Untold stories of Sherpas on Mount Everest

THE untold stories of the people taking deadly risks to help foreigners in a job likened to “going to war”.

A game of Russian roulette

“BASE camp, base camp,” the radio crackles.

“Go ahead,” a voice answers back.

“We need help here. Yeah, we need people to dig out the bodies. Everyone please come up. We need help here. One man is alive and another doesn’t look good. I can’t recognise who it is.”

When Australian documentary filmmaker Jennifer Peedom set out to make a film that showed the untold stories of the Sherpas on Mount Everest and the deadly risks they take helping foreigners up and down the mountain, she didn’t expect her cameras to capture such a disaster.

While filming, Peedom was at base camp on April 18, 2014 when an avalanche struck. A 14,000 ton block of ice crashed down onto the main climbing route and claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas. As cameraman Ed Wardle notes in Sherpa, there hasn’t been a year in history where that many people have died on Everest, let alone in one day.

“In that night we had been up at 2 o’clock in the morning filming Sherpas do their ritual and heading off into the ice fall in the night,” Peedom told news.com.au.

“So I was aware that my Sherpa crew were up there in the mountain and I heard the avalanche at about 6.30 in the morning from my tent and then one of the Sherpa kitchen staff came to my tent shortly afterwards and told me what had happened and said, ‘It’s very bad. People have died.’”

SHERPAS AND THE FACEBOOK GENERATION

Scrolling through Instagram, under the hashtag of #MountEverest, you’ll see some breathtaking photos.

Bright coloured prayer flags strung along ridges in the Himalayas. Soaring views, both peaceful and extreme.

And Westerners in bright coloured climbing gear — in groups and sometimes alone. Standing proudly, perched on a peak of the highest mountain in the world. Chest puffed out, sometimes flexing their arms, showing off the strength and endurance it took to complete what is, for some, a lifelong challenge.

It’s a major achievement that requires intense training and commitment. But all these visitors to the mountain are merely children riding a push bike. And they don’t quite realise there’s an adult behind them, with a hand on the back of their seat, holding them up — stopping them from crashing down hard.

In her BAFTA-nominated doco, Peedom shifts focus away from the thrillseeking, bucket-list-ticking foreigners who take on the mountain, and shines a light on the quiet Himalayan locals who do the grunt work shepherding visitors up and down the mountains. Employed by commercial operators, Sherpas also set the route, and establish and stock the camps up the mountain. With the government not permitting equipment to be flown up, Sherpas have to carry everything — tents, oxygen tanks, food. This means trekking through the most dangerous section — the Khumbu icefall. Mountaineering writer Ed Douglas describes the icefall as “uncontrollable” and “perilous” in the film, while expedition operator Russell Brice says sending Sherpas up the mountain is “like sending them off to war”.

Foreigners might only have to cross through the icefall two or three times on an expedition. For a Sherpa, it can be 30 times a season.

Noticing the changing attitudes of the Sherpas and the shift in dynamics on the mountain in recent years, Peedom decided it was time to make a film that showed their side of the climb and the risks they take.

“Sherpas were getting more educated (and) had access to Facebook and were observing these films and noticing they were being left out of the narrative,” she told news.com.au.

Sherpa guides meeting in the doco Sherpa.

Following an angry brawl between European climbers and Sherpas in 2013, Peedom travelled to base camp in 2014 to follow New Zealander mountaineer and operator Russell Brice’s expedition to the summit with his clients — along with his head Sherpa Phurba Tashi. Peedom was set to follow Tashi who was planning on making his world-record 22nd climb to the summit.

But things took a turn when the avalanche struck.

“I jumped up and I woke up the camera crew and I ran to the camera tent and grabbed a camera,” Peedom said. “As you can see it’s just rough and ready and we’re just filming everything that’s going on and just trying to cover it the best we can because I knew pretty quickly that if you’re making a film about the risks Sherpas take then here that was under a microscope.”

Tension grew on the mountain in the days following the avalanche. Sherpas questioned their treatment, the motivations of the government and operators and demanded better conditions.

With the government not budging, Sherpas went on strike for the season — something that’s never happened before.

Sherpa director Jen Peedom.

A GAME OF RUSSIAN ROULETTE

“Nepal’s tourism industry is worth $360 million a year,” mountaineering writer Ed Douglas says in the film. “So when the government offers the families around $400, which isn’t even enough to cover their funeral expenses, grief turns to anger very quickly.

“The government, once it figured out it could sell Everest as many times as it liked every year rather than once, it’s basically just sat there, occasionally twiddled around the edges when there was some bad headlines, but basically not really done anything since. They’ve left it to western operators and just taken their cut every year. And it’s a big cut.”

Sherpas can earn up to $5000 for a two-month expedition. For the Sherpas and their families, that’s a lot of money — more than they could make doing other jobs.

“ ... The question is, what is the moral justification for that?” asks Douglas in the film. “What reward is there for you to play what is essentially a game of Russian roulette?”

“Everyone needs money,” Sherpa Phurba Tashi says. “ ... So we’ll go on pretending that it’s safe”.

Following this decision to boycott the 2014 season, the conversations between Sherpas and operators, and operators and clients brings to light the ethical struggle on the mountain. For mountaineer and operator Russell Brice, he cares about his Sherpas — but he also has a business to run.

Guides and climbers in a scene from Sherpa.

When the Sherpas decide they don’t want to put their lives at risk by going ahead with the expedition, the foreign climbers are devastated. Some have had their expeditions cancelled before — and after laying out what can be close to $100,000 for each trip, their disappointment is understandable. But, despite 16 deaths in the ice fall just days earlier, some still don’t seem to realise the risk for the Sherpas.

“Can’t you just talk to their owners?” one climber pleads with operator Russel Brice in a particularly shocking scene.

Peedom says she “really didn’t want to judge” the climbers and just let them speak for themselves.

“I think when you embark on an Everest expedition, it is a huge undertaking,” she said. “You spend a lot of money but you also have to spend a lot of time ... a huge amount of training

plus being away from home for two months is not an insignificant thing. So they’re very focused on the task at hand and they probably don’t think a whole lot about what’s going on with the Sherpas. Normally the Sherpas don’t draw attention to themselves — they go about their job.

“I would argue that all of them really care about the Sherpas but I don't think they realised the real risks. I think that just comes back to being a very determined personality and having a mission. Having a goal in life and putting your head down and going for it, which means not thinking about the welfare of others necessarily as much as perhaps you should.”

Sherpa is in cinemas nationally from March 31.

Director Jennifer Peedom will present a Q&A and special advance screening in Sydney on March 17 and Melbourne on March 20.