Phura Lama.
Photo by Kim Johnson

Phura Lama 

Age: 43   Hometown:  Makalu, Nepal
 

On our first arrival in base camp about three weeks ago, I recall a friendly session of kicking around the hackey sack on one of the frozen glacial lakes.  As we laughed and stretched our legs after the trek up from Gorak Shep, one of the climbing sherpas dressed in lime-green fleece pants, an old fleece jacket and a tattered baseball hat hopped on the rocks, walking by our game with a smile wider and brighter than any one of us Americans could muster.  Not being able to resist this man's smile and energy, he was quickly invited to join in our game of hack.  Although foreign to the idea and techniques of the hack, his intensely pure and innocent sense of humor bubbled like a fountain and infected us all.  Soon, we were all sharing in the joyous laughter of just playing on the glacier.  We learned his name quickly: Phura (pronounced per-ba).

Phura Lama, as you might be able to tell by his name, is not actually a member of the Sherpa tribe, but rather of the Lama tribe which occupies a region of Nepal to the east of the Khumbu valley.  His hometown, Makalu, shares the same namesake as another one of the Himalaya's great mountains.  Back home in Makalu live his wife, Pubu Chirchi; two sons: Pasang, 18, and Dawa, 15; and 4 year old daughter Cheepa Hamu.  (Please pardon the spellings, we are doing the best we can)    Actually, his eldest son, Pasang, currently is attending college in Kathmandu. 

Although a bit older than some of the other climbing sherpas, Phura's youthful energy and experience combine to make him one of the strongest, despite his height of about four and a half feet.  He has extensive experience after working for twelve years as a climbing sherpa.  His list of mountains of where he has worked is quite impressive and includes Ama Dablam, K2, Manaslu, Makalu, and two prior expeditions on Everest.  According to Phura "K2 difficult" and Everest "easy", "very beautiful" and "not dangerous". In his spare time on this expedition, Phura has been studying a textbook of English language.  He also mentions that his favorite food is daal bhat. 
 

Contributed by Jonathan McDonagh and Kim Johnson