Flying Off Everest
Page 19
Cheers,
Kimberly Phinney
Mary Anne Potts, the editor of National Geographic Adventure, wrote back a few hours later. She said that the magazine was considering doing a story that would possibly run in November. “It’s not necessary for us to have the exclusive,” Potts added. “You can share it with other media.”
Meanwhile, Hamilton Pevec, the Coloradan who had been editing the GoPro footage from Babu and Lakpa’s flight from Everest, as well as the interview footage Mukti took shortly after they had landed, had finished a rough cut of the film back in Pokhara. Consulting with the Arrufats, who were the producers, he titled the twenty-eight-minute documentary Hanuman Airlines, a nod to the flying Hindu monkey god adorning the storefront of the Blue Sky Paragliding shop. Baloo’s brother, Pradeep Basel, and his friend Kiran Punja wrote and recorded the music for the film in a single afternoon at a small recording studio in Pokhara.
“It was a glorified slideshow,” Pevec says. “My biggest regret is not being able to tell the whole thing. There were so many amazing details that got left out of the film. Of course the most obvious: the whole kayak portion of the journey.” In the film Babu and Lakpa’s entire thirty-seven-day journey from where they landed their paraglider in Namche Bazaar to the ocean is covered in less than sixty seconds. There’s no video. Just still photos, which Babu gave David to use in the film.
It appeared as if the bulk of the expedition was merely an afterthought.
Still, the film was accepted to the Coupe Icare Free Flight International Film Festival in Saint-Hilaire, France, that year, which had been the Arrufats’ main goal for the project to begin with. According to Pevec, “Using it as a promotional device was part of the big plan to launch APPI,” the Arrufats’ new paragliding instructor certification organization. David procured visas and tickets for both Babu and Lakpa to join him in France September 22–25, so they could attend the premiere of the movie that covered at least the paragliding portion of their expedition.
Shri Hari, the expedition’s cameraman, was annoyed that Babu had gone behind his back to edit another film about their trip without him. After refusing to share his kayak footage with Pevec for use in Hanuman Airlines, he and Lakpa proceeded to start making their own feature-length film about the expedition. They decided to focus it almost exclusively on Lakpa, “since Hanuman Airlines is Babu’s story,” Shri Hari says, and titled it The Flying Sherpa. It would take them over two years to complete it, and likewise, the paddling portion of the video lasts only a few minutes. The film is still only available in Nepal. Babu had nothing to do with its production. “It is Lakpa’s film,” Babu says.
At the same time, Phinney provided the transcript of her initial interview with Babu and Lakpa about the expedition to both Cross Country and Canoe & Kayak to use in articles for their respective upcoming November/December issues—which would appear in print nearly five months after the expedition had actually finished.* They would prove to be the only two media outlets that would actually pay Babu and Lakpa for their photos.* Phinney also bought herself tickets to Saint-Hilaire to join Babu and Lakpa at the festival, where she struck deals on their behalf with several gear companies, including Niviuk and Sup’Air, for additional photos and blogging content in exchange for some new paragliding gear. At the same time, David Arrufat attempted to negotiate potential sponsorship deals for Babu, often with the same companies Phinney had just talked to. Neither of them had much success, even though Hanuman Airlines won two awards at the festival: the Golden Icarus (the top film prize at Coupe Icare), as well as the People’s Choice Award. Arrufat and Phinney did not leave on good terms, either.
After the Coupe Icare festival, Pevec sent Hanuman Airlines to America with Phinney so she could transfer the film over from the original PAL format, which he had made it in for the French festival, to high-definition NTSC, for submission to North American film festivals.† Phinney recut the film with the help of another American filmmaker friend and gave herself the title of executive producer in the credits. She then submitted it to the Banff Mountain Film Festival; it was eventually accepted into the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour.
Phinney claims that Pevec “gave” the film to her, and that she was told that Pevec, Davida, and Mukti “had no more time, and [that] none of them want to spend their own money on this.”
