Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day Read online

  Paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt, another letter read, “Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

  Others raised basic questions: What do men and women do when they are on top of a mountain, dying? And why are some people driven to take such risks?

  Before they were trapped on the mountaintop; before the deaths and funerals; before the rescues and reunions; before the fistfights and friendships; before the recriminations and reconciliations—everything had seemed perfect. The equipment was checked and rechecked; the routes, established; the weather, cooperative; the teams, intact. The moment they had spent so much time and training and money to reach—summit day—had finally come. They were going to conquer K2, stand on top of the most vicious mountain on earth, howl in triumph, unfurl their flags, and call their sweethearts.

  Chhiring and Pasang, as they fell into the blackness, must have wondered: How did this happen?

  PART I

  AMBITION

  Rolwaling, Khumbu, and Arun regions of Nepal: The Sherpas in Chhiring’s village of Beding (center) believe they are protected by a goddess who inhabits the mountain of Gauri Sankar. Pasang grew up in Hungung (far right), which became a war zone as the Maoists wrested control from Nepal’s monarchy.

  1

  Summit Fever

  Rolwaling Valley, Nepal

  12,000 feet above sea level

  His walk was more of a jog. He didn’t drive a car; he rocketed through traffic on a black Honda Hero motorcycle. In the seven languages he spoke conversationally, Chhiring Dorje Sherpa talked so quickly it seemed as though each sentence were one long word punctuated by exclamation points. Everything about him was accelerated: his eating, his thinking, his climbing, his praying. He couldn’t control the pace. Speed was hardwired into his DNA.

  His first name meant “long life,” but its pronunciation to English speakers—CHEER-ing—personified him. Cheerful determination radiated from Chhiring. It got him noticed. Clients praised his you-can-do-it, let’s-rock-’n’-roll, give-me-your-pack attitude. It was contagious. How could you sit still in camp when every few minutes he would lurch up, stride forward, chop his arms through the air, make a pronouncement, plop down, and spring up again? There was a reason this thirty-four-year-old dynamo rarely drank coffee. He was caffeinated enough.

  “Chhiring was always crazy,” said his father, Ngawang Thundu Sherpa. “He was a naughty child, and I knew he’d be a naughty adult.”

  “We have relied on his climbing for income,” explained Chhiring’s younger brother, also named Ngawang Sherpa. “Without his money, we wouldn’t be where we are. But Chhiring became too ambitious. I was always telling him: ‘Slow down.’ ” The family complained that Chhiring’s line of work offended the gods and disrupted village life. His relatives wouldn’t state the obvious: Chhiring’s job could get him killed.

  The summit of K2 was a long way from where Chhiring started. Before he climbed mountains, Chhiring lived in Beding, a remote village in Nepal. Wedged between India and Tibet, “like a yam between two boulders,” Nepal is on the collision zone between two continental plates. This region of Southeast Asia used to be flat, submerged beneath the Tethys Sea, but for sixty-five million years, the Indian plate, moving north at twice the speed of a growing fingernail, has been jacking up the Tibetan crust, lifting the ancient seabed. It’s now earth’s highest mountain range. Nepal hosts a third of the Himalaya, including the south side of Everest.

  Chhiring describes his birthplace as “mostly rock and ice.” About 12,100 feet above sea level, the village of Beding seldom appears on maps, and when it does, it is plotted at different locations and, like many remote villages, goes by different names. Beding is about thirty miles west of Everest in a valley known as Rolwaling. Getting there takes a trek. First, travelers must jostle over a jeep track that ends near a cliff. Afterward, they zigzag up switchbacks, ford rivers, and wobble over chain-link bridges. After six days of lugging their own food and shelter, travelers see the village chorten, a shrine painted with unblinking blue eyes, rimmed in red. Symbolizing Buddha’s gaze, the eyes stare down on Beding, inspiring the devout and spooking evil spirits.

  Glaciated peaks surround the village, which is constructed of rocks, wood, mud, and dung mortar. A film of gray dust off the moraine coats the children. The air smells of threshed grass, blue smoke billows from fire pits, and the clouds seem so close you could jump up and punch them. Goats, sheep, cows, and yak-hybrids called dzos graze on steep terraces that resemble giant staircases. Below, the Rolwaling River shoots iridescent spray into the air.

