In an interview for the mountaineering gear blog OutInUnder, tent designer Martin Zemitis described the moment he first met Babu Chiri Sherpa.
Down came this rather short gentleman about 5 feet in diameter. I think he was nothing but a big lung and a muscle, with legs like tree trunks.
Standing just 1.65m tall and weighing 82kg (or 5’5” high and 13 stones for those of you who prefer good old-fashioned measurements), nobody would ever have suspected Babu Chiri of being an athlete if he walked into a bar. But when Zemitis met him in 1998, he was probably one of the top three in the world at his specialist event.
The event in question, climbing Everest, was undergoing a transformation. For 70 years it had been the preserve of elite foreign climbers with plenty of resources behind them. For most of them, climbing Everest a single time would be among the highlights of their life. Sherpas were the workhorses who helped them to establish their camps, but were rarely given the opportunity to climb to the summit.
In the early 90s things changed dramatically with the birth of the commercial era on Everest (documented comprehensively in Will Cockrell’s excellent book, Everest, Inc.) Mountaineering operators started to organise commercial expeditions that enabled paying customers to climb Everest. Sherpas were hired as guides to accompany them to the summit, and suddenly a handful of Sherpas found themselves climbing Everest every year.
In 1998, the top Sherpa mountaineer was arguably still Ang Rita Sherpa, a mountaineering legend who had retired after climbing Everest 10 times between 1983 and 1996. It was a record that was all the more remarkable because he had always climbed without supplementary oxygen, something that no responsible guide would do today.
The final member of the trio, Apa Sherpa had climbed Everest 8 times, one more than Babu Chiri. His career would span a generation. By 2011 he would have extended the record number of ascents to 21. After he retired, he emigrated to the United States and became an ambassador for climate action in the Himalayas.
Apa’s fame was still in the future, however. In 1998, Babu Chiri was very much the superstar. More media savvy than his two compatriots, he had grasped the fact that attaining records was a way to gain publicity and acquire clients for his company Nomad Expeditions. He had managed to attract sponsorship from the outdoor equipment manufacturer Mountain Hardwear and wanted to be the first person to spend a night on the summit of Everest.
Zemitis was working for Mountain Hardwear at the time. He was tasked with designing a tent that would be light enough to be carried to the summit, yet warm and strong enough to withstand extreme cold and 140 mph winds.
In his interview, Zemitis gave no clues about the design of the tent, but he did describe the stress involved. He didn’t sleep on the night that Babu Chiri camped on the summit. Babu Chiri had been told by doctors that if he fell asleep then he might never wake up. He had a radio with him so that he could stay awake by talking to his companions waiting on the South Col. But there were about 7 or 8 hours of radio silence, and everyone thought that he must have perished.
Zemitis spent the night reading mountaineering blogs.
And the blogs were saying that I designed the world’s highest coffin. When I read that I completely lost it… A lot of people didn’t think that he could do it and so it was pretty scary.
There is a moment in Mountain Hardwear’s video about the night where a tiny figure can be seen descending from the South-East Ridge. It was a moment of considerable relief. It was 7 May 1999. Babu Chiri had achieved his ambition and spent 21 hours on the highest point on Planet Earth. Nothing like it has been done before or since. It was an imaginative thing to do, but it’s not something that has since appealed to the record hunters.
By contrast, Babu Chiri’s other notable record, his 2000 speed ascent of Everest in 16 hours 56 minutes, has been attempted numerous times in various different formats. Guinness thinks that Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa’s 2003 time of 10 hours 56 minutes 46 seconds is the record. But Lhakpa Gelu used supplementary oxygen, so others say that Kaji Sherpa’s 1998 time of 20 hours 24 minutes without oxygen is the fastest. Others still say that Kilian Jornet’s 2017 time of 26 hours is the record because he did it in alpine style without using oxygen or fixed ropes. Meanwhile, I still hold the record for the slowest time from Camp 3 to the summit and back on the north side without having to urinate, when I did it in 18 hours in 2012 (though it’s a record that has not been recognised by anyone else). As recently as this year two more climbers, Karl Egloff and Tyler Andrews, also made speed attempts, though their failure to even complete them underline how hard it must be.
