So there’s something I never understood about Sherpas in the Himalayas. They lived right near these massive mountains for millennia. For whatever reason, they decided never to summit them. Then along come some Westerners and decide to do it. So the local experts become this professional/ethnic class of hired help, assist Westerners in attaining their fame, and from there on keep being these second class helpers. It’s very strange to me…
1. Any idea why they never made it to the peaks themselves? No need/interest? Technical or logistical limitations (oxygen tanks, for example?)
2. Once interest/fame/money/etc. became associated with all this, why did they continue to be second class to all of it? I get that maybe in the mid-twentieth century racist attitudes and policies kept it that way, but I feel like even today it’s the same thing: Western European leads the way, Sherpas are only their help.
History is rife with examples of colonists using local help for things, or importing second-class help from somewhere else, but this situation always seemed unique to me. The locals were the experts here. Why were they never front and center (for technical reasons and/or social), and still aren’t? This would be to me like someone arriving on a Pacific island, inhabited by master canoers, looking out at another island clearly visible and reachable by them, and then telling them, “hey, let’s go there.”
UPDATE- ok, found lots of useful information here:
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-Sherpas-usually-get-credit-for-climbing-Mount-Everest
In: 7
The only people who ever did mountaineering have always been rich people with cushy enough lives to want to seek out danger and risk. I love mountaineering, but it’s always been a sport for the idle rich since its birth in the 1800s. Why the hell would a farmer or shepherd or carpenter in *any* country go throw his life away like that? He’s got a family to support and work to do!
But where there’s money, there’s people willing to strive for it, and the Sherpa people live right next to a constant stream of people who will pay for help climbing mountains.
In the himalayas, European climbers initially hired indian porters, usually in Darjeeling, because India was an easy entry point for British and their allies. Some Sherpa porters joined them when they got closer to the mountains. After a generation or two of big expensive climbs coming through, the Sherpa people built up a generation of porters with significant experience, and they slowly moved from “load carriers who can go higher than base camp” to skilled and respected climbers in their own right.
Still, this took time, and rich British people have never been known for being egalitarian. Into the 1980s and 90s, paid guiding companies increasingly hired Sherpa guides, but the truly best-in-the-world climbers, and the ones with the *capital* to run guide companies, were still Europeans. Building up the knowledge of leading complex expeditions, and the money, takes longer than building up individual climbing skills.
By now, most guide companies are owned and run by Sherpas, and while there are still western companies, they’re a small percentage taking small groups and charging 10x more for it. Today, 99% of guides are Sherpas, and they’re better climbers than 95% of everyone else on the mountain. The Sherpa people, and Nepalis more broadly, own the himalayas now.
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