  Sherpas inhabit Beding and the other villages of the Rolwaling Valley. Although sherpa, with a lowercase S, is used colloquially as a job description, Sherpa is also an ethnicity, just as Greek, Hawaiian, and Basque are. And the Sherpas are a tiny ethnicity at that: The 150,000 Sherpas in Nepal make up less than one percent of the country’s population.

  Chhiring’s village is often described by a list of what’s missing: antibiotics, electricity, machinery, public sanitation, roads, running water, telephones. Residents lack formal education. Some don’t know how to spell their names or read a clock, and many are told when they were born not by day but by season. A calendar’s main function is to track dates commemorating the life of Buddha.

  The Sherpas of Rolwaling seldom characterize themselves this way. They prefer to recognize what they have: faith and a self-reliant community. The gods are near, and neighbors are family. In Beding, locals take time to chat, drink tea, and play Carrom, a hybrid of billiards and shuffleboard in which players flick pucks at targets. They have a sophisticated knowledge of folklore, farming, and the region’s topography, and they speak an unwritten language that combines eastern and central dialects of Tibetan, reflecting their long journey into Nepal. Rolwaling Sherpi tamgney is spoken nowhere else.

  As with many Sherpa communities, the residents of Rolwaling rotate among three villages according to the season. The winter village heats up too much in the summer, the summer village cools down too much in the winter, and the central village, Beding, is more hospitable for crops and livestock in the fall. Residents live off the land, growing and eating astonishing amounts of potatoes. As Buddhists, they follow a tradition variously described as Tantrayana, Vajrayana, Nyingma, or, by detractors, Lamaism.

  Written history on Rolwaling is hard to come by, and the legends vary, depending on the imagination of the storyteller. Anthropologist Janice Sacherer has studied the Sherpas of Rolwaling since the 1970s. “Piety they have,” she said while discussing the challenges of studying their folklore. “Consistency they do not.”

  According to Tibetan scripture, Rolwaling is a beyul, a sacred valley formed as a refuge for Buddhists during times of turmoil and hidden until divinely revealed. Guru Rinpoche, who converted Tibetans to Buddhism in the seventh century, is credited with finding the beyul of Rolwaling, or even creating it with a giant horse and plow. Five centuries later, when Mongols were invading Tibet, the ancestors of the Sherpas moved to Nepal, and Buddhist visionaries told followers about the beyuls on the southern flanks of the Himalaya. Full of caves and rock monuments with spiritual properties, the beyuls are tributes to Guru Rinpoche and his consort, Yeshi Tsogyel, who aimed to peacefully enlighten all sentient beings.

  At the hands of Chhiring’s father and his elderly friends, however, these legends take on a less Buddhist tone. According to them, the Rolwaling Valley is the center of the universe and the cradle of life. The world began eight hundred years ago, before time was linear. Guru Rinpoche and his wife were meditating in a cave near Beding. After two days, the couple made a pact to rid the valley of evil. They stormed out and waged war against the demons.

  Wings and scales were stripped like husks. Limbs were twisted; fangs, extracted. The demons rallied and tried to blot out the sun, stirring up dust t
o choke the gods. Guru Rinpoche summoned support, instructing his troops to gouge out their enemies’ eyes. Crippled demons, swooping blindly, plunged into the Rolwaling River. Some of them sank. Guru Rinpoche waded in after the others, forcing their heads beneath the surface. Those who wiggled free of his grasp retreated to clefts in the rocks.

  In the end, almost all of the demons were killed or tamed, but the war had taken a toll on the land. Features of Rolwaling’s landscape—a massive rock on a level plain, a deep pit in the hills, a crack cleaving a boulder in two—attest to the battle. Afterward, the gods retired to the mountains, and Guru Rinpoche and his wife conceived five children, who became the genesis of all others. A few stayed. Most left the valley and became corrupt. That’s the rest of us.

  These days, the gods are impatient with the world outside Rolwaling. The elders predict that these gods will wipe out civilization fairly soon, maybe tomorrow, sparing only those who live in the valley. They frown upon anyone leaving. Deserters will be butchered along with everyone else.

