Yesterday, while I was in Gorakshep sending my dispatches a Puja and a general meeting was held in base camp with Sherpas and western expedition leaders including Phil Crampton and Russel Brice. Some outspoken Sherpas keep demanding their requests granted by the government AND they also want to go home without putting any more work with full pay!
The older Sherpas being much wiser realize that if they all go home now everyone will suffer! They may not get anything from the government, they will not get paid in full, they will lose their job as many large outfitters are threatening to not come back to Nepal anymore and the families of the dead will not receive additional compensation.
Things have taken a turn for the worse now as some of Himex clients have been threatened by some Sherpas that if they don’t leave within 7 days there will be trouble!
This is a very disturbing twist as so far this was not a struggle between westerners and Sherpas but now some Sherpas are beginning to direct their anger towards westerners!
Himex leader Russell Brice (famous for the discovery channel Everest TV shows) and our leader Phil Crampton have asked the government to bring military personnel to base camp to keep things stable!
They both took a helicopter yesterday from base camp to Kathmandu to meet with other leaders of the big outfitters and go talk directly to the high ranking officials in the government of Nepal.
They want to encourage the government to agree to the terms of the Sherpas so the expeditions can resume. Obviously in this case the government and the outfitters would expect the Sherpas to resume the work they were contracted to do.
The best scenario as I see it is if the trouble maker Sherpas that are insisting that everyone leave actually leave! And let the other Sherpas who want to work…stay and work and us climbers climb!
We are being dragged into this whole political nonsense when all we came to do here is to climb and we have all contributed a lot of money to the Sherpa community and to Nepal to do this! Western countries will probably donate a lot more money to the families of the victims than anyone else. This is definitely not fair to us! And now to begin to receive threats is completely insane! We have nothing against the Sherpas and in fact we are the ones trying to help get their demands met!
It’s absolutely crazy!
Our Sherpas and us (altitude junkies) continue together and in very good and friendly terms.
This is reaching very critical proportions and I imagine we will know soon if this whole thing is going to get solved or if we need to leave the mountain!
I’ll continue to keep you updated as I am able.
Ricardo
