Apa Sherpa, 63, moved, with his family, to Utah in 2006. Tenzing Sherpa is an accountant at a biotech firm.
How many young Utahns dream of working as mountain guides and would never consider becoming an accountant?
May 8, 2023
"It’s all for education. Both my dad and mom were deprived of education, so he worked hard in the mountains."
Said Tenzing Sherpa, the eldest son of the famed Everest guide Apa Sherpa, quoted in "'I See No Future': Sherpas Leave the Job They Made Famous/Perils of the job and a scant safety net are pushing climbing guides to leave the industry and ensure the next generation has other options" (NYT).
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A great addition to the English language. We live in a place with many stairs, and I like to joke that guests can use a sherpa to get to the main floor, and there will be a St. Bernard waiting for them there. I know, dogs can't go as high as sherpas can.
And then the extreme tourism: multiple groups approaching the peak of Everest at roughly the same time, many people already suffering in the thin air and cold, and a storm is coming. Customers have paid a lot of money, so "tour operators" are inclined to keep pushing to the peak, no matter what. The operators making significant money tend to be Westerners who have specialized in mountain climbing, but the whole business would have been impossible without the sherpas.
Classic (legal) immigration story. Good for them. Apparently it costs about $50K to climb Everest, and I doubt that much of that amount made its way down to the Sherpas.
Working as a professional mountain guide means a high-risk service job catering to ultra-wealthy, ultra-aggressive, ultra-competitive tourists. There are dozens of companies named "Sherpa" that say they will help competitive managers and executives do the hard, high-risk work to allow managers to get to the top.
If you aren't interested in sub-zero temperatures, avalanches, falling off cliffs, and dealing with rude a**holes every day, then don't be a professional mountain guide.
Many Sherpas have died on the job. Their clients walk by the dead bodies on Mt. Everest in pursuit of the summit, and they will just hire another porter when the Sherpa dies.
No one dreams of being an accountant. It just happens. Like being fat.
Perhaps that's one reason why many of the Utah youth go on missionary quests. Get that desire to be a mountain guide out of the system.
multiple groups approaching the peak of Everest at roughly the same time, many people already suffering in the thin air and cold, and a storm is coming. Customers have paid a lot of money, so "tour operators" are inclined to keep pushing to the peak, no matter what.
My comment roommate was working for one of the Everest outfitters in a mostly administrative capacity during that disastrous Into Thin Air season. She went to base camp with their tour group, got very sick from the elevation, and returned home.
I still remember sitting around with her watching the news and reading the emails she was getting as events unfolded. What a horror.
Apa Sherpa, 63, moved, with his family, to Utah in 2006. Tenzing Sherpa is an accountant at a biotech firm.
How many young Utahns dream of working as mountain guides and would never consider becoming an accountant?
T'were ever thus. Sinclair Lewis 1922 novel Babbitt is about the title character George Babbitt's longings to escape his comfortable middle class life. One of the things he dreams about is becoming a guide in the main woods. There is one guide that he particularly looks up to and once manages to get away by himself for a week fishing with him.
Talking to the guide one day he finds that the guide wants nothing so much as to escape guiding, move to the city and become, IIRC, a shoe salesman.
Maine vs Himilayan guide, Realtor vs accountant. But, yeah, I would say pretty much the same thing 100 years ago. You are absolutely correct, Ann. (As you so often are.)
And OT but Sinclair Lewis writing, Babbitt, Arrowsmith (about the pharmaceuticl industry), and especially his earlier Free Air (about a cross country auto trip in 1916) as well as other books
John Henry
I would be remiss if I did not also mention "It Can't Happen Here" Lewis 1935 novel of how Italian style fascism, came to America.
Hint, a doddering old man gets elected as president.
Available at the portal and can be downloaded free from Gutenberg Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html
Well worth reading.
Wilson's Col House wrote an earlier book on similar lines "Philip Dru, Administrator" that Woodrow Wilson may have used as a guideline. Also worth reading. It is dreck, but read for the history.
John Henry
"'I See No Future': Sherpas Leave the Job They Made Famous ... "
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying “change is the only constant in life.”
Reference
People want what they do not have.
Climbing Mt. Everest or Mt. Kilimanjaro is a dangerous job. I don't blame anyone for leaving it after a while to become an accountant. Its one of those positions that seem glamorous and thrilling but the glamour and thrills wear off after you've done it 10 times.
I was puzzled mightily by this blog post, but then figured it all out eventually. It was the "Tenzing" and "Apa Sherpa, famed Everest guide" that confused me. None of these people are related to Tenzing Norgay.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the Himalayas.
One of my grandfathers was a sharecropper. The other was an immigrant steel worker. I got a PhD. Just because I did this around the Appalachians and not the Himalayans, am I more different from the sherpas, ore more like them?
How many young Utahns dream of working as mountain guides and would never consider becoming an accountant?
While we're not young Utahns anymore, that describes my best friend from high school to a T. Considering the popularity of rock climbing, mountaineering, skiing etc. out here, I suspect that there are not a few young Utahns who would love to be mountain guides. Maybe we can set up an exchange program.
Wow, for someone with only a little bit of knowledge this was tough to read. To me, the "famed everest Sherpa" is sherpa, Tenzing Norgay who accompanied Edmund Hillary on Hillary's summit of Everest. With the name Tenzing, I thought the article was saying Tenzing was Tenzing Norgay's son.
People climb mountains like this for their ego. What was a sherpas original job? Carrying goods and people through the Himalayas? Then some Brit got the idea to climb the worlds tallest mountain. Now it's one of the filthiest tourist places on the planet. Not to mention all the dead people.
This guy was smart. Get out of that going nowhere job and do something profitable.
Apa Sherpa is famous. It’s plain in the article and you can read Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apa_Sherpa
It’s kind of strange to think there’s only one famous Sherpa. I did not anticipate this confusion.
Tensing is a first name. I suppose the Nepalese are surprised so many foreigners are named Hillary.
Doing dangerous things for fun is a luxury for the wealthy, but a burden for the poor.
Excelsior!
In P.J. O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World he has a great bit about how Fresno and Dhaka have similar population densities -- and that how, to many in Dhaka, Fresno would be paradise.
Americans don't realize how good we have it most of the time.
Not needing oxygen is a plus.
Sherpa is name of profession >> Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hillary
The first ever recorded people to climb Everest were Edmund Hillary (a mountaineer from New Zealand) and his Tibetan guide Tenzing Norgay.
under US Immigration even 21 ascents of Everest would not qualify a person of extraordinary ability for 'Green Card' immigration
The O nonimmigrant classification are commonly referred to as:
O-1A: Individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics (not including the arts, motion pictures or television industry);
O-1B: Individuals with an extraordinary ability in the arts or extraordinary achievement in motion picture or television industry;
O-2: Individuals who will accompany an O-1 artist or athlete to assist in a specific event or performance; and
O-3: Individuals who are the spouse or children of O-1 and O-2 visa holders.
I have two nephews sho have advanced degrees (paid for by Mom and Dad) in very desirable fields. On even studied abroad, and learned Japanese. He is working as a shift supervisor of the snow production team at the Killington, VT slope. He and his girlfriend live in a converted school bus. The other is going to Wyoming to "figure things out." I wish them the best. They are all ability, and no direction.
John Henry, Sinclair Lewis is a great writer. I went through all his books about fifteen years ago and your post reminds me I should revisit his works.
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