Ang Dorje (Chhuldim) Sherpa (born 1970) is a Nepali
sherpa Sherpa may refer to:
Ethnography
* Sherpa people, an ethnic group in north eastern Nepal
* Sherpa language
Organizations and companies
* Sherpa (association), a French network of jurists dedicated to promoting corporate social responsibility
* ...
mountaineering guide, climber and porter from
Pangboche
Pangboche or Panboche is a village in Khumjung VDC of Solukhumbu District in Province No. 1 of Nepal at an altitude of . It is located high in the Himalaya in the Imja Khole valley, about 3 kilometres northeast of Tengboche and is a base camp fo ...
,
Nepal
Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...
, who has climbed to the summit of
Mount Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...
21 times. He was the climbing
Sirdar
The rank of Sirdar ( ar, سردار) – a variant of Sardar – was assigned to the British Commander-in-Chief of the British-controlled Egyptian Army in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Sirdar resided at the Sirdaria, a three-blo ...
for
Rob Hall
Robert Edwin Hall (14 January 1961 – 11 May 1996) was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was g ...
's
Adventure Consultants expedition to
Everest in spring 1996, when a freak storm led to the deaths of eight climbers from several expeditions, considered one of the worst disasters in the history of Everest mountaineering.
Early life
Ang Dorje was born in 1970,
in upper Pangboche, Nepal, near the
Khumbu Valley as it passes down the slopes of Mount Everest. He grew up among
Himalayan climbers; his father, Nima Tenzing Sherpa, was a climber with expeditions led by British mountaineer
Chris Bonington
Sir Christian John Storey Bonington, CVO, CBE, DL (born 6 August 1934) is a British mountaineer.
His career has included nineteen expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest.
Early life and expeditions
Bonington's father, ...
in the 1970s and 1980s.
He followed his father in work with climbing expeditions beginning as a porter at the age of 12. "I always wanted to climb when I was little," Ang Dorje says. He attended private school in Nepal, with assistance from western clients impressed by his work ethic, as he continued his mountaineering work with several expeditions in the Everest area.
His efforts were rewarded when in 1992 at the age of 22 he reached the summit of Mount Everest.
Sirdar and guiding career
Ang Dorje has led many successful expeditions on Everest, frequently as climbing sirdar for Adventure Consultants, the guiding service founded by Rob Hall. During the disastrous 1996 expedition on Everest,
he and Lhakpa Tshering Sherpa attempted to rescue Hall and others, in the deadly storm conditions that ultimately killed 8 climbers. They ascended 900 vertical meters to just below Everest's South Summit, only to be halted by impenetrable storm conditions just 100 meters from Hall. They waited 45 minutes before being forced back by the storm. Ang Dorje later commented on the incident saying, "It was very sad. Very difficult."
The rescue efforts were recounted by
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American writer and mountaineer. He is the author of bestselling non-fiction books—'' Into the Wild''; ''Into Thin Air''; ''Under the Banner of Heaven''; and '' Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat ...
in his account of the disaster, ''
Into Thin Air
''Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster'' is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and sev ...
''.
In addition to his work as climbing sirdar on Everest, Ang Dorje has also worked as a
mountain guide
A mountain guide is a specially trained and experienced professional mountaineer who is certified by local authorities or mountain guide associations. They are considered to be high-level experts in mountaineering, and are hired to instruct or ...
on Everest, as well as
Aconcagua
Aconcagua () is a mountain in the Principal Cordillera of the Andes mountain range, in Mendoza Province, Argentina. It is the highest mountain in the Americas, the highest outside Asia, and the highest in the Southern Hemisphere with a summi ...
,
Mount Rainier,
Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It has three volcanic cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world: above sea level and a ...
, and
Island Peak
Imja Tse, better known as Island Peak, is a mountain in Sagarmatha National Park of the Himalayas of eastern Nepal. The peak was named Island Peak in 1953 by members of the British Mount Everest expedition because it appears as an island in a sea ...
.
He first guided
Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in 1984, when he climbed Mount Everest for the second time.
Climbing accomplishments
As of 2020, Ang Dorje had reached the summit of Mount Everest 20 times since 1992 (in both spring and autumn, all via the
South Col
The South Col is a sharp-edged col between Mount Everest and Lhotse, the highest and fourth-highest mountains in the world, respectively. The South Col is typically swept by high winds, leaving it free of significant snow accumulation. Since 1950 ...
route),
Cho Oyu seven times since 1995, and had also summited
Broad Peak
Broad Peak ( ur, ) is a mountain in the Karakoram on the border of Pakistan and China, the twelfth-highest mountain in the world at above sea level. It was first ascended in June 1957 by Fritz Wintersteller, Marcus Schmuck, Kurt Diemberger, ...
(1995),
Gasherbrum II
Gasherbrum II ( ur, ; ); surveyed as K4, is the 13th highest mountain in the world at above sea level. It is the third-highest peak of the Gasherbrum massif, and is located in the Karakoram, on the border between Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan ...
(1997) and
Ama Dablam
Ama Dablam is a mountain in the eastern Himalayan range of Province No. 1, Nepal. The main peak is , the lower western peak is . Ama Dablam means "Mother's necklace"; the long ridges on each side like the arms of a mother (''ama'') protecting her ...
(in 1996, via the southwest ridge route)
Personal life
After meeting American
computational linguist Michelle Gregory at the southern
Everest Base Camp
There are two base camps on Mount Everest, on opposite sides of the mountains: South Base Camp is in Nepal at an altitude of (), while North Base Camp is in Tibet, China at ().
The base camps are rudimentary campsites at the base of Mount Eve ...
, in 2002 he immigrated to the United States. The couple wed a year later. He returns to climb Everest each spring, in part to be able to visit family as he passes on the way to the mountain. He completed his 19th summit of Everest in 2017.
When he is not leading clients in the
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
, Ang Dorje works as a
wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...
mechanic in the
wind farms
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few h ...
on the northwest side of the US.
He spent time in 19971998 climbing in Jotunheimen in Norway with amongst others his friend Morten Skjellen-Larsen.
Everest summits
*2019 - 20th summit
*2017 - 19th summit
*2016 - 18th summit with
Adventure Consultants
*2013 - 17th summit
*2008 - 14th summit
See also
*
*
List of 20th-century summiters of Mount Everest
Mount Everest, at is currently the world's highest mountain and is a particularly desirable peak for mountaineers. This is a list of people who reached the summit of Mount Everest in the 20th century. Overall about 1,383 people summited Evere ...
References
External links
Death and survival on top of the world: Sherpa guide recalls the tragic 1996 Everest expedition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorje, Ang
1970 births
Living people
Sherpa summiters of Mount Everest
Nepalese mountain climbers
People from Solukhumbu District
Nepalese emigrants to the United States
Nepalese summiters of Mount Everest