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Sherpa: Trouble on Everest review: Doc spotlights an industrial dispute at the top of the world

A thoughtful account of high risk at high altitude

Documentary director Jen Peedom chronicles an industrial dispute like no other in her thoughtful account of high risk at high altitude, Sherpa: Trouble On Everest.

Sherpa began life as an observational doc about the indigenous guides who are the literal backbone of the Himalayan economy. Peedom and her crew, including high-altitude cinematographer Renan Ozturk, had plans to shoot a year's worth of footage to give a sense of ‘what it’s like’ to walk in a Sherpa’s boots over the course of a climbing season. Peedom’s plan was to highlight the unfair expectations placed upon modern Sherpas, and the patronising treatment they’ve received throughout history (the most infamous example being the royal snub of Tenzing Norgay, who conquered just as much of Everest as Sir Edmund Hillary, just not enough to score a matching knighthood).

Such were the circumstances by which Peedom’s crew came to be on the mountain on April 18, 2014, a date that bears the tragic distinction of being Everest’s deadliest day. A notorious expanse of creaking, shifting ice gave way, and the resulting avalanche claimed the lives of 16 working Nepalis. The premise of Peedom’s film underwent a profound shift; its exclusive access before, during and after the crisis, captured everyone’s worst fears being realised, in real-time.

The elite mountaineers of Nepal’s east are naturally acclimatised to the extreme altitude of the region’s peaks and passes, so they’ve found consistent work acting as guides and porters for the swelling numbers of tour groups that attempt to conquer the world’s highest mountain peaks each year. A season’s work can feed the family for a year – but it’s a profession with potentially life-threatening occupational hazards: According to labour statistics, the death rate for working Everest Sherpas in the decade to 2014 was 12 times higher than that of U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq between 2003- 2007.

The tourist trade for Himalayan expeditions is booming, and some tour operators in Nepal now offer the ‘glamping’ experience for the affluent trekker. However, those widescreen TVs and bookcases at base camp aren’t going to set up themselves, so it falls to the Sherpas to do the heavy lifting. When the trekkers bunk in for the night, they do so oblivious to the fact that their guides work through, trudging back and forth over the most dangerous expanses of the mountain – up to 30 times! in the dark! – to transport the group’s gear (spare oxygen, propane, food, water and ladders) to higher ground. They make multiple trips overnight and their prolonged exposure to slippery, unstable terrain is a source of frustration and fear.

In Sherpa: Trouble On Everest, our own guide to the story is Phurba Tashi Sherpa, a family man and senior climber with Kiwi mountaineer Russell Brice’s firm, Himalayan Experience. The start of the 2014 climbing season promises to bring Phurba Tashi several thousand steps closer to reaching a record number of summits. His petrified wife offers the grim reminder that every ascent has the potential to be his last; she pleads with him to stop pushing his luck but without an alternate source of family income, it’s no surprise when we see Phurba Tashi report for duty on day one of the doomed season.

The stakes are high as we observe the various parties assembling for the 2014 climb. Some of the trekkers are returning customers who had forfeited an earlier trek (and its $45,000 fee) when Brice, fearing disaster, aborted Himalayan Experience’s 2012 season.

In documenting the disaster and its aftermath, Peedom shows her own deft ability to navigate difficult terrain.

Brice had been widely criticised for ‘overreacting’ to the danger posed by a section known as the Khumbu Icefall, a chaotic assemblage of ice shards that looms, ominously, over the 17,000-ft base camp. Tragically, he receives dreadful vindication when a wedge of ice the size of a super-yacht breaks away from the same section that had spooked him two years earlier.

As a rescue mission shifts to one of recovery, the surviving Sherpas grieve their dead friends and colleagues, and consider the likelihood of a similar fate if they return to work and complete the season. Tour operator Brice has the unenviable task of trying to manage everyone’s expectations at this time of heightened emotion: his clients, who have trained for months and have pre-paid a small fortune to tick an item off their bucket lists; and his employees, who fear for their lives but can’t afford to forfeit a season’s pay.

A terrible irony emerges when the Sherpas reveal themselves to be frustratingly ineffective at self-advocacy: Scenes of difficult negotiations illustrate how much their much-praised stoicism acts as a cultural impediment to sounding off about unfair working conditions.

In documenting the disaster and its aftermath, Peedom shows her own deft ability to navigate difficult terrain. She cuts through the competing interests at play within Nepal’s US$500m tourism industry, and summarises the issues and complex cultural challenges with fairness and restraint. It’s a testament to her even-handed storytelling that there’s no clear villain in this film... save maybe for the ineffectual government lackey choppered in for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sound bite/photo opp.