We can only speculate about what Babu Chiri Sherpa might have achieved had he survived to retirement like Ang Rita and Apa. In 2001, however, he died in a mysterious accident at Camp 2 in Everest’s Western Cwm. He was just 35 years old and had already climbed Everest 10 times.
It has been commonly believed that Babu Chiri died when he fell into a crevasse while taking a photograph. This may be true, but in truth, nobody really knows.
For their book Sherpa, which I reviewed in the previous post, Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari interviewed one of the Sherpas who was with Babu at the time, his sirdar Nima Dorje Sherpa, who also goes by the nickname Boka Lama.
It was an expedition rest day and very windy. In the afternoon, Boka Lama was sleeping in the tent that he was sharing with Babu Chiri’s older brother Dawa Sherpa, when Babu came to the door and woke him up.
Hey Lama! Boka Lama! Get up. Let’s go and make some tea in the kitchen tent.
Since it was a rest day, Boka declined the invitation and said that he wanted more sleep. When Babu turned to leave the tent, Boka noticed that he wasn’t wearing any crampons.
It’s not known when or how Babu Chiri fell into the crevasse. At around 5pm the wind died down and everyone came outside to get snacks from the kitchen. It was only then they realised that Babu Chiri was missing. When they found his tent empty they became concerned. The alarm was raised and everyone in camp started looking for him.
They found his body down a 30m crevasse. They guessed that he had fallen through a snow bridge. He was already dead by the time they found him. A Sherpa was lowered on a rope to try and fetch the body out, but it was frozen in place.
The following morning, the team gathered together and they managed to haul the body to the surface. It was taken to Kathmandu in a helicopter. Boka Lama remained on the mountain and guided Babu’s three clients to the summit a few days later.
During his interview with the authors of Sherpa, Boka Lama became wistful.
It’s been several years, but I still see Babu Chiri in my dreams sometimes. If I had agreed to go with him to the kitchen… If only he had escaped that fateful day… half the records on Everest would be in his name.
Babu Chiri Sherpa was one of a kind. Today, many Sherpa and Nepali climbers have become superstars with dozens of sponsors. A handful of them, including Nirmal Purja of Elite Expeditions and Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summits Treks, have grasped the fact that records help to pay the bills and bring in the punters. Babu Chiri was the man who paved the way.
In March – April of 1985 I trekked from Jiri to Gokyo and EBC with young Ang Babu as my porter, Dawa Sherpa was the guide from the village of Chuleimu near Taksindu. After spending 3 days at the EBC with an American West ridge expedition (they let me climb to Lho La and carry 10 kg of macaroni there) we crossed Amphu Labtsa to Mera and then over Zatrwa La to Lukla. Babu had never used a harness, crampons or rope, so I taught him enough rope craft and ice climbing so that we could frontpoint the 30 meter ice avalanche chute at the start of our chosen route up Amphu Labtsa. That route was sketched on a paper napkin by a fellow backpacker I had met in Beijing previous winter. 7 days from Dingpoche to Lukla including Mera summit in 4 hours from the Mera La. No services, no trekkers, no permit. Total length of this trek Jiri to Jiri was 42 days.
Next year I guided a group of 12 clients around full old Annapurna Circuit, Babu as a guide, even though he hardly spoke any English. I had walked the route in 1984 already, so that was not really a problem at all.
The third and last time I met him was in March 1998 when hiking to EBC again from Jiri, stopping at Taksindu for the night. The lodge keeper sounded and looked familiar, but maybe 15 kg heavier than before. It was Babu! He gave his calling card stating “Babu Chiri Sherpa, 7 times Everest summiter”. So the young Babu had grown up, became an Everest hero, a wealthy hotelier and a father of 6 daughters! With some secret pride I later read about his speed records and his camping at the summit (he had better radio contacts to the Tibetan side colleagues, not to South Col, by the way), and with great sadness about his death at C2. He was a very likeable and modest person. When asked why the most famous Everest Sherpa would work at the Mountain Hardwear warehouse off-season at 7 dollars per hour, he simply said “it is a good salary”. Compared to the $3/day I had paid him in 1985 it certainly was.