Kalsang Tenzin Sharchop's high altitude illness

Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa’s high-altitude illness, described by his own account and by other climbers as sickness and vomiting, complicated the May 10, 1996 summit push. His condition did not simply stop his ascent: he said he waited while sick, then chose to go with the members and later remained near the summit waiting for Scott Fischer. In the expedition’s retrospective discussion, the illness became inseparable from questions about who was expected to fix ropes, who understood the plan, and who was responsible for allowing an unwell Sherpa to continue upward.

Illness on the Summit Route

During the recorded discussion, Lopsang said that other people had already begun fixing the ropes and explained that he was sick and vomiting. Asked whether this had prevented him from going earlier, he clarified that he had decided to go with the members. He also recalled being sick at the previous camp, waiting there, and then going toward the summit with the other members before waiting for Fischer.

The accounts locate the illness in the working conditions of the climb rather than in a separate medical episode. On the route, Neal Beidleman recalled finding Lopsang at a bench after moving ahead with Ang Dorje Sherpa; Lopsang was very sick and vomiting. Beidleman then took two ropes from him—a long white polypropylene rope and perhaps sixty meters of seven-millimeter Perlon—while the effort to establish the line continued. Lopsang’s sickness and his equipment were thus present in the same moment: he was unwell, but still carried rope intended for the route-fixing work.

A Disputed Assignment

The testimony does not establish a single, agreed plan for Lopsang’s role. When Sandy Hill Pittman asked whether there had been an earlier assignment for him to leave ahead of the group and fix ropes, Lopsang answered that he fixed ropes and carried them, as he did every year. His account presents rope work as part of his recurring responsibilities, but it does not confirm the specific early departure that the question proposed.

Beidleman likewise said it was not his understanding that he had been assigned to fix lines. He believed Fischer had asked him to remain in the middle of the group, help organize people, and continue up the mountain. He moved forward and began fixing lines on his own initiative after judging from his watch that the climbers were moving slowly against Rob Hall’s recommended cutoff times and that there was no organization at the front. His testimony supplies context for the route work Lopsang encountered, but it does not resolve what Lopsang himself had been instructed to do before the push.

The Route Work and the Illness

Beidleman described following Lopsang and Ang Dorje over an initial rise, then taking a safