New Article in The Salt Lake Tribune
Apa Sherpa returns Sunday June 1st to his home in Draper, UT after making it to the top of Mount Everest for a world record 18th time last week. He arrives at 1:35 p.m. on a Southwest flight at Salt Lake City International Airport.
Apa Sherpa warm with pride over record-breaking Everest summit on Eco Everest Expedition
By Brett Prettyman
The Salt Lake Tribune
After making 16 trips to the highest point on the planet working as a guide, Apa Sherpa is still adjusting to climbing on his own time.
Apa made it to the top of Mount Everest again last week, breaking his world record with an 18th summit of the 29,035-foot Himalayan peak.
“We got there too early. It was still a little cold [around -40 Fahrenheit],” Apa told The Tribune by telephone from Kathmandu late Tuesday.
Apa left Everest’s Camp 4 (25,940-feet) with Ang Mingma Sherpa, a support climber, on May 21 at 9:30 p.m., and made it to the summit at 5:45 a.m. on May 22.
Apa, who moved his family to the Salt Lake Valley in December 2006 in search of a better education for his children, Apa is fond of saying that getting up Everest is the easiest part of the climb; dealing with the impact of altitude, physical exhaustion and sleep depravation on the way down is the most dangerous part of a summit attempt.
Apa and Ang Mingma planned their early departure from Camp 4 in the hopes of avoiding a dangerous bottleneck of climbers on the way up. They succeeded on that count, but ended up sitting and waiting at the famous Hillary Step for about an hour during the descent while climbers made their way up the fixed ropes at the most technical part of the summit.
We tried to beat the traffic jam. It worked on the way up, but we got caught on the way down,” he said.
Apa heard that more than 75 people made it to the summit that day; he was glad to have been the first. After making it past the Hillary Step, he and Ang Mingma quickly descended to the safety of Camp 2, where they rested before returning to base camp.
Overall, Apa only spent eight days on Everest. He waited in his home village of Thame for the mountain to open above Camp 2 during a climbing and communication restriction enforced while the Chinese worked to get the Olympic torch to the top of the mountain.
While he said he again felt an incredible sense of pride upon reaching the top, Apa said he also is proud to be one of the first climbers to pack out his waste.
Climbing with the Eco Everest Expedition, Apa was committed to bringing down his own waste, including oxygen bottles and other gear.
“It is required that human waste is hauled from base camp, but we were the first to do it for the rest of the mountain,” he said. “It was not a hard thing to do. Our hope is that everybody will haul it down in the future because there is only one Everest.”
Another reason Apa joined the Eco Everest Expedition was the desire of expedition leader Dawa Steven Sherpa to research the impacts of global warming on the world’s glaciers and the threat of climate change on people who live in the Himalayan highlands.
Apa made his first summit of Everest while not acting as a guide last year when he climbed with Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa as part of the SuperSherpas Expedition.
Asked if he had given any thought to No. 19, Apa laughed and gave his standard reply.
“That is a tough question. We will see, the mountain is always there,” he said. “I need to talk to my family about it.”
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