Kathmandu: Dawa Gyalzen Sherpa, 28, has made it to the summit of Mount Everest six times in the past five years.
And nothing will stop him from doing it again — not even the chilling moments of April 25 when he saw the terrifying dance of death in the very mountains he had conquered.
“I am scared but this is the only thing I know. I love the mountains and this is where I belong,” Gyalzen Sherpa, who hails from Lukla, a trekking village in Solukhumbu district in the North-east of Nepal, told Gulf News.
A trekking guide and a trained long line mountain rescue expert, Gyalzen was with a group of trekkers when the Nepal earthquake sent a massive avalanche slamming down on hundreds of climbers at Everest’s base camp. Dozens were killed, and hundreds were buried under the snow in one of the worst tragedies to strike the Himalayas.
Recounting his miraculous escape, he said his group consisting of 35 climbers had just finished lunch and was resting near the Nuptse mountain when they felt the ground shaking.
“Within seconds, there was a huge rumble, and next we saw a massive avalanche coming crashing down toward our direction. And I knew only God could save us.”
Everyone started running, which Gyalzen said was the most dangerous thing to do in that situation. So he asked his group to bend down and stay in a fetal position with both hands over their heads.
‘Terrifying’
“What happened in the next few minutes was terrifying. Huge chunks of snow and loosened rocks were pummelling at us as we lay there ducked. We were buried under a blanket of snow when it finally ended,” said Sherpa.
Nobody knew how many of the trekkers were alive. Many did not make it. Sherpa said he could hear people calling out for help.
“I saw a woman whose skull was ripped open, and she was saying something I could not understand. There was panic and terror, and I tried to pull out as many as I could from under the snow,” said Sherpa who spent more than a week at base camp rescuing the victims.
He said they were not prepared for such an incident. There was not enough first aid or medicine available.
“I think that is one thing we have learnt from this tragedy. We need strict safety guidelines in place to ensure lives are saved in the mountains,” he said.
There are hundreds of Sherpas who risk their lives to assist climbers in their extreme adventure on the Himalayan mountains. A trained guide who accompanies climbers on their more than a monthlong Everest expedition can earn as much as $5,000 (Dh18,365) to $6,000 for a trip.
But Sherpa said after the earthquake, many of his colleagues had come back empty-handed.
“Not all of us work on contracts, and we are mostly paid at the end of the expedition. We had already spent weeks in the mountains when the earthquake happened. But now we don’t know who will pay us,” he said.
But will the recent disaster stop Sherpas like him from trekking the mountains?
“No way,” he retorts.
“There is only one Mount Everest, and trekkers will soon forget this tragedy and come back to conquer the peaks. But the only thing is we will be more careful when we take up the next challenge,” he said.
— The writer is a Senior Reporter with Xpress — a sister publication of Gulf News