  The younger generation is less concerned. They say the apocalyptic legend is a scare tactic their grandparents use to get them to visit more often. In the standard Buddhist version of the founding myth, Guru Rinpoche traveled across the Himalaya like a sacred bounty hunter, tracking down demons and proselytizing them without the use of force. At that time, five sisters inhabited the crags in Rolwaling. Predating Buddhism by centuries, they were goddesses of an ancient Tibetan sect that demanded blood sacrifice.

  As Guru Rinpoche entered the valley, chalk-faced Tseringma, the eldest, sent a snow leopard in pursuit. The guru charmed the cat until it purred and spoke of Buddhism, without pausing to eat or sleep, until Tseringma reformed.

  Tseringma ascended a nearby mountain that now bears her name—but known to Hindus as Gauri Shankar—and renounced her diet of human flesh. Tseringma, the goddess of longevity, still lives on the 23,405-foot peak above Beding. Snowmelt from her glacier surges into the Rolwaling River, and its properties are miraculous. Some elders claim to be 120 years old, thanks to the water’s effects.

  After Guru Rinpoche subdued Tseringma, he pursued her four younger sisters. One by one, they repented and became Buddhist deities, moving to mountains of their own. Miyolangsangma patrols the summit of Everest on the back of a tigress. Now the goddess of prosperity, her face shines like 24-carat gold. Thingi Shalsangma, her body a pale shade of blue, became the goddess of healing after galloping on a zebra to the top of Shishapangma, a 26,289-foot peak in Tibet. Chopi Drinsangma, with a face in perpetual blush, became the goddess of attraction. She chose a deer instead of a zebra and settled on Kanchenjunga, a 28,169-foot peak in Nepal.

  The final sister—Takar Dolsangma, the youngest, with a green face—was a hard case. She mounted a turquoise dragon and fled northward to the land of three borders. In the modern Rolwaling folklore, this is Pakistan. Guru Rinpoche chased after her and eventually cornered her on a glacier called the Chogo Lungma. Takar Dolsangma appeared remorseful and, spurring her dragon, ascended K2, accepting a new position as the goddess of security. Although Guru Rinpoche never doubted her sincerity, maybe he should have: Takar Dolsangma, it seems, still enjoys the taste of human flesh.

  Rolwaling is a beyul, a frontier community that granted amnesty to refugees. It was thought to be guarded by a powerful mountain goddess. By the mid-nineteenth century, the valley was a popular destination for debtors and thugs to settle down and become pious. At first, famine limited population growth. In the 1880s, the introduction of the potato provided a measure of food security, and the population quadrupled to about two hundred.

  The next significant incursion, after the potato, was Edmund Hillary. Two years before he achieved the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Hillary trekked through Rolwaling with a British reconnaissance team, searching for the best route to Everest. The British ultimately chose a different approach, through the Khumbu Valley to the east, but some Rolwaling Sherpas were offered jobs, including Hrita Sherpa, who broke trail for Tenzing Norgay and Hillary days before their first ascent.

  Rolwaling never underwent development like the Khumbu, where Everest-bound tourists injected money and jobs and Hillary built schools, a hospital, and an airstrip. During Chhiring’s childhood in the 1970s, Rolwaling was the “most isolated, traditional and economically backward of all the Sherpa communities in Nepal.”

  Traders seldom passed through, and beasts of burden could barely scramble up the banks of scree. The Sherpas relied on local materials and their own labor to feed and clothe themselves. No one owned a cotton T-shirt; yak wool was woven into cloth. Chhiring’s father dressed in a chuba, a wool robe secured by a sash over his trousers. In the winter, he wore buffalo leather boots that were padded with dried moss. His mother wore an ungi, a sleeveless tunic draped with a blue-striped apron that covered her front and back. To signify her unmarried status, Chhiring’s younger sister wore an apron only on her back.

  Chhiring was born in 1974 on the floor of a room that served as his family’s kitchen, barn, and bedroom. The boy—said Chhiring’s father, aunt, and uncle—was a slacker who loved to sneak away and explore the mountains. His relatives still tell the story of his gravest transgression: the time when, as an eight-year-old playing with fire, Chhiring set the hills ablaze. The flames burned the winter reserves of feed, and the animals went hungry. Chhiring’s father beat him with a stick, and, twenty-six years later, still hadn’t forgiven him.

