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Buried in the Sky
May. 9th, 2014 03:59 pmRemember that documentary that got me started on this mountaineering kick? It was about the deaths of 11 people on K2 in 2008. I just finished reading a book about the same disaster, but it had a completely different focus.
Buried in the Sky follows two high-altitude workers, Chhiring Dorje Sherpa and Pasang Lama. The first half of the book goes into a lot of detail about their lives and cultures, talks about their home villages, their religion and folk tales, racial and ethnic divisions, and the complicated journeys that brought both of them to K2.
For example, Chhiring loved his career as a high-altitude worker, and when given the chance at climbing K2, his ambition couldn't let him turn it down, even when his wife threatened to leave him. Pasang, on the other hand, had never wanted to work on the mountains. He'd been in school in Kathmandu when the massacre of the Nepali royal family happened and Maoist rebels took over his home village. His entire extended family fled to Kathmandu, which meant school was no longer an option and he had to make money the only way he could.
The book also talks about how complicated it is for them to reconcile themselves to climbing mountains, given their Buddhist beliefs, and how Western climbers often disregard and disrespect these beliefs. For example, another worker, Shaheen, saw one of the climbers taking photos of a dessicated, dismembered body on the slopes of K2. (Humans cannot get bodies off of K2, only nature can. And when it does, it's with avalanches, which means the remains aren't pretty.) Shaheen was disturbed by this and spoke to the Westerner, asking what he planned to do with the photos. The Westerner promised not to post them, he was just "documenting." Because if the photos were posted, the dead man's family might see them. After promising not to, the climber did anyway.
The book also talks about the devestation to the local communities after the disaster, while news stories and the documentary usually only look at the suffering of Westerners. Two of Pasang's cousins were killed. After he returned alive, he was ostracized by his family. He took the next mountaineering job he could, with the same team, hoping that this time it would kill him. In another example of callousness, gruesome photos of the cousins' bodies, moments after they were killed, also made the rounds of blogs.
One of the contributing factors in the disaster was that the most experienced worker, who was supposed to supervise laying the lines, got high altitude pulmonary edema and nearly died. He was the only one who could translate between the Pakistanis and Nepalis, so his absence meant a clusterfuck. He was consequently smeared in the media by Western climbers as lazy and a liar--attributes extended to all the Pakistani workers, who were widely blamed.
The book also points out that the rescues of Westerners were widely covered in the media and those who helped them made into international heroes, but the rescues of locals were ignored.
So I'd say, if you're going to read a book about mountaineering, this is a good one to read, because it provides a perspective severely lacking in most accounts.
It also points out that, you know how the documentary The Summit seems weirdly obsessed with Ger McDonnell? That's cause Ger saved the filmmaker's life on Everest in 2004, and the doc was made with the express purpose of painting Ger as a hero. So there's some bias for you. I think I'd have appreciated a title card in the doc acknowledging that.
Oh, also, why is it that in all these mountaineering accounts, people dump on the Koreans, but never bother to interview them? It's not only the Sherpas that get the short stick in the media.
Buried in the Sky follows two high-altitude workers, Chhiring Dorje Sherpa and Pasang Lama. The first half of the book goes into a lot of detail about their lives and cultures, talks about their home villages, their religion and folk tales, racial and ethnic divisions, and the complicated journeys that brought both of them to K2.
For example, Chhiring loved his career as a high-altitude worker, and when given the chance at climbing K2, his ambition couldn't let him turn it down, even when his wife threatened to leave him. Pasang, on the other hand, had never wanted to work on the mountains. He'd been in school in Kathmandu when the massacre of the Nepali royal family happened and Maoist rebels took over his home village. His entire extended family fled to Kathmandu, which meant school was no longer an option and he had to make money the only way he could.
The book also talks about how complicated it is for them to reconcile themselves to climbing mountains, given their Buddhist beliefs, and how Western climbers often disregard and disrespect these beliefs. For example, another worker, Shaheen, saw one of the climbers taking photos of a dessicated, dismembered body on the slopes of K2. (Humans cannot get bodies off of K2, only nature can. And when it does, it's with avalanches, which means the remains aren't pretty.) Shaheen was disturbed by this and spoke to the Westerner, asking what he planned to do with the photos. The Westerner promised not to post them, he was just "documenting." Because if the photos were posted, the dead man's family might see them. After promising not to, the climber did anyway.
The book also talks about the devestation to the local communities after the disaster, while news stories and the documentary usually only look at the suffering of Westerners. Two of Pasang's cousins were killed. After he returned alive, he was ostracized by his family. He took the next mountaineering job he could, with the same team, hoping that this time it would kill him. In another example of callousness, gruesome photos of the cousins' bodies, moments after they were killed, also made the rounds of blogs.
One of the contributing factors in the disaster was that the most experienced worker, who was supposed to supervise laying the lines, got high altitude pulmonary edema and nearly died. He was the only one who could translate between the Pakistanis and Nepalis, so his absence meant a clusterfuck. He was consequently smeared in the media by Western climbers as lazy and a liar--attributes extended to all the Pakistani workers, who were widely blamed.
The book also points out that the rescues of Westerners were widely covered in the media and those who helped them made into international heroes, but the rescues of locals were ignored.
So I'd say, if you're going to read a book about mountaineering, this is a good one to read, because it provides a perspective severely lacking in most accounts.
It also points out that, you know how the documentary The Summit seems weirdly obsessed with Ger McDonnell? That's cause Ger saved the filmmaker's life on Everest in 2004, and the doc was made with the express purpose of painting Ger as a hero. So there's some bias for you. I think I'd have appreciated a title card in the doc acknowledging that.
Oh, also, why is it that in all these mountaineering accounts, people dump on the Koreans, but never bother to interview them? It's not only the Sherpas that get the short stick in the media.