Pevec says this isn’t true. “I gave her all the source files, copied the whole project to a separate hard drive and shipped it off to her. So in that sense, yes, I did give it to her—but under the expectation that she was only going to export it onto full HD in a professional-quality studio, because we were in Nepal and didn’t have that.” Regardless, somewhere amidst the growing miscommunication, Phinney thought the film was now hers to start pitching to film festivals.
“I was told I stole the movie,” Phinney says. “How can I steal something that was given to me?”
“I had this long, dreaded conversation with her over the phone, which I recorded for legal purposes,” Pevec says. “Because she had threatened to sue me multiple times, and threatened to sue APPI. She took out a credit card in APPI’s name, without permission. Using the APPI name to do shit with regards to the film. That was really early on too. It was one of those things, like, ‘Whoa, whoa, wait. Who said you could do this?’ She just took a lot of liberties like that. She acted like she was the lead on the project, but that clearly was not the case.”
A long string of strongly worded e-mails was exchanged among Phinney, Pevec, Davida, and Mukti. Tensions rose. Babu and Lakpa distanced themselves from the situation as much as they could. They eventually asked Phinney not to return to Nepal and requested that she and David and Mukti stop selling Hanuman Airlines altogether. Everyone agreed. Pevec, meanwhile, continued to sell the film on his personal website and filled out a bulk order to Cross Country for 500 copies.*
It wasn’t until November 11, 2011, that Babu and Lakpa were nominated for National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year Award. Phinney told them the news via Skype. They had no idea what she was talking about. They learned that they had actually won the award on February 10, 2012, during their interview at Sarangkot, still not really knowing what they had won. On February 28 National Geographic officially announced them as the people’s choice for the award in a blog post on the website. The news was posted along with a series of ten photos and the edited two-and-a-half-minute video of the interview Alex Treadway had shot with them at Sarangkot eighteen days earlier. The post read:
With nearly 72,000 votes cast, we are thrilled to announce the 2012 People’s Choice Adventurers of the Year: Nepalis Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa. Their dream to complete the Ultimate Descent—climbing Mount Everest, paragliding down, then kayaking to the sea—truly embodies the spirit of adventure.
Babu, 28, a kayaker and paraglider, and Lakpa, 39, a mountain guide, combined their skills to persevere in extreme conditions. Babu had never done a high-altitude mountaineering expedition like this before. Though he had three Everest summits to his name before the expedition, Lakpa didn’t know how to swim, let alone kayak the Class V rapids they would encounter. Through teamwork and tenacity—and without the support of corporate sponsors or big budgets—they did something no one had ever done before.
It was only after this announcement that the Nepali Times actually ran a short article about their trip—eight months after they had completed it. Babu and Lakpa, though, were still confused as to what, exactly, they had won. They still didn’t have anything to show for what they had done besides a short, bad movie and a few even shorter magazine pieces with their names in them. And, in Lakpa’s case, a large bill.
“To be honest, we are disappointed,” Babu says. “We have this saying in my village: ‘You can hunt all day for deer but only get a monkey. You don’t even want to eat a monkey, but you must eat it, because you have worked so hard for it.’ We have killed a monkey, I think.”
The two friends went on to start their own paragliding comp
any in Pokhara together later that same year. They called it Flying Himalayan Paragliding. It’s doing well and making a small amount of money for them. Babu is in the process of teaching his wife, Susmita, and his brother, Krishna, how to fly. They each also had a new son in 2012. Lakpa named his Sanga Dorjee Sherpa. Babu named his youngest Himalaya. Life goes on.
Standing on a hillside on his family’s farm in the Khumbu, Lakpa plants kiwi vines beneath the shadow of the mountains, waiting for the climbing season to start up again. The vines will grow on a wooden trellis he has constructed out of sticks, which he has dug into the ground along the length of a narrow terrace his ancestors carved out of the hillside long ago. The sky is cobalt blue and bright. The forest around him is dark and green, even in the sunlight. Below him, the valley seems to drop off into nothingness just past the edge of the kiwi terrace he’s planting. The surrounding hills are steep, blocking his view of the icy ramparts of the higher Himalaya just to the north. He knows he will be walking slowly up them again soon. The climbing season on Everest isn’t far away.
