Finjo and Asha are preparing for the next Everest climbing season. I asked Finjo, back in Kathmandu before we left, if he wanted to give up climbing. He looked shocked. “Never!” he said. “This is everything I always wanted. Even now.”
But Asha might quit after this season, might try for a scholarship to go to college in Kathmandu. And Bishal—we don’t know how he’s doing or even where he is. When he left the hospital in Kathmandu, he went dark. Finjo said he would look for him, but we haven’t heard any news in months. I try not to think about it too much because I hate how powerless I feel, how pointless that a guy like him could be lost just because he had the bad luck to be in a snowstorm on the mountain. It makes me want to rage, want to punch and fight the utter bullshit unfairness of it all. But there’s nothing to punch, nothing to fight. So every once in a while, I send texts to his old number, send him a funny photo or a surf shot, since he was low-key obsessed with the idea of surfing. Maybe someday he’ll answer.
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Now we’re at sea level, trying to study, trying to balance our lives at school with everything we shared, everything we are together. With what happened on the mountain.
Rose climbed Everest like she tackled every other mountain we’ve climbed, like the natural she is. But there’s no smile of satisfaction when Everest comes up. There’s just a shadow, like the memory of something lost forever. Then I take her to the ocean and we breathe that awesome thick, oxygen-rich air we both love, and I kiss her and make her laugh until the shadow fades away.
The End
A Word about Sherpa
The region of Nepal where this mountain exists is known as the Khumbu, and the people who live there are an ethnic group known as Sherpa. Originally nomadic, they have lived primarily, though not exclusively, in eastern Nepal for centuries. From the early days of Himalayan expeditions, the Sherpa people were highly valued by the western explorers due to their knowledge and climbing skills in the high peaks of their home. Today the term sherpa is used to signify a climbing guide or support staff in the Himalayas, but it is still accurate to use this term to refer to the ethnic group of the region. Adding to the confusion for visitors, Sherpa is often the last name given to an individual, so that Finjo Sherpa (his name) might be a Sherpa (meaning he is from that ethnic group) who works as a sherpa (meaning he is a mountaineering guide).
Author’s Note/Further Reading
For millions of years, in an inaccessible part of a remote area near India, Tibet, and Nepal stood a looming, massive peak. It was called Chomolungma by the Tibetans who lived in its shadows, which means mother goddess of the universe. Later the Nepali government named it Sagarmatha, or goddess of the sky. Measuring it, climbing it, “conquering it,” as the later explorers hoped to do, was unfathomable. It just existed, enormous and wreathed in clouds, high above where humans lived.
But in the 1800s British explorers were aggressively traveling and mapping the globe, hoping to fill in the gaps on their maps of our world. In 1841 George Everest surveyed a part of the mountain range known as the Himalayas, and in 1856 it was measured with what was at the time cutting-edge technology. It came in at 29,002 feet and was designated Peak XV. Nine years later, the British renamed Peak XV Mount Everest, after the western explorer who mapped it. New technology and shifts in the mountain itself have caused the official height of the mountain to be revised several times. In 1999 it was considered to be 29,035 feet, but the Nepali government began a new measurement campaign in 2019 to see what the effect of the 2015 earthquake had on the mountain.
Once named and measured, it did not take long before foreign explorers considered the possibility of reaching the summit. Starting in 1921, massive expeditions flocked to the base of the mountain to launch summit attempts. Again and again climbers headed up into incredibly harsh conditions and bad weather. Some died, many more were turned back by impossible conditions. While it’s possible that earlier explorers managed to reach the summit before disappearing on the descent, it was not until 1953 that Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary, as part of a British climbing expedition, made the first official ascent.
Since then, a veritable parade of “first ascents” have been attempted. First climbers from different countries, first climber to reach the summit without bottled oxygen, oldest climber, youngest climber, first visually impaired climber, first paraplegic climber, first descent by ski, first descent by paraglider, fastest time to the summit…The list goes on and on. In addition to the zeal of holding a record, no matter how esoteric, there are also more climbers who simply want the glory of having tagged the highest mountain in the world and ever more commercial climbing companies willing to help them get there—for a price. The crowds have led to increased pollution, ecological damage, and, improbably, human traffic jams on the mountain. Many fear that this commercialization of Mount Everest will lead to its ruin. But the allure of a place that is both gloriously beautiful and utterly deadly continues to draw people in.
As I wrote Above All Else I did a lot of research, and I have traveled to Nepal to the Gokyo Lakes in the Khumbu, near Everest Base Camp. It is a truly extraordinary part of the world. I can’t overstate the beauty of those mountains, the improbably blue of the sky against the white peaks, the sense of distance—both physical and cultural—that it takes to get yourself there. The Khumbu region has been transformed by tourism: English signs offering solar showers, pizza (dubious at best), Coke, and internet access dot the landscape. But it is still an incredibly poor part of the world. Twenty-five percent of people live on U.S. fifty cents a day, and rates of disease, malnutrition, and child mortality are high. The contrast between the climbers who pay upwards of $60,000 for a three-month expedition and the local communities is stark and sometimes uncomfortable to witness, even as the Sherpas gain some benefit from the tourism dollars and are welcoming to the global visitors who admire their home. There are no easy answers to this tension. And in Nepal, like everywhere, climate change is irreparably shifting the reality on the mountain. More extreme weather patterns will lead to more dangers, putting more climbers and Sherpas at risk. The future of the mountain, and the region, is unknown.
Most of the details about the landscape, lodges, villages, climbing routes, and camps are as accurate as I could make them. There are indeed dead bodies left along the path to the summit, though the ones I reference in the book are not real. The dangers of altitude sickness and exposure are real, as are the kinds of problems and missteps that befall the characters in the book. Unfortunately, small errors can turn deadly on the mountain. But the beauty of the place, the glory of the mountains, and the kindness of the villagers who host travelers there is also real. If you get a chance, I strongly recommend you wander that way someday. You won’t be sorry.
For more information about Mount Everest and climbing, please check out the books and links below. Most of these are adult titles but offer vivid and page-turning tales of life on the mountain.
Annapurna: A Woman’s Place by Arlene Blum
Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life by Arlene Blum
The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt
Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest’s Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil
High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas
High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places by David Breashears
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
www.alanarnette.com
www.melissaarnot.com
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/everest/reference/climbing-mount-everest/
http://sherpafilm.com
http://thewildestdream.com
http://www.beyondtheedgefilm.com
http://www.mounteverest.net/expguide/route.htm
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There are many global foundations and nonprofits supporting Nepal. You can always look on www.charitynavigator.org to ensure that the organization you are supporting is actually doing good work and using the money well. To directly support the Khumbu region and the Sherpa families there, consider giving to The Juniper Fund, a small nonprofit started by western climbers that works directly with Sherpa families impacted by accidents on Everest: www.thejuniperfund.org
Acknowledgments
It took me significantly longer to write this book than it would take even the most unlikely mountaineer to train for and climb Everest, and if the perils of a misstep had been even a fraction as deadly, I would have been smashed on the rocks more times than I can say. I am extra grateful for my beloved family—Patrick, Noah, and Isabel—who gazed up at the Himalayas with me and then listened, for six years, while I tried to figure out how to write a book about it. The fact that this book exists is a testament to my stubbornness but also to the amazing writing community I have.
I don’t know if I can thank everyone who ever read a draft of this, from those early readers in 2013 to the last saviors a few months before the final draft was due, but I will try. Readers like Sarah Harian, Laura Tims, Jen Downey, Helene Dunbar, Katie Bouton, and others helped me fix the rope and start the climb. Heather Lucas and Willow Monterrosa had to deal with me attempting to write this book on our fortieth birthday trip, and then again on our forty-fifth birthday trip. (They will be relieved that by the time our fiftieth birthday trip rolls around this book will finally be on the shelf!)
Beloved Marietta Zacker roped in and led me up the steep bits, even when it seemed there was no path. Liz Levy, Catherine Egan, Jen Malone, and my long-suffering sister Erica Levy-Ringel set up camp and helped untangle the snarls. Joy McCullough, like a Saint-Bernard with a flask full of whiskey, showed up at the eleventh hour to help identify a character arc problem that had been dogging me for five years. Thank you, Joy!
And then there’s the MoB: Rachael Allen, Alina Klein, and, most of all, Kate Asha Boorman. If I had to hang off an ice face at 29,000 feet with anyone, it would be you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I also want to thank Mona Shahab and Prabhat Srestha for their knowledge and expertise. I am so grateful for all the information shared, and of course any mistakes that remain are solely my own.
Finally, I am so grateful to work with the Charlesbridge team. Thank you, Diane Earley, who designed this gorgeous book and found the amazingness who is cover artist Levente Szabo, and thank you, Donna Spurlock and Jordan Standridge, for helping readers find their way to my story. Thanks to Jacqueline Dever for copyediting and Mandi Andrejka for proofreading. And mostly, thank you to Monica Perez, for seeing the story in Above All Else, for recognizing that it’s less about the mountain and more about the people who are drawn to it, less about the summit and more about the journey. Onward and upward…
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