Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Sherpas getting pissed off on Everest

If anybody here has dreams of spending his child's college fund on a dream climb to the top of Everest, you might want to book sooner rather than later.

Sherpas are starting to get mightily pissed off at doing all the work, taking most of the risks, and getting killed - for peanuts.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/everest-sherpas-death-and-anger.html

16 of them got killed by falling ice on the Khumbu Icefall last week. Not too long ago, there was a well-publicized fistfight between a couple of sherpas and a couple of Europeans.

They're getting cranky and tired of being treated like draft animals by rich white people, and I guess I can't blame them. They want more money for hauling our toilet paper and granola up the mountain and breaking trail for our sorry asses.

Better to get pissed off than to fall off.

It's a free market, and as best I can tell; they're holding all the cards. If they organize properly, they can force the issue. If not, then it will go to the lowest bidder.

Another good article on the subject

The Value of a Sherpa Life

I guess I'd feel guilty if they were breaking trail for my sorry ass.

They're welcome to price themselves out of the market and go back to farming in that beautiful tropical paradise.

The families were offered $400 as compensation for their deaths. Frankly, I think the climbing companies should pony up $10,000 a piece as those families lost their breadwinners.

They sherpas do all of the work, which is a tremendous amount under dangerous and difficult circumstances...and they spend a great deal of time on the most dangerous parts of the mountain in order to get it done. The climbers are paying up to $90,000 each for their Everest attempt, and the Nepali government charges $10,000 per climber just for a permit. The sherpas make very little for the amount of money that is being spent and made by others on Everest, and for the work that they do.
None of the climbing activity on Everest would be possible without the sherpas...and none of the money being made on Everest would be possible without the sherpas.

The sherpas should hire the NFL players union. However if they do that they will have to hire consultants to teach them obnoxious and felonious behaviour. The profitable part of the Everest climbing industry would disappear w/out the sherpas as most of the guided are incompetent.

mike r

I would think that one trip up one of those hills carrying their own gear would change anyone's mind on how much the porters should be payed.

heard on the news the average salary for sherpa not climbing the mountain is like $400 a year. The mountain guides can make $5000 in 3 months.

Put a 5 year moratorium on the mountain. That would dampen some of the yuppie enthusiasm for the reckless stunt, and the Sherpas would get a taste of reality, at $400 per year.

I fellow I know almost had his brother die on the ill fated Everest expedition that became "Into thin Air". Beck Weathers damn near died and lost some fingers and toes. Last I heard, has some permanent disability of some sort to this day.

Beck Weathers:

International Brotherhood of Sherpas ?


Denny

Personally I think they should shut down the whole mountain. At least until the climbing companies go up there and cart down all of their darn garbage. Shameful the trash they've left up there.

Spoiled ass [bleep]' sherpas.




Travis

Looks like loads of fun.


Travis

Like a bunch of friggin bleeding heart liberals on here. The sherpas should make more! And the fast food workers!

Isn't Weathers the guy who was left sitting on a snow bank for hours because everybody who looked at him was certain he was already dead?

You can mock, or you can get in on the ground floor of a unique business opportunity. Bangladeshi sherpas. They're slow, but they work cheap and don't complain.

UNIONIZE!!!