He plans on selling the fruit he is planting to tourists in Lukla, once it grows. He will call them “Sherpa Kiwis,” he says, and will walk with the produce on his back a half hour into town each week to sell it.
“I am not special,” he says later, reflecting on his and Babu’s expedition, thinking of how a kiwi farmer who couldn’t swim and a kayaker who couldn’t climb somehow managed the impossible. How they flew off Everest and then paddled to the sea.
“I set a challenge for myself, and that’s the important thing,” Lakpa says, interpreting both the meaning and reasoning behind what he and Babu had done. “I don’t want to tell my children what to do with their lives. I want to show them. I want to show them that whatever they want to do—they must do it.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book exists because of the amazing feats, generosity, insight, and patience of others—many others. First and foremost, I am indebted to both Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa and Sano Babu Sunuwar, who, after climbing Everest, flying off of it, and paddling to the ocean, somehow managed to not only survive, but sit cheerily through countless hours of tedious interviews with me. It is a feat beyond reckoning. Their kindness, patience, and bravery know no bounds.
Almost everyone included within the pages of this book went out of their way to assist in the making of it, particularly (in alphabetical order by first name) Alex Treadway, Balkrishna Basel (Baloo), Charley Gaillard, David Arrufat, Erik Boomer, Hamilton Pevec, Kelly and Nim Magar, Kili Sherpa, Kimberly Phinney, Krishna Sunuwar, Mahendra Thapa, Pete Astles, Phu Dorji Sherpa (Ang Bhai), Ryan Waters, Shri Hari Shresthra, Susmita Sunuwar, Wildes Antonioli (Mukti), and Yanjee Sherpa. This book would not have been possible without their assistance.
Many people not included within the text also played a vital role in my ability to report it, including (in alphabetical order by first name) Anup Gurung, David Michael Smith, Grayson Schaffer, Lalit Tamang, Mark Gunlogson, and Sagar Poudyal. Each provided valuable logistical support and sound practical advice that I would have been lost without. To Sagar Poudyal, in particular, I owe an extreme debt of gratitude for helping me arrange numerous key interviews in Nepal, oftentimes bringing me to them himself, with me sitting white-knuckled on the back of his motorcycle. No words would be on these pages without him.
This book wouldn’t be what it is without the help of my fellow writers Eugene Buchanan, Joe Glickman, and Jon Turk, who all helped me in drafting the initial proposal. Similarly, I owe many thanks to Falcon’s former senior acquisitions editor John Burbidge, who initially accepted it and had enough faith in the story and myself to send me to Nepal to report it. Thanks are also owed to editor Katie Benoit and copyeditor Sarah Zink, who significantly polished the story and consistently provided sound practical advice through each stage of the drafting process. Additional thanks to Jeff Moag, editor at Canoe & Kayak magazine, for publishing the first article I wrote about Lakpa and Babu’s expedition.
I, of course, was influenced greatly by the published work of others, namely (in alphabetical order by title) Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day, by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan; Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest’s Most Controversial Season, by Nick Heil; Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes, by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver; Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River, by Julian Crandall Hollick; Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River, by Peter Heller; The Himalayan Database: The Expedition Archives of Elizabeth Hawley, by Elizabeth Hawley; Himalayan Whitewater, by Peter Knowles and Darren Clarkson-King; In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote; Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer; Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering, by Sherry B. Ortner; Nepal in Transition: From People’s War to Fragile Peace, by Sebastian von Einsiedel, David M. Malone, and Suman Pradhan; The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen; and The State and Society in Nepal: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Trends, by Prayag Raj Sharma.