  It was a childhood disrupted by death. Chhiring’s younger sister returned from the fields one afternoon with red blisters crawling up her skin. As the pustules clustered on her tongue, she suffocated. Another sister was carrying water from the river when a rock dropped off a cliff and crushed her internal organs. No one could figure out what happened to Chhiring’s two-year-old brother. Perhaps he ate something toxic. One day, his gut inflated. With his stomach painfully distended, the child soon died. A third sister’s birth left Chhiring’s mother, Lakpa Futi, hemorrhaging. Mother and infant died.

  Chhiring watched the lama perform the death rites on his mother, yanking her hair to let her spirit leave through the head, whispering into her ear advice about the afterlife. Chhiring tried not to cry, believing it could cause a veil of blood to cover her eyes and obscure her way into the next life. He was too young to go up the hill for the cremation, so he sat in the room where he was born and watched his mother’s smoke lift into the sky. His father, Ngawang Thundu Sherpa, returned home and collapsed.

  From then on, Ngawang passed out several times a day. Villagers suspected that a demon possessed him. As the fainting became more frequent, Chhiring’s father stopped caring for the four remaining children. He fell mute and forgot to eat and bathe. When he slept, he woke crying, and sobbed until he fainted again.

  The fields withered, the animals strayed, and the house fell into disrepair. The family ran low on food. The children’s shoes and clothing wore out. No matter how hard he tried, Ngawang could not motivate himself to work. When able to rouse himself, he spent all his effort praying, trying to appease the gods. “I didn’t understand what I had done to make them punish me,” he recalled.

  Chhiring, then twelve years old, became head of the household. He sold off livestock and bartered for food to feed his siblings but soon ran out of things to trade. In exchange for potatoes, he worked for other families, fetching water, gathering firewood, and sweeping. His sister, Nima, cared for their father and the two youngest children. Chhiring didn’t make enough to afford shoes, but he and his family didn’t starve, and relatives helped when they became desperate.

  Around the time he turned fourteen, Chhiring’s aunts and uncles told him he had no choice: He was a man now, old enough to marry, and he had to find a faster way to pay off his father’s debts. Some suggested he leave the village to carry fuel and equipment for European climbers and trekkers. Chhiring was reluctant. He had never wandered far from the sacred valley. At that time, few Sherpas had left Rolwaling, and those who had entered
the climbing industry described it as miserable and speculative. “Chhiring seemed too young to be a porter, too small to carry loads for foreigners,” recalled his uncle, Ang Tenzing Sherpa. “I told him it was a bad idea.”

  Furthermore, Chhiring worried about the deities who lived on the mountains; the glaciers were their embodiment. Climbing the spine of a goddess or trespassing into her home amounted to insolence, even blasphemy. Chhiring’s grandfather, Pem Phutar, had carried loads for a 1955 British expedition to Gauri Shankar, the sacred peak where Tseringma resides, but the family rarely spoke of it. Many villagers looked down on mountaineers and told disparaging stories about them.

  These tales had the same theme and usually ended with a broken man from Germany. Fifteen sherpas were infamously killed on German expeditions to Nanga Parbat in 1934 and 1937. Even Hitler’s Reichssportführer had condemned two members of the 1934 expedition who abandoned their team in a storm, and a strange stereotype evidently developed among the Sherpas. For example, villagers in Beding spoke of a once-successful German businessman who tried to climb Gauri Shankar. He failed, of course, and the mountain goddess punished him. Within a year, the German lost his teeth, contracted leprosy, and was robbed of everything but his wife. When she left him, he died of despair.

  Although that story must be apocryphal, another one isn’t. In 1979, American mountaineer John Roskelley decided to conquer Gauri Shankar. Pitch after pitch, conditions on the peak were so frustrating that Roskelley found the experience vaguely erotic. The “goddess of love,” he surmised, wanted to “remain a virgin.” Approaching the summit, he had nearly seduced her when his climbing partner—“a young and upcoming Sherpa ‘tiger’ ” named Dorje—begged him to stop. Roskelley, nonetheless, “hugged [the peak] like a fat lady’s bottom and shimmied up,” Dorje in tow. “Gauri Shankar was ours,” he gloated. “We were the first non-deities to reach its 23,405-foot summit.”