Word: norgay
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...Sherpa, more than any other, changed this attitude. "In Tenzing Norgay," writes his grandson, "there developed something more, something almost alien to his race, this was a passion for and an ambition to climb mountains, specifically Everest." As a boy, while he herded yaks on the high mountain pastures with Chomolungma?as Everest is known by the Sherpas?looming above, he had grown to consider it his mountain...
...spring of 1952, Tenzing Norgay joined a Swiss climbing team. From the start he demonstrated extraordinary leadership. As he led the three Sherpas and seven Swiss climbers toward the South Col at 7,925 m, they were stopped by savage winds and forced to bivouac 153 m below the day's goal. Tashi Tenzing writes, "My grandfather stayed in the Sherpa tent to keep them company. He managed to cook some soup and the Swiss were incredulous when, roped to keep himself from being blown off the face, he appeared at their tent with hot food and drink." The next...
...Tenzing Norgay and his generation of climbers forged a path that the Sherpa people now navigate daily. Their pioneering accomplishments served as a bridge from the communities' isolated, subsistence past to the "relative affluence and sophistication that they enjoy today," writes Tenzing. A Sherpa, working as a high-altitude climber, can make four times the average annual wage of a Nepali. Namche Bazaar, the trading capital of the Khumbu Valley, once comprising a few dozen mud houses, now features neon lights, sophisticated communications systems and blaring rock music. The Khumbu is dotted with medical clinics and schools. But the climbing...
...climbers like Apa Sherpa, who has reached the summit 11 times, and Babu Chiri Sherpa who, before he was killed in 2001, completed a speed ascent in less than 17 hours, rests on decades of accumulated knowledge and sacrifice by the Sherpas who came before them: men like Tenzing Norgay, who braved the slopes seven times before becoming, along with Edmund Hillary, the first to stand on top of the world's highest mountain, in 1953. As the 50th anniversary of the first ascent approaches, climbing Everest is as much a historic journey as it is a feat of mountaineering...
...Plenty has been written about conquering Everest, most of it biased toward the exploits of Westerners. Now, Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest by Tashi Tenzing (McGraw-Hill; 294 pages), grandson of Tenzing Norgay, gives a face to the Sherpa heroes, representatives of "a people whose loyalty and personal integrity have earned them a reputation worldwide to equal that of the great mountain, beneath which they dwell." Many of these so-called tigers of the snow paid the ultimate price: by 1990, 43 of Everest's 115 fatalities were Sherpas...