During the drafting process I came to rely on the clear-sighted advice of several trusted readers: Dave Shively, managing editor at Canoe & Kayak, provided remarkably detailed line edits on each chapter draft; Kyle Dickman, a remarkably talented writer, read through each chapter and provided consistent direction; Brandon Keinath, a wizard by all standards, not only provided thoughtful line edits, but helped keep me in good humor—a great trick when writing your first book; Guenther Hobart looked very closely at every word, whether I wanted him to or not…
Heartfelt thanks are owed to my parents, Tom and Wendy, as well as my brother and sister-in-law, Ryan and Rachel, who have always stood by me and supported me in my own adventures.
Lastly, I’d like to thank the love of my life, Natasha, who has proved to be not only my harshest critic, but also my best editor, staunchest supporter, and greatest friend. This was all for you, you know.
INDEX
acclimatization, 52, 79, 83, 86–87
Action Asia, 120
Ang Bhai
altitude sickness, 85
equipment, 82
Everest, ascent of, xii–xiii, 85–86, 95
Everest, descent from, 110–12
expedition, plans for, 77–78
safety concerns, 88–89
Antonioli, Wildes (Mukti), 101, 115–17, 127–30, 174, 182, 185
Arnette, Alan, 86
Arrufat, David
blog post, 121–23
expedition, end of, 179
glider, 53, 54–55
moviemaking plans, 115–16, 127–30, 182, 185
paragliding, 41, 42, 101, 108, 112
publicity efforts, 179–80, 181
Arrufat, Wildes. See Antonioli, Wildes (Mukti)
Association of Paragliding Pilots and Instructors (APPI), 41, 87, 121–23, 128–29, 183, 185
Astles, Pete, 36–39, 42, 43–44, 117–18, 132, 137
award, 173–78, 185–86
Barish, David, 47
Basel, Balkrishna (Baloo), 81, 87–88
Benegas, Damian, xiii, 108
bergschrund, 84
Bernbaum, Edwin, 64
bike ride to India, 151–52, 153
Blue Sky Paragliding, 20–22, 41
Boivin, Jean-Marc, xiii, 45, 46, 47, 50, 105
Boomer, Erik, 39–40, 175–76
Boston Red Sox, 29–30
Buddhism, Tibetan, 64
Bull, Richard, 174, 176–77
Camp I, 84–86
Camp II, 86, 93
Camp III, 86–87, 94
Camp IV, 93–95
Canoe & Kayak, 176, 183–84
Chaurikharka, Nepal, 22–24
Chimborazo, 68
chortens, 78, 79
Chu, Nima Wang, xii, 77–80, 85–86, 110–11, 112
Climbing magazine, 48
Clydesdale, Lord, 104–5
Colonica, Craig, 49
Cook, Frederick A., 65
Coxwell, Henry, 103–4
Cross Country, 112, 123, 179, 183–84
Dalai Lama, 68, 70, 128
D’Arrigo, Angelo, 105
Dead Man’s Eddy, 136, 137–38, 141–44
Delsalle, Didier, 106
Denis, Sophie, 76, 82, 108, 113
documentary, 115–17, 127–30, 182–83, 184–85
“Downwind Dave,” 47
Dudh Kosi River, 38–39
East India Company, 164–65
Elizabeth II (Queen of England), 73
Erroz, Matias, xiii
Everest, Mount
ascent, first successful, 72–74
British attempts to climb, 66, 68–74
Camp I, 84–86
Camp II, 86, 93
Camp III, 86–87, 94
Camp IV, 93–95
expedition costs, typical, 55
firsts/records, 89–91
fly-over attempts, 104–6
height, 62, 63, 67–68
names for, 63–65
summit, climb to, 95–97
weather window for climbing, 45, 83–84, 92–93
Everest Base Camp
about, 75–76, 81–84
walk to, 78–80
Exodus Rafting, 34
Falconer, Squash, 45, 52, 76, 86, 87, 91–92