I thoroughly enjoyed Sherry Ortner’s book, Life and Death on Mt Everest. It was different from the recent books that we’ve been reading that included more of a climbing focus, in that it took us much more in depth about the relationships between the Sahib (“boss”: climbers) and the Sherpas. Ortner delivered it in a way that made me rethink the way I feel about mountaineering and Sherpas and the way they are treated throughout the sport. Ortner gives a deep and insightful look into not only the reasons Sherpas exist (to assist wealthier middle-upper class mountaineers), but the culture and the economy that surrounds these Sherpas and their families. She doesn’t just describe what a Sherpa is and the role they play as a load carrier, but describes them more as a small ethnic group, comprised mostly of Buddhists. She also analyses the evolution of the Sherpa, and the changes that occur within the Sahib-Sherpa relationships throughout time, especially through the 1970’s. She argues that Sherpas have evolved from men who are on the expedition solely to carry goods, clean up garbage, assist the etc., “to the point where most present-day expeditions make at least some Sherpas members of the actual climbing party” (Ortner, 13). Probably one of the most well known examples of this being Tenzing and Hillary.

Theres always a tendency to think that Sherpas are there for one reason: because they love it as much the climbers. However, Ortner raises a point that many of us, myself in particular, are guilty for ignoring. “Yet if this book has one refrain,” Ortner claims,“it is that the Sherpas have a life off the mountain, a life with its own forms of intention, desire, and achievement, and a life with its own forms of inequality and pain as well” (Ortner, 5). People tend to forget that often these Sherpas don’t have a choice in their career, and they have to take any job they can to provide for their families. Mountaineering literature often focuses solely on the climbers themselves, very often omitting or downplaying the efforts, and sometimes deaths, of the Sherpas. Many struggles of the Sherpas go unnoticed, and unrecorded by those who hire them. Of course there are the odd books that do include the heroic efforts of some Sherpas, such as Herzog’s account of Annapurna where a frost-bitten Herzog was carried down the mountain on the back of a Sherpa. But what seems to be mostly omitted is the sacrifices and deaths of the Sherpas. Even Ortner herself admitted to becoming extremely hostile towards mountaineering after learning of “the extravagant purposelessness of the deaths of these young men” (Ortner, 8). This raises the question: do you think Sherpa’s get enough attention and respect? Even in current day news, such as the 2014 Everest avalanche that took the lives of 12 Sherpas, do you think that media still downplays the Sherpa’s role in mountaineering, and the impact of their deaths within their culture and families?