Gelje Sherpa was trying to climb Everest for the sixth time last month when he spotted a descending climber lying in the snow, speechless and shocked.
Sherpa, 30, has done dozens of rescues in the Himalayas as a guide, but this time was the hardest, he said. The ill-fated climber is at more than 27,200 feet, in an area known as the “death zone” because of the extreme cold and scarcity of oxygen.
For the next hour or so, he said, the two remained in that area. The instructor serves as the climber’s eyes, ears, and strength as he takes him more than 1,000 feet down the mountain.
“He has nothing,” Mr. Sherpa said in a phone interview this week. “No energy, no oxygen, nothing.”
It’s been a brutal downhill, and it’s far from over. Near Camp 4, the last campers reached before pushing to the top, the pair met other guides who helped them get from 26,300 feet to Camp 3 at 23,500 feet. For the next five hours, Mr. Sherpa and other guides will take turns tying the climber, who is swaddled in a sleeping pad, to his back as they navigate the rocky terrain. On patches of ice and snow, they put him on the ground and dragged him away.
Mr. Sherpa capture part of the May 18 rescue in video clips has been widely shared on the internet. The footage shows his friend Ngima Tashi Sherpa in a bright red fur suit with the ailing climber on his back. Gelje Sherpa said he spent two or three hours with the climber on his back and estimated that the man weighed more than 175 pounds with his hiking boots, tools and clothes still on him.
The six-hour challenge was successful and the climber, Ravichandran Tharumalingam, from Malaysia, was airlifted from Camp 3 to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, before heading home.
The rescue was a bright spot in a particularly deadly year on Everest.
Alan Arnette, a mountaineer who specializes in climbing Mount Everest, wrote on his website Last week, 13 people died on the mountain during the spring climbing season that runs from April to late May, and four are still missing. In 2014, the most climbers killed on Mount Everest was in 2014, when 16 Sherpas were killed in an ice avalanche. Four days laterMany Sherpas said they would not work for the rest of the climbing season to protest exploitative working conditions.
These working conditionsincluding a flimsy social safety net, dangerous work, and low pay compared to the tens of thousands of dollars their foreign clients spend on mountain climbing, somewhat stoking online criticism of the The climber is rescued.
A Twitter thread on Sunday called attention to Ravichandran’s social media accounts, which celebrated his Everest summit with little or no mention of the climbing guides who saved his life, and noted that he blocked Mr. Sherpa, who save him, on Instagram. Ravichandran’s social media accounts were quickly flooded with negative comments.
Mr Sherpa confirmed that Mr Ravichandran had blocked him, but he said the climber then unblocked him. Since the backlash began, Mr Ravichandran has repeatedly posted on social media about the guides who rescued him, naming each of them in several posts. On Monday, he wrote on Instagram that Sherpa “never leaves you behind.”
Responding to an interview request via email, Mr. Ravichandran sent a link to a video on Instagram shared by Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, his Everest expedition leader and founder of 14 summit expeditions and 7 summit treks. In the video that Tashi Lakpa Sherpa posted on Tuesday, he said that Mr Ravichandran had called him from the hospital in Nepal and thanked him.
“Ravi administered Sherpa’s bounty to the participating rescuer and he paid all the costs of the oxygen used in the operation,” Tashi Lakpa Sherpa said in an email Wednesday. “After recovering, he is very grateful to our company and all the Sherpas who participated in the rescue mission.”
He said that, in addition to Gelje Sherpa and Ngima Tashi Sherpa, four other guides from his company helped with the rescue: Ming Tenjing Sherpa, Nima Dorchi Sherpa, Dipen Bhote and Dawa Sherpa.
Some climbers have asked why Mr. Ravichandran was found alone on the Balcony, a small flat spot near the summit.
Tashi Lakpa Sherpa said that two guides had been assigned to assist Mr Ravichandran, who he said reached the summit late on May 17 because of “body weakness”. He said the downhill was difficult and one of his instructors went to Camp 4 for help. The other guide went down a few meters to use his walkie-talkie to talk to the base camp and the expedition leader.
Tashi Lakpa Sherpa wrote: “I immediately coordinated with my team working above the camp to rescue Mr. Ravi.
Gelje Sherpa assisted other climbers who wanted to reach the summit, but persuaded them to give up their efforts so he could save Mr. Ravichandran.
The dramatic rescue is another achievement in the climbing career of Gelje Sherpa, who in 2021 became the youngest person to summit K2, the world’s second highest mountain, in winter. This week, he traveled from Nepal to Alaska to climb Denali as part of a delegation to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Jim Whittaker becoming the first American to summit Everest.
Gelje Sherpa comes from the Solukhumbu region of the Himalayas. He said he started working in the mountains, first as a porter, because he was not well educated.
Like many other Sherpashe hopes his two young children will find safer and more secure jobs.
“I don’t want to carry them up the mountain to lead the way,” he said. “Perhaps if they like climbing for fun.”
