If you're going to follow in your father's footsteps, Jamling Norgay suggests, it's probably a lot easier if your father is a carpenter or maybe a plumber. Norgay's own father, on the other hand, was Tenzin Norgay, one of the first two people to reach the top of Mount Everest.
Tenzin's footsteps were steep and icy. Also oxygen-deprived. But Jamling followed them anyway. In 1996, 43 years after his father's historic ascent, he also made his way up the world's highest mountain as climbing director for the crew that produced the IMAX film "Everest."Jamling Norgay was in Salt Lake City Monday night to show slides of both climbs. The event was a benefit for the Smithsonian Tibetan Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., this June. Tibetans hope the festival will draw attention to the plight of their country and its "slowly dying culture," both victims of Chinese occupation.
Mount Everest was still a part of a free Tibet when Tenzin Norgay stood at its summit in 1953. He was one of the Sherpa guides who accompanied the British expedition that May, although it is Sir Edmund Hillary, his climbing partner, whose name became a household word in the West.
One of Jamling Norgay's most striking slides is a picture of oxygen bottles as far as the eye can see. Since 1953, 1,040 people have reached the summit of Everest and have left behind the detritus of climbing: oxygen bottles, trash, human waste, dead climbers.
Jamling Norgay has begun raising money to begin a cleanup of the mountain, sending the first 25 Sherpas this spring. "Our goal is eventually to bring everything back."
Jamling Norgay's slides of his ascent show how much climbing has changed since 1953. No Goretex. No fleece. No bright-red climbing outfits. No harnesses for climbing. Oxygen bottles that weighed 24 pounds each, compared to six pounds today. To cross harrowing crevasses of ice, the IMAX team had special ladders. Tenzin Norgay and Hillary had logs they lugged up from base camp. When they finally got back down, they still had to walk a month to get to Katmandu. These days, a helicopter will take you there in 50 minutes.
Climbing was harder in those days. But it's just as dangerous today, as May of 1996 proved. It was while the IMAX team was high on the mountain that nine people from other climbing parties perished, some of them victims of a sudden storm and bad judgment.
The IMAX team helped bring down injured climbers suffering from snow blindness and frostbite and took part in a mountainside memorial service for those, including some friends, who had died. Then the IMAX team loaded up their 42-pound camera, 50-pound tripod and their rolls of film -- four pounds each for 90 seconds worth of tape -- and headed back up.
Because it was now already late May, the team had to climb faster and earlier in the morning to avoid melting snow. Having just witnessed the power of the mountain, they were also more cautious, he says.
When you're climbing Everest, Jamling Norgay says, you can't see the summit until you actually get there. Each step before that is slow and torturous, with minutes of heavy breathing in between (even for Sherpas, an ethnic group originally from eastern Tibet, whose lungs are believed to be "bigger than any other humans'," Norgay says).
When he got to the top, he cried with joy. Then he left, on the summit's impromptu shrine, a picture of his late parents and of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He also left behind a small toy belonging to his baby daughter and a flag of Tibet "on its own soil."
You can reach Elaine Jarvik by e-mail at jarvik@desnews.com