Furdiki Sherpa (l.) and Nima Doma Sherpa (r.)

Mount Everest took their husbands. And the fathers of their children. Nevertheless, Nima Doma Sherpa and Furdiki Sherpa want to climb the highest mountain on earth this spring. “We are doing our expedition for the respect of our late husbands because they were mountaineers too,” Nima Doma replies to my question about the purpose of their project. “And we want to motivate all the widows.” Everest has left a lot of single mothers behind. According to the mountaineering chronicle “Himalayan Database”, 37 Sherpas have died there in the past 20 years alone. Furdiki’s husband, Mingma Sherpa, belonged to the so-called “Icefall Doctors” who set up and secure the route through the Khumbu Icefall every year. The 44-year-old died in a fall into a crevasse on 7 April 2013. One year later, on 18 April 2014, Nima Doma Sherpa’s husband, Tshering Wangchu Sherpa, was one of the 16 Nepalese victims of the major avalanche accident in the Icefall. 

Move to Kathmandu

During the ascent on Island Peak

When Everest’s fate struck, the two Sherpanis each worked in the small tea houses of their families: Furdiki in Dingboche, a small village in the Everest region at 4,340 meters, Nima Doma in Khumjung, further down the valley at 3,780 meters. Their income was too low to make ends meet for their children in the long run. Both moved to Kathmandu and started working as porters and later guides of trekking groups. Furdiki wanted to give her children greater opportunities for the future than she could finance herself. The 42-year-old found adoptive parents in the USA for her three daughters, who are now 14, 17 and 20 years old. Nima Doma has a ten-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. When the 34-year-old is on the road as a trekking guide, her mother looks after the children in Kathmandu.

On top of two six-thousanders

Nima Doma (l.) and Furtiki in the climbing wall

In order to prepare for their “Two Widow Expedition”, Nima Doma and Furdiki attended several climbing courses of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA). Last November they scaled the 6,584-meter-high Chulu East in the Annapurna region and the 6,189-meter-high Island Peak in the Everest region, two popular trekking peaks. Is that enough experience for Everest? I asked the two Sherpani if they were not afraid that something might happen to them on the highest mountain on earth and that their children would then be orphans. “We are not afraid of the mountains because we believe we gain basic technic that is need in the mountains and well wishes from all the people who know us and our story,” replies Nima Doma Sherpa. “Every mother loves her children and so do we. But after the death of our husbands all the responsibility suddenly lay on our shoulders. We want to show our children that we can be independent. This will motivate them and make them proud.”

P.S. Nima Doma and Furdiki still need more money to finance their expedition. On 19 October, they will be hosting a fundraising dinner party in a hotel in Kathmandu. If you want to support the two Sherpani, you can also send them money online. Here is the link to their crowdfunding campaign.

Edi Koblmüller on the summit of Cho Oyu in 1978

Only the spouses were in the know. The three Austrians Edi Koblmüller, Alois Furtner and Gerhard Haberl as well as the two Germans Herbert Spousta and Peter von Gizycki had agreed on strict secrecy. After all, the eight-thousander Cho Oyu was not open to climbers in Nepal in 1978. So the five climbers disguised themselves as trekking tourists and hiked to Gokyo. Their actual destination was a few kilometers behind: the 3,000-meter-high Southeast Face of the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu. “I was obsessed with this idea,” Alois Furtner, who reached the summit with Koblmüller on 27 October 1978, writes to me. The others turned around about 200 meters below the summit. “Friends of ours later called it a ‘century adventure’. Today I know that it was a very courageous undertaking,” recalls the now 70-year-old Furtner. “At that time I was so determined and focused that it had to happen. Just as a pregnant woman has to give birth to her child, I had to realize this plan in a similar way. And I succeeded.”

Sleeping in snow caves

In the Southeast Face

A picture of the upper part of the wall in a book by Reinhold Messner had inspired the quintet. The mountaineers had no more information. First, they carried about 250 kilograms of equipment from Gokyo to the base camp at 5,100 meters. Koblmüller, Furtner and von Gizycki ascended to an altitude of 6,700 meters at the foot of the summit wall. There they deposited a tent with equipment and descended again. On 22 October the five mountaineers started their summit attempt. They climbed in “pure Alpine style”, Furtner says. “We had no Sherpas on the mountain, no supplies, no bottled oxygen, no communication with the outside world, we were completely on our own. There was also no doctor. We were not allowed to make any mistakes,” says Alois. “Food, petrol, fixed ropes were reduced to a minimum. We only used tents in the lower part of the wall. In the summit wall we dug out snow caves to reduce weight.”

