A sherpa's mission to retrieve climbers from Mt Everest
World-renowned mountaineer Mingma Tsiri's quest to bring back the dead from the world's highest peak is documented in a new film.
Sherpas believe Mount Everest is angry.
They believe a series of disasters that have hit the world’s highest peak in recent years are the result of Chomolungma or Mother Goddess of the World punishing them.
More than 300 climbers have died attempting to climb Mount Everest and at least 200 bodies remain on the mountain, frozen where they fell or lost forever.
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A third of the dead are Sherpas.
A new movie Everest Dark follows the efforts of world-renowned mountaineer Mingma Tsiri Sherpa to reclaim the sacred mountain from decades of exploitation, in his life-threatening journey to retrieve fallen climbers from Everest's Death Zone.
The movie was written, directed and produced by Michael Bodnarchuk and Jereme Watt.
The film changed in character after the devastating 2015 earthquake Watt told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
“He [Mingma] had climbed Everest 19 times and wanted to break the record at the time, which was held by two people, which is 22. But while we were filming, that's when the earthquake hit. And so that obviously changed the direction of the film completely,” Watt says.
After the quake Mingma told the film-makers he didn’t want to make the film about his personal accomplishments, Watt says.
Sherpas missions to retrieve climbers from Mt Everest
“Eventually telling me, I'm not going to do this anymore because God is angry.
“And I asked him why. He said, 'because people are leaving garbage on the mountain, there's bodies everywhere. And this is his way of punishing us'.”
Mingma resolved to appease his God's anger, he says.
“I want to do something. And I think that if I remove garbage or bodies off the mountain, he'll stop punishing us with these earthquakes.”
Which is how Everest Dark evolved into a very different kind of film, Watt says.
Mingma is a mountaineering legend, but an extremely humble man, Bodnarchuk says.
“I've always joked with Jeremy that I've always thought that Mingma was the Yoda of the Sherpa world. He's such a humble, quiet person, but he's so wise to the ways of the mountain that, we've always felt completely safe with him being up there just because he's so all knowing and intuitive and in tune with the mountain.”
The wider spiritual significance of Everest to Sherpa people was explored through the lens of one man in the film, he says.
“Who does this mountain belong to and why is it being disrespected and why do the Sherpa hold it in such high regard? So, there's many layers to this film and Mingma became the perfect person to explore them with.”
Mingma’s Buddhism drove him to attempt to bring back dead bodies from the mountain, Watt says.
"Most Sherpa are Buddhists, and in the Buddhist cycle of life, there is no chance at reincarnation unless the body is put through the proper rituals basically to close that circle of life.
“So whenever possible, they want to recover the body so it can be cremated and returned to the heavens and so that body can reincarnate at some point.”
The idea of bringing bodies back from the mountain is an anathema to the western mountaineering mind, Bodnarchuk says.
“The whole Western ethos about mountaineering is if I fall on the mountain, leave me there.
“But the Sherpa people don't want bodies up there. So, it speaks to a bigger question about indigenous relationships with the mountain and the spiritual aspect with the mountain, the respect for the mountain.”
