Dawa Sherpa remembers exactly where he was when a massive earthquake hit his home country of Nepal on April 25, 2015: He was climbing Mount Rainier in Washington state. 

But his wife, Bindu Tamanz, and their two children were still at home in Nepal.

“She Skype me and said an earthquake hit,” Sherpa, now a Clark-area resident, recalled during an interview with the Tribune last month.

Since he and his family had been through five or six earthquakes in Nepal, “I said not a big deal. I did not realize the magnitude of it.”

As details of the earthquake began to emerge, he soon learned it was a devastating 7.8 on the Richter scale. The death toll eventually climbed to 9,000 people, with another 22,000 injured. 

Thankfully, Sherpa’s family survived — but their home did not.

“Our house was broken,” he said. “They couldn’t live in the house.”

That’s when fate seemed to intervene on their behalf. For two years, Sherpa had been trying to get green cards for his family to come to the United States, to no avail. 

But soon after the earthquake, their visas finally came through. 

Sherpa returned to Nepal that June to rescue his family.

“When I got home, my wife was just bone and skin. She was so skinny,” he said.

Though stressed from their ordeal, the children — their 18-year-old son, Gelu Ringi Sherpa, and their 8-year-old daughter, Nima Karma Sherpa — seemed to be OK. 

They all boarded an airliner for the 24-hour flight, followed by a taxi ride to their new home in Prescott, Arizona, where Sherpa had secured a job as a framer in a friend’s construction company. They arrived on July 24, 2015.

Two days later, Gelu, who had cerebral palsy, was sitting in a chair and eating a smoothie for breakfast. 

“He looked at his mom and smiled, and ... he died. He just smiled, and he was gone.”

Sherpa said he believes his son’s death was caused by the physical and emotional stress that followed the earthquake, coupled with the long, exhausting trip to his new home.

“The cavity is going to stay there forever,” Sherpa said, laying his fist on his chest over his heart.

Born to climb

That wasn’t the first time Sherpa faced a difficult situation with determination to go forward, simply because going back wasn’t an option.  

Back in Nepal, Sherpa grew up at the foot of the Himalayas, and he began serving as a porter — a Sherpa then by name and by trade — when he was a teenager in 1987-88.

Soon, he moved up to kitchen boy, to assistant cook and to cook, then he became the head of the Sherpa on expeditions.

Though he became accustomed to the work and the danger, “every expedition was scary,” he said. “In Nepal the system is, every time you join an expedition team, you have insurance. You sign on the dotted line saying the insurance will go to your wife or parents or your family. Every time I sign the paper, I get goosebumps.”

Sherpa later began working for the Khumbu Climbing Center and he became manager of Camp 2 on Mount Everest, at an altitude of 21,000 feet.

As Camp 2 manager, he cooked meals for clients and Nepali climbers, kept an inventory of oxygen bottles and kept track of other supplies.

He was required to remain at the camp for the duration of each expedition — and that could take up to 45 days.

He watched climber after climber ascend to the top of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot summit, all while he was stuck at 21,000 feet.

“I wanted to climb Everest real bad, but since I speak better English than others, they wanted me to be in Camp 2, in case of static, if they need me to relay a message.”

His chance to reach the summit came in 2001, when mountain climber Peter Hillary asked Sherpa if he would guide him and his party to the top of Everest.

Sherpa jumped at the chance. Then, after climbing to the summit with Hillary’s party, he decided to never risk that climb again.

“I have been very, very lucky. I think I worked about 25 years on high altitude, and I lost lots of good friends. But luckily, I’ve been OK,” he said. “Because of the danger ... we say, ‘Before you go to the mountain, clear all your debts, because you don’t know if you’ll be back.’”

Nepalese people make good mountaineers because they live at such high altitudes that their bodies are acclimatized to the thin air, Sherpa said. But they are not compensated adequately for the risks they take.

Sherpa people may get $5,000 to $10,000 for one expedition while many people in other parts of Nepal earn $3-$4 per day — but that’s just part of the picture, Sherpa said. Few crops will grow at that altitude, so virtually all food and supplies must be shipped in.

“What they’re missing is, in our village in Khumbu, rice will cost 10 times more. They fly it in on a plane, then load it onto a mule or a yak or carry by a porter,” he said.

Well-known foreign guides are paid between $25,000 and $100,000 for a single expedition, he said.

Family

Sherpa said 90 percent of Sherpa people’s first job is guiding mountaineers.

But that’s not what parents want for their children.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “If you ask any Sherpa, none of us want our children to be a mountaineer.”

“In our culture, it’s our job to take care of our wife and family and bring food into the house,” he said.

For mountaineer guides, that means husbands are away from their families for long stretches of time. Too often, they don’t come back.

Sherpa met his wife, Bindu Tamanz, 19 years ago through his uncle. In their culture, people from the same clan are not allowed to marry.

“Mine is an arranged marriage,” Sherpa said. “My long-lost uncle, he found her to be my wife. ... He said, ‘In this village are some beautiful girls. You want me to talk with someone?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’”

Two days later, he and Tamanz were married. 

Sherpa came to the United States for the first time in 1998, ending up in Red Lodge, Montana, for a few months.

He was a guest of the late Rob Hart, whom he met while guiding mountaineers.

Since then, Sherpa has visited some part of the United States every year. He went back to Red Lodge a few times, and those visits often include stays in Clark. There he was the guest of Hart’s brother, Douglas Hart, and his wife, Harriet “Rox” Corbett, at their CrowHart Ranch.

Sherpa, Tamanz and their daughter moved to Clark to live on the ranch last June, where Sherpa works as manager and caretaker. He irrigates and does maintenance during the summer, patrols for poachers during hunting season, and clears snow in the winter.

The family plans to apply for citizenship in a few years. They live in a cozy house, where the savory smells of traditional Nepalese food welcome and draw in their guests.

Sherpa and Tamanz enjoy cooking together, and eventually, they hope to own a small restaurant — maybe four five tables, Sherpa said.

He said the adjustment has been more difficult for his wife, with language and isolation posing barriers for her.

“When something is hard for my wife, it takes a toll on me, too,” he said.

Nima, now known as Angelika or Angelie, is attending Clark Elementary School and adjusting well, he said.

Angelie’s education was the biggest reason for the family’s move to the United States, he said.

Students in Nepal must carry many heavy textbooks and do pages and pages of homework each night, Sherpa said.

“When parents see more books, they say better school. (When they) see children pushing a pen or pencil day and night, they think they’re learning — but really, they are not learning. It is ruining their brain.”

Harriet Corbett said Angelika is “a gorgeous child who is quite shy, but she’s coming out of that.”

The language barrier has made it more difficult to get to know Tamanz, but Corbett said she hopes to get better acquainted over time. Tamanz had a beautician’s license in Nepal, she said.

Corbett described Sherpa as “an extraordinary guy.”

“He’s entirely self-taught in language skills. He’d learn 15 new words every day, and by the end of the day, he was using them in context. He’s got a better vocabulary than most Americans.

“He’s just an engaging person, and everybody feels that when they meet him. He’s got fans wherever he goes.”

She said she went to Linton’s Big R in Powell the other day when the young woman behind the counter said, “You must be Harriet. We’ve never met you, but we LOVE Dawa!”

Clark is fortunate to have Sherpa and his family in the community, she said. “I feel extraordinarily fortunate to know him.”