Like Brocken spectres

The summit wall demanded everything from climbers. Their route led over an ice pillar in the middle of the wall, which was up to 70 degrees steep. In the morning of the summit day the thermometer showed minus 40 degrees Celsius. Haberl got frostbite at his fingertips, which finally cost him the summit. Furtner and Koblmüller reached the highest point shortly before sunset. “We both knew that we had achieved something great,” recalls Alois. “I had four turquoise stones around my neck. I pressed one of them into the snow of the ‘Turquoise Goddess’ (that’s the translation of Cho Oyu) at the summit in return for good luck. I remember one thing – it was mythical: The setting sun enlarged our shadows and threw them onto the wall of fog in the direction of Everest, it was like Brocken spectres.”

Five years entry ban

Nepalese side of Cho Oyu (Southeast Face on the right)

The descent turned into a race against time. At 6,600 meters the five mountaineers were snowed in. Two nights and a complete day they crowded together in a tent, food was running out. The quintet digged their way down to the valley through partly breast-high snow and finally reached the base camp on 1 November, ten days after setting off for their summit push. One day later they were back in Gokyo. Because they had climbed Cho Oyu without a permit, the Nepalese authorities punished the climbers with a five-year travel ban. “At that time our ascent virtually disappeared,” reports Furtner. “In the same year, Messner and Habeler climbed Everest without bottled oxygen – that was the world sensation.”

“The adventure of my life”

Alois Furtner

To date, the route via the Southeast Face of Cho Oyu, completed by Furtner and Koblmüller (who froze to death in a snowstorm in Georgia in 2015), has not been repeated. That actually says it all about its degree of difficulty. “Looking back, I’m still deeply moved by how we climbed the wall back then. There were so many obstacles on the way to the summit and also on our way back. And yet we all arrived at the base camp relatively unharmed,” says Alois Furtner. “It was the adventure of my life, and the summit picture was the photo of my life.”

The Cho Oyu pioneer takes a critical view of today’s Himalayan mountaineering. “Gokyo becomes a Zermatt in the Himalayas, the peaks are climbed in hundreds and the ascents are broadcasted live. I lean back calmly and think of our happy ascent with a feeling of well-being,” says Alois. “I am also very pleased that Reinhold Messner, in his Cho Oyu book, classifies our ascent as a ‘milestone in climbing great Himalayan walls’. I accept this compliment gratefully.”

P.S.: Yes, yes, I know, the anniversary was two months ago – but 40 years ago is still true.

Mount Vinson

Christmas with the family beneath the Christmas tree – this might not happen for about 40 mountaineers in Antarctica. For about a week now, several teams have been stuck in the base camp at the foot of the 4,852-metre-high Mount Vinson, the highest mountain of the continent. Severe storm with speeds of around 100 kilometers per hour and heavy snowfall have been preventing aircrafts from taking off or landing there for days. “We rationed the food for one warm meal a day,” writes Manuel Möller, with whom I was on an expedition to the 7,129-meter-high Kokodak Dome in 2014, where we succeeded the first ascent. Manuel had actually wanted to be home again on 21 December: “We are now prepared for still spending Christmas here.”

Turned around 150 meters below the summit

The Vinson Massif

Jürgen Landmann, who like Manuel belongs to the five-member team of the German expedition operator Amical alpin, writes on Facebook about a possible “mini good weather window” on 27 December: “Let’s hope that we get away from here then!” According to him, the team had to turn around 150 meters below the highest point during their summit attempt. One of the climbers suffered frostbite on her nose and cheek during the ascent, Manuel adds, “but things are looking better again”.  The team had good weather only on two out of ten days on the mountain, he says.

Mood in base camp still calm

“The season here is completely crazy,” writes Manuel. “The rangers said they’d never seen so much bad weather before. Yesterday there was 15 centimeters of fresh snow. Normally it snows here one centimeter a year.” The atmosphere in the base camp is calm despite the delay, says Manuel, adding that there is enough food for another two weeks, and petrol is still available too. “So there is no immediate danger of starving or dying of thirst,” reassures Manuel. “Nevertheless it is somehow stupid, since it is not foreseeable when the conditions will improve.” So keep your fingers crossed!