Lhakpa Rita Sherpa

Lhakpa Rita Sherpa is a Seattle Sherpa, one of the world's elite mountaineers, 10 times Everest Summiteer, part of a small Sherpa immigrant community in Seattle, that is growing slowly. He is also brand ambassador of our small outdoor company Sherpa Adventure Gear. These facts, however, are incidental to my story here. I just wanted to share with you and your readers the story of a great hero and his selfless act of saving lives and truly showing the compassionate spirit that purportedly exists amongst the brethren of the rope.

You are right, Everest is a tired story. But lost in all the self congratulatory spirit and Guiness book benchmarking that ensues every season when the last five hundredth climber makes it to base camp is the quiet bravery and immensity of a samaritan Sherpa's compassion who sees fit that it is more right to save a fellow climber's life in danger, bring another sister climber's dead body down from the treacherous slopes of Lhotse. Lhakpa climbs because this is his living, but even here he does it without any of the self serving cycnicism that is now prevalent amongst the climbing community on Everest.

He did what he did at great risk to himself and I can imagine the toll to his spirit and body when in the space of so many days he had to challenge his own belief in what it all meant to be a climber. Very few people were there to help him when he organized the resuce for Usha Basnet the Nepali climber as she lay close to death around Camp 4. She was totally abandoned by her team at about 27000+ feet and it was he who made sure to get her down to safety along with his other two climber friends, Dave Hahn and another Sherpa. However, the foreign media hardly bothered to find out what really happened and true to their form swallowed and spewed out the standard glorification of a Western climber's role in the rescue. It did not matter to Lhakpa. what was important was that Usha was safe.

I believe there was an extensive interview by Kantipur publications in Kathmandu with Lhakpa. Usha Bista and her family arranged a huge family banquet to express their eternal gratitude to him and all he told them was that " I dont need your gratitude, what I want is that you should also be willing to help another fellow climber in the same situation..". No fanfare- just plain humility and a deep sense of doing what is right. We at Sherpa Adventure Gear are deeply honored to be associated with such noble heroes.

He embodies the essence and soul of the unsung Sherpa Hero just like Pemba Doma did, who died on Lhotse last month. None of the bragging rights that seem so commonplace now and less and less meaningful. Add to that the fact that he almost singlehandledly was instrumental in personally bringing down Pemba's body to base camp when NOBODY, none of the other climbing fraternity on the mountain, made any attempt to help him even after pleading for support. We are indebted to him for because of his heroic feat, Pemba's family was able to fulfill the last ceremonial rites and cremate her body and set her spirit at peace. It took him five back breaking days to harness the body down to Base camp. How painfully cruel it must have been for him to have witnessed Pemba's unfolding spiral to her death on Lhotse happen right in his view as he yelled in deep desperation from the Everest side urging her to get her pick axe out or to grab anything. The grief and guilt of not having been able to prevent her death sits heavy on him. To me, he is truly one of the last of a dying breed of Mohican Sherpas.

This is the best of the best Sherpas and he lives here right in our midst. It is a story that truly touches the soul and needs telling to the world by the right voice. I hope that you will be the one.

- Tashi Sherpa

Photo of Lhakpa Rita Sherpa by Joseph Puryear.