KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Five Sherpa women are trying to break the stranglehold of Nepalese male mountaineers on Mount Everest.
The team led by Migma Yangje, a 33-year-old hotel owner, plans to scale the mountain along with a dozen Western teams. They leave Katmandu Saturday on their quest to become the first team of Nepalese women to scale Everest.
Although Sherpas have won international fame as Everest guides, Sherpa women have been limited to cooking, cleaning and carrying climbing gear to lower camps. The only Sherpa woman to scale Everest was Pasang Lhamhu. She climbed the 29,035-foot peak with a male team in 1993 and died on her way down.
`We have had many of our men scale the mountain, tell us heroic and tragic tales but they have always discouraged us from climbing, telling us we are not good enough to face the harsh conditions on the mountain,'' Yangje told The Associated Press. ``We are tired of being in the shadow of our men. ... If they can do it so can we.''
Yangje runs a lodge for trekkers at Thangboche village, en route to the peak. She said her dream began when the first woman climber stayed at her lodge.
`She told me nothing should come in the way of our dreams,'' said Yangje, a mother of two. ``When I told my children about my mission, my 13-year-old daughter cried all night. But I am doing this for their future and for the womenfolk of my community.''
The team plans to climb in early May when the weather becomes favorable.
Everest has been scaled more than 800 times since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay conquered it in 1953. Dozens of women have been among those who have scaled the peak. Hundreds of climbers have failed, and some 180 have died.
