the first time I climbed Mera Peak, several of our team – including myself – wore inadequate gloves and suffered mild frostnip after our -30°C summit day. During the ascent, I took my gloves off and discovered that my hands were purple, heading towards black. I was inexperienced then and unfamiliar with the onset of frostnip, the precursor of full-blown frostbite. One of our Sherpas warmed my hands in his own, a teammate gave me some liquid hand warmers to put inside my mitts, and we continued onwards. My boots were also inadequate, and I returned home with a black little toe. Fortunately it recovered soon afterwards, but the tips of my fingers were numb for several weeks; otherwise I was unharmed. Herbert Tichy’s doctor will no doubt have told me the reason for this was because the day after our ascent we spent an evening in the Sherpa village of Tangnag, where our hosts insisted on tipping large quantities of San Miguel beer down our throats.

In my opinion, no mountain is worth sacrificing a digit for – it will always be there to climb another day in different circumstances. The best cure for frostbite is prevention: to be well equipped with good clothing, and to stay in base camp when high winds are battering the summit. On 8,000m peaks, climbing with oxygen helps to circulate blood to the extremities and is one of the best safeguards against frostbite.

But it’s nice to know that a few celebratory drinks afterwards don’t do any harm either.

Cho Oyu, Tibet, where the Austrian climber Herbert Tichy discovered an intriguing cure for frostbite.

2. An early history of the 8,000m peaks: the Sherpa contribution

24 February 2016

The Himalayan Tigers

The Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal (popularly known as the Everest region) is the spiritual home of the Sherpas. Originally Tibetans, they probably migrated over the Nangpa La pass and into Nepal in about the 16th century. The name Sherpa means easterner, because they originally came from the Tibetan region of Kham in the east. They were mostly traders who made a secondary living by farming. Unlike Nepalis from the south, they were used to the high desert climate of Tibet and didn’t find the high mountain climate of the Solu-Khumbu at all harsh. To them it was a green paradise. The Sherpas made their home in the Khumbu, growing crops on its fertile slopes, and trading salt, wool, grain and cotton with their kinsmen across the Nangpa La in Tibet.

By the early 20th century their migratory traders’ lifestyle had taken many of them across the high passes to Darjeeling in north-east India. The surge in Himalayan expeditions in