One thing I really enjoy about Sherry Ortner’s monograph is how well she considers the Sherpa culture, as one of the key factors of their role in high-altitude mountaineering. I think she does an excellent job of making it clear that Sherpa culture and mountaineering are very related, and have that unique dyanmic which at times is forgotten. At least for me, that is the case. My perspective on Sherpas was that they were not at all interested in the mountains, except that was where their gods lived, and then they did not begin to climb until they were hired by European mountaineers when Himalayan mountaineering began to be a focus of imperial Europe. To me, mountaineering for Sherpas was always much more of a job, they found an opportunity to make more money than in any other way, and only began climbing mountains because of that economic opportunity. But Ortner is clear that that is simply not the case. Much was going on within Sherpa culture while mountaineering was beginning and increasing in popularity and extensiveness. The background of religion was a big thing that permeated Sherpa culture throughout mountaineering. In fact, Tibetan Buddhism, according to Ortner, was undergoing a kind of reformation, monasteries were going up, and there was resistance to Nepali and Hindu religions that were slowly creeping into Tibetan Buddhism.

One part of Ortner’s writing actually bothered me quite a bit though. In her chapter about men and masculinity, she argues that competition was important to masculinity, almost to the point that it was exclusive to masculinity. And she calls this a heightened competitiveness. My problem with her argument comes from the sources she uses, and that because men were trying to see who could go the hardest for the longest time, or who could reach a certain point first. What I’m not going to say was that this was not competition. Obviously it was. These men were interested to see who was the best. But I don’t think that is something unique to masculinity, or that it was even heightened competitiveness. I seriously think that is just part of being a human in a sport, because that’s what mountaineering is. And part of a being in a sport is competition, and trying to find out who is the best. Mountaineering is not unique in this. And I really don’t think this is something exclusive to masculinity at all. Ortner writes that, “postwar sahib competitiveness was individual physical superiority in relation to all others on the mountain, including the Sherpas.” (165) But competition is more something everyone is involved in. At some level, I think everyone wants to see if they can outcompete another person, and often this is in physical terms because it is one of the easiest areas to prove some advantage over another.