Sherry Ortner’s account of the climbing on Mount Everest is the first book we have read that is specifically concerning the Sherpa’s point of view of mountaineering in the Himalaya. Although Ortner is not a Sherpa herself, she is seen in the Western world as the absolute authority on their culture. This simple fact makes me very concerned when she suggests the Sherpas have been spoiled by mountaineering. Her analysis on the conflicting cultures of Sherpas helping climbers in the form of porters, and as support of climbers as a whole, allows for several stereotypes to be disavowed. Ortner does this by giving us a look into the Sherpa’s culture, by explaining their religion and the natural optimism of their people. Ortner culminates in how they act within the death zone above 26,000 feet. All of this leads back to whether or not the increased employment of Sherpas have started to spoiled their way of living, and in turn, destroying the culture that made them such great climbing companions in the first place.
The first person accounts in this book, by Ortner, allowed me to fully appreciate the absolute wealth of knowledge that the author is working on. Working from the mid 1960’s to the early 2000’s within the unique communities sherpa people, Ortner witnessed firsthand the change that the commercialization of mountaineering has caused and the effects on the people of the Sherpa Clan. Ortner realized her over reaching authority on the matter, which allowed for her other points to mean that much more.
Throughout the entire book, and primarily in Chapter Nine, Ortner gives great insight into the everyday life and traditions of the Sherpas. In one of the sub chapters within chapter nine, Ortner refers to the Lukla Airstrip and how the construction of this airstrip allowed for schools and hospitals to be built. This raised the education level of the Sherpa community, however, it also raised the amount of Tourism flowing through the area. Using the example of a female sherpa dentist, that had been trained in Canada, Ortner stated that she was no longer Sherpa. This is just one of her many jabs at the fault of the Western society for distorting such a rich culture.
As mountaineers, the Sherpas are just as talented, if not more so, than western climbers. Ortner points out several feats of mountaineering that Sherpa people completed before anyone from the Western world had even thought to challenge. The most notable is Ang Rita who accomplished summiting Everest nine times without oxygen; yet, on the ninth time, the Russian team he was working with did not even mention his name in the press release (Ortner, p. 259). This is a common theme that Sherpas endure. Sherpas are not usually named or recognized in books and films. However, Ortner states that, in recent years, the old dynamic of Sherpas being more porters/servants has transitioned to being full fledged member of the teams in which they should have always been. The neglect that some climbers, such as Heinrich Harrar, exhibit while relying on the Sherpa people is not only astonishing, but morally wrong in a contemporary world.
In short, the foremost cultural expert of the Sherpa world elludes the sweet fact that mountaineering is changing the Sherpa lifestyle from being a peaceful religious people, to a full fledged member of Western modernity. Whether this is better or worse, we do not know.