Thank You to “The Adventurist” Jason Hendricks

Reflections On A Glimpse Into The Life of Apa Sherpa
Posted by Jason A. Hendricks on June 3, 2008

Apa Sherpa is to Mt. Everest what Michael Jordan was to basketball. He has succeeded and excelled at every level. Mt. Everest is his NBA Finals. With finesse and strength, Apa Sherpa has slowly carved a reputation that will be very hard to surpass in the world of climbing. He has successfully summited the world’s highest peak an unprecedented eighteen times. An achievement that no other climber can lay claim to.

The Salt Lake Tribune recently had an opportunity to meet up with Apa Sherpa. It is an insightful and unglamorous look at how Apa, although the epitome of climbing on Mt. Everest, struggles to live in his second home, the United States.

In 2006, Apa Sherpa moved from his native country of Nepal to Salt Lake City, Utah. The move was due, in part, to Apa wanting to help out his family who remained in Nepal. He wanted to build a foundation that would help to keep his kids from having to embark on the same path that he chose on Mt. Everest, ushering up climbers to the top of the world’s highest peak. A job, that by all accounts, could very easily rank right up there with the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Apa Sherpa, while recently being afforded the opportunity to actually climb on his own merits, struggled for many years carrying up climbing gear, tents, and oxygen for many of the world’s top expeditions on Mt. Everest. The Sherpa people are known for their stamina and abilities to carry heavy loads at high altitude, offering many of them a steady job each spring. Most make more money in a month than what they could in a single year, in Nepal.

For the past ten years, many climbers from the western world have relished in an unabashed celebrity status upon reaching the top of Mt. Everest. Many have turned their successful summit into books, speaking engagements, and a whole slew of other means to earn a successful living after achieving what many consider the epitome of mountain climbing. Apa Sherpa wanted a piece of the pie for himself. Not just himself though, but for his family.

The article in the Salt Lake Tribune paints a picture that is insightful, yet a bit disturbing for someone of Apa’s stature in the climbing community. He will no doubt go down in the journals of Everest history as one of the best climbers of all time, yet, in Salt Lake City, Apa Sherpa walks around unnoticed and struggles to survive monetarily on a day to day basis. He lives with a close friend, Jerry Mika, who gives Apa room and board, as well as a job with his own company designing outdoor equipment.

Apa Sherpa is very intent on offering his own family a better means to survival. I recently covered a few items, most notably a Poisk Oxygen canister, that were being featured on Ebay. In the listing for this item, it was made very clear that all proceeds were going to help support Apa Sherpa’s family in Nepal. Apa is pretty open about his wishes, yet, in the United States, he is finding the road to be a bit more rough than say, a Conrad Anker or Ed Viesteurs. Both of these guys have been able to turn their love of adventure into full time jobs that goes to support even more adventurous expeditions.

Why Apa Sherpa has not been elevated outside of the mountaineering community to a higher status in the world, is actually quite dumbfounding. He still struggles with gaining sponsors for his climbs, and even at that, is still looking to Ebay to make a few bucks so his family can survive. This seemingly tells a tale of the difference between eastern and western climbers and how they are perceived in the media and the public. I am not going to go as far as to make this a racially biased issue, but perceptions going out in the world would suggest that climbers can make a decent living in the United States with companies just throwing money around to potential expeditions. This is just simply not the case for most foreign climbers who come to the United States in search of the ‘motherlode’ if you will.

All of this is quite sad, but does reveal some insight into the different perceptions that companies and the media place on ‘local’ climbers, as opposed to those that were foreign born. Even with 18 successful Mt. Everest summits to his credit, Apa Sherpa is still finding life to be quite tough.

In the past couple of weeks, most people in the United States do not even realize that one of the best climbers in the world, Inãki Ochoa, died on Annapurna. When Inãki first got into trouble, there was nobody around that could help the struggling climber at high-altitude. Within two days time a call went out to all climbers in the area. In the days that ensued, some of the top climbers in the world would race to Annapurna, risk death for one of their own, and still come up shorthanded. It was an amazing effort from all fronts. Even though the rescue was not a success, it did show us the heart and soul of many of the world’s elite climbers. In the United States press, this story of heroic efforts and dubious tragedy has not even garnered a mention. It didn’t feature American climbers or American Companies, so why would the public care?

The scope of all of this is really quite hard to understand. I cover all aspects of many of these climbs, including those of Apa Sherpa in 2007 and 2008, as well as the recent struggle and death of Inaki Ochoa. Many of my viewers come from all over the world, with it being almost a 50-50 split between American readers and those from foreign countries. Perhaps the companies that throw their money to the American climbing community could find a bigger audience, a more productive business, if they would just follow along and treat the international climbing community with the same vigor and thought that they do with the American climbers. In the United States, our climbers are thought to be the strongest in the world. If people would just open their eyes, many would get a very different outlook at how these statistics are being played out by the press.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like supporting our own climbers, especially those that rank in the upper tiers of the climbing community, should be fully supported to continue doing what they do. On a different note though, how cool would it be to see Apa Sherpa, or a Ueli Steck sporting Nike shoes on the television? They emphasis the “Just Do It” philosophy perhaps even better than a Micheal Jordon or Labron James. On top of that, the money would actually be going to those who need it. People like Apa Sherpa.

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