You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Fighting on the mountain.
It’s damn near impossible to climb Mt. Everest when conditions are good.
People fall off this frozen chunk of Earth all the time. It’s easy to die here, like tap dancing in an Iraqi mine field. People not only break bones and crack skulls, people freeze to death in this swirling vortex of cold.
Mt Everest is the bear traps of mountains. It’s a wolverine of rock and ice and fatigue.
Now imagine climbing 22,000 feet into the stratosphere only to get into a gang fight.
In a high altitude version of West Side Story, a bunch of European climbers were mountain jacked by a bunch of angry Himalayan Sherpas.
Yeah, I said it. SHERPAS.
Sherpas are like shepherds with bad breath and lots of body hair. Sherpas are indigenous mountain people who for decades have lead legions of land lubbers up the side of this icy rock.
Thousands have died. Many more have survived to tell a tale that few can tell.
I always thought of Sherpas as a kind, benevolent people. They remind me of those little warrior bears in Star Wars 3.
But now comes word of a high altitude knife fight and mountain mugging.
Sources say 100 Sherpas go ballistic, bristling like mountain goats shot with bb’s full of vinegar. Sources say the salty, angry, recalitrant mountain men started laying some whoop ass on 3 climbers who dared to disrespect a Sherpa rope bridge.
Rule 1 of Sherpa etiquette – don’t disrespect the rope.
Now to be fair to the Sherpas, Nobody has interviewed them. We don’t know what the hell happened, or why 100 of them went crazy like an elephant with a spicy burrito shoved up it’s rump.
But everyone agrees the brawl began some 4.5 miles up.
That’s like fighting inside of a 747 with no windows and a bad safety record.
According to the Europeans involved in this mountain maiming, it was all a misunderstanding.
I think the Europeans misunderstood how much a rope bridge means to a Sherpa.
Sherpas are normally a serene people. They are one with the mountain at peace with themselves and nature.
Confuscious say: Sherpas fighting on the mountain is like hamsters fighting inside a wheel full of graham crackers.
Why bother? It just doesn’t happen.
But this did happen. One report has a Sherpa using a pocket knife to attack a climber. Luckily for the climber, the Sherpa only sliced the climbers back pack.
Nobody was hurt.
That’s good. This mountain is hard enough on a good day.
Now it’s the scene of a 23,000 foot crime scene.
What happened? Getting the full story will be as difficult as getting a mountain goat to cook chili.
I know this much. If a Sherpa says stay away from my rope bridge, I’m staying away from his rope bridge.
Life’s Crazy.™