On the Everest circus

Film maker Jennifer Peedom and the son of history’s most famous Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, relate a compelling tale of rocks, climbers and death :

by Luke Buckmaster

It was a little before 7 a.m. on 18 April 2014 when Jennifer Peedom was woken up by the sounds of an avalanche.

The Australian film-maker was in her tent on Base Camp at Mount Everest, on location with a camera crew to make a documentary exploring the lives and working conditions of Sherpa people. They are the Nepalese climbers who for decades have escorted tourists up and down the mountain: incredibly risky work for a very small share of the reward.

Peedom, 40, was told there had been an accident but only learned the extent of it later. Sixteen Sherpas had been killed, at the time the worst tragedy in Everest history (a year later, 18 people perished in another avalanche). The director and her team, specialists in high altitude photography, picked up their cameras and continued filming.

“There was never any hesitation in how or why to do that because we were there to make a film about the disproportionate risk that Sherpas take in taking foreigners to the summit of Everest and back down again,” she says.

“You’re kind of running on adrenaline and every now and then you stop yourself and realise how upsetting the whole thing is. But then you say, this is what I am here to do. You snap yourself out of it and keep going.”

The end product is very likely the most majestic looking industrial dispute film ever made. The seemingly omnipotent beauty of Everest provides awe-inducing backgrounds for a truly disturbing examination of worker’s rights.

Having taken notice of 2013’s so-called Everest brawl, and having worked on projects on the mountain for the good part of a decade, the film-maker says she could sense things reaching a tipping point and felt a strong urge to be there.

“I could never have anticipated that an avalanche would come and kill 16 people,” she says. “But it felt for me that where things were at politically, tension really was at the point where it felt like anything that was going to happen was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Norbu Tenzing, who works in San Francisco as Vice President of the American Himalayan Foundation, is a champion of Peedom’s documentary and features in it.

He describes Sherpa as “a big, big gift for the mountaineering workers and Sherpas. This is a subject that has always played in our minds and hasn’t been talked about much. This film has given that issue a voice.”

Tenzing, 51, is the son of history’s most famous Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. Along with Edmund Hillary in 1953, Norgay – described by Time as one of the most influential people of the 20th Century – became the first person known to have reached Everest’s summit.

On the question of what his father might think of the current state of affairs, Tenzing pulls no punches: “I think he would be quite horrified with the way things have turned out. Since the time he was climbing there’s been a complete change, a shift in the way people climb Everest and what motivates them.

“The sense of people going on an adventure, working together, doing something nobody’s done before, with a sense of comradeship and working together – that spirit doesn’t exist now.

“It’s just a total service industry, where you’re fulfilling the egos of western climbers and people from South Asia who want to test the limits of how close they can get to death, at great expense of the Sherpas. I don’t think my father would want to be alive to see the circus that Everest has turned into.”While praising Peedom’s documentary as an exercise in awareness raising, Tenzing says that since the 2014 tragedy almost nothing has actually changed for Sherpas other than a US$5,000 increase in their life insurance (from US$10,000 to US$15,0000). This, according to Tenzing, “barely covers the cost of the funeral”.

Limited employment

Neither Tenzing, Peedom nor the Sherpas themselves advocate shutting down commercial operations on Everest. Sherpa people have limited employment opportunities and rely on tour operations for their annual income.

Out of respect for the victims of the 2014 avalanche, the Sherpas took an unprecedented decision and refused to continue climbing for the season. They also did not climb in 2015, when expeditions were cancelled because of the earthquakes.

“The Sherpas are on their way to Base Camp now to start setting up for a new season,” says Peedom. “They have lost two seasons’ income so they are under a lot of pressure to make sure as much as they can that the season goes without incident. Let’s hope that it does.”

- Guardian.Uk