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Latha Venkatraman

(From left) Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Peter Hillary and Brent Bishop.

MUMBAI, April 9

JAMLING Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay, may have given up high-altitude mountain climbing but his passion for the mountains has not ebbed.

"I am done with big climbing. Now I climb smaller mountains, some ice climbing and trekking," he says.

Thirty-eight-year-old Jamling reached the summit of Mount Everest in the climbing season of 1996, which claimed the lives of nine people. Just as weather had turned for the worse on Mount Everest in 1996, there was a similar disaster in 1994 on K2, the world second highest peak at 8,611 metres (28,250 feet). Six climbers died on K2 that season.

"That was a lesson for all of us that nobody can take the mountains for granted. No matter how fit you are the dangers posed by the mountains remain," he said.

Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary, attempting to summit K2 in 1994 took a call and decided to turn back. "He took the right decision while many of his friends perished on the mountain," said Jamling.

At 38, it may have been early for Jamling to give up high-altitude mountaineering. "No more 8,000-metre peaks for me. The two months that I used to devote for climbing used to put my family through great amount of tension. That's why I decided to give it up," he said.

He agrees that mountaineering is a prohibitively expensive sport. "You need a lot of money to go on any expedition to an 8,000-metre peak," he says. "In India, much of the climbing is done by the Defence, which has the money for these expeditions. But it is amazing to see some of the civilian groups collecting money and attempting to peak Mount Everest or any other peak in the Himalayas."

However, today's mountaineers have it much better that their predecessors in terms of equipment and gear. "Today you get very good equipment which is light and durable. It does help when you have to carry a much lighter load up a mountain," he said. But all of these equipment will not make one a better mountaineer. "The mountains have not changed, so one cannot take chances at all," he said.

He agrees that there are a number of climbers who climb for the wrong reasons. His own endorsement of the National Geographic Channel reality programme on Mount Everest is because the participants go up to the base camp of Everest. "Anyone can go up to the base camp, it is a trek. Had this been extended up beyond the base camp, I would not have supported this programme," he said.

Although not part of any high-altitude climbing, Jamling is involved in clearing garbage from the Himalayan mountains. "The deforestation and the amount of garbage piling up are quite alarming. In 2000, we went up in a team and brought back 600 discarded oxygen bottles from a height of 26,000 feet," he said.

According to him, mountaineers are becoming aware of the fragile ecological nature of the Himalayas and many teams are conscious of the perils of deforestation and garbage accumulation.

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