In April 2015, I was preparing to join the first Chinese women’s Everest expedition at Base Camp — seventy of us in total, foreign clients and Nepali staff. I never made it up in time. The earthquake, and the avalanche it triggered off Pumori, reached Base Camp before I did.
For hours, I had no way to reach my team, and no way to reach my own parents back in Dolakha. Base Camp — meant to be the safest point on the mountain — became something else entirely that day.
The disaster did not end with the quake. The blockade later that year strangled fuel, medicine and relief supplies into the country for months, deepening a crisis that took years — and a global pandemic in between — for the industry to recover from.
Share
Email
