Global Courant
Gelje Sherpa was attempting to summit Mount Everest for the sixth time last month when he spotted a descending climber lying in the snow, speechless and in shock.
The 30-year-old Sherpa had led dozens of rescues in the Himalayas as a guide, but this one was the most difficult, he said. The ailing climber was at an altitude of over 27,200 feet, in an area known as the “death zone” because of the severe cold and oxygen scarcity.
For about the next hour, the two remained in that zone, he said. The guide acted as the stricken climber’s eyes, ears, and strength as he carried him more than 1,000 feet down the mountain.
“He had nothing,” Mr. Sherpa said in a telephone interview this week. “No energy, no oxygen, nothing.”
It was a relentless descent and it was far from over. Near Camp 4, the last climbers of the camp, before heading to the top, the pair met other guides who helped them get from 26,300 feet to Camp 3 at 23,500 feet. For the next five or so hours, Mr. Sherpa and the other guides took turns tying the climber, who was wrapped in a sleeping mat, to their backs as they clambered over rocky terrain. In icy and snowy places, they put him on the ground and pulled him.
Mr. Sherpa captured part of the May 18 rescue in video clips that have been widely shared online. His friend can be seen in the images Ngima Tashi Sherpa in a bright red feather suit with the sick climber on his back. Gelje Sherpa said he spent two or three hours with the climber on his back and estimated the man weighed more than 175 pounds with his climbing shoes, equipment and clothing still on.
The six-hour ordeal was a success and the climber, Ravichandran Tharumalingam of Malaysia, was flown by helicopter from Camp 3 to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal before traveling home.
The rescue was a bright spot in a particularly deadly year on Everest.
Alan Arnette, a mountaineer who climbs Everest, wrote on his website last week that 13 people died on the mountain during the spring climbing season, which ran from April to the end of May, and four were still missing. The most climbers to die on Everest in a single season came in 2014, when 16 Sherpas died in an ice avalanche. Four days later, many Sherpas said they would not work for the rest of the climbing season in protest of exploitative working conditions.
These working conditions, which included a weak social safety net, hazardous work and low wages compared to the tens of thousands of dollars their foreign clients spend to climb, fueled in part online criticism of the rescued climber.
A Twitter thread on Sunday attention demanded to Mr. Ravichandran’s social media accounts, who celebrated his Everest summit with little or no mention of the mountain guides who saved his life, noting that he had blocked Mr. Sherpa, his savior, on Instagram. The social media accounts of Mr. Ravichandran were soon inundated with negative comments.
Mr. Sherpa confirmed that Mr. Ravichandran blocked him, but he said the climber had since unblocked him. Since the backlash began, Mr Ravichandran has posted on social media several times about the guides who rescued him, naming each of them in different posts. Monday he wrote on Instagram that Sherpas “never leave you behind.”
Gelje Sherpa said the rescue of a stricken climber from Mount Everest last month was the most challenging of his time as a guide in the Himalayas.Credit…Prakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In response to an email interview request, Mr. Ravichandran sent a link to an Instagram video shared by Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, the leader of his Everest expedition and the founder of 14 Peaks Expedition and Seven Summit Treks. In the video, which Tashi Lakpa Sherpa posted on Tuesday, he says Mr. Ravichandran called him from the hospital in Nepal and thanked him.
“Ravi managed the Sherpa bonus payment for the rescue person involved and he paid all the costs of the oxygen used in the operation,” Tashi Lakpa Sherpa said in an email on Wednesday. “After his recovery, he was very grateful to our company and all the Sherpas involved in the rescue mission.”
He said that, in addition to Gelje Sherpa and Ngima Tashi Sherpa, four other guides from his companies helped with the rescue: Ming Tenjing Sherpa, Nima Dorchi Sherpa, Dipen Bhote and Dawa Sherpa.
Some mountaineers have asked why Mr. Ravichandran was found alone on the balcony, a small flat spot near the summit.
Tashi Lakpa Sherpa said two guides had been appointed to assist Mr Ravichandran, who he said had reached the summit late on May 17 due to “physical weakness”. The descent was difficult and one of his guides went to Camp 4 to get help, he said. The other guide descended a few feet to talk to base camp and the expedition leader on his walkie-talkie.
“I immediately coordinated with my team working above the camp to rescue Mr. Ravi,” Tashi Lakpa Sherpa wrote.
Gelje Sherpa had helped other climbers who wanted to reach the top, but persuaded them to abandon their attempt so that he could save Mr. Ravichandran.
The dramatic rescue was yet another achievement in Gelje Sherpa’s climbing career, who in 2021 became the youngest person to climb K2, the second highest mountain in the world, in winter. This week he traveled from Nepal to Alaska to climb Denali as part of a delegation commemorating the 60th anniversary of Jim Whittaker becoming the first American to climb Mount Everest.
Gelje Sherpa hails from the Solukhumbu region of the Himalayas. He said he went to work in the mountains, first as a porter, because he didn’t have a good education.
Like many Sherpas, he hopes his two young children will find safer employment.
“I don’t want to take them to the mountains to escort them,” he said. “Maybe if they like to climb for fun.”
