A press conference was held earlier this year in Kathmandu to publi¬cise the success of the national team from North Ossetia, Russia, on Everest. The obvious pride the Ossetians felt about their feat was only understandable. Equally un-derstandable was the matter-of-factness with which the invited Nepali press-persons regarded the whole affair.
After all, Everest is in Nepal and suc-cessful ascents are only too routine. What was of interest during the press meet, however, was that the excitable Russians did not even refer to the fact that one of their expedition members had achieved a ninth scal¬ing of the mountain. Celebrated mountain¬eer Ang Rita Sherpa was part of the team, and it was only after pointed questions from the reporters that the Ossetians expressed their ´happiness´ at being associated with Ang Rita´s record-setting climb.
This episode is a good illustration of how notable achievements of Nepali (read Sherpa) climbers receive no attention from foreigners and, by extension, the foreign press. Another incident this year highlights this fact. When Allison Hargreaves, the Brit¬ish alpinist, was lost on K2, it made news world-wide but the same cannot be said of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa´s disappearance during her descent from the Everest summit in 1993. Of course, a basic difference existed in that Hargreaves was pretty well-known in mountaineering circles while Pasang Lhamu was hardly a climber. But one can easily assume that their respective climbing resumes were not the only factor that affected the column inches they deserved when they died.
Sherpas have always been given short shrift in terms of media exposure. Expedition stories that appear in foreign newspa¬pers and periodicals usually list them as two, three, or four Sherpas, as the case may be, who were there, relegating them to exotic anonymity. That is one reason why most people interested in climbing worldwide know that New Zealander Rob has climbed Everest four times, but cannot say who the dozen or so Sherpas that have made it to the top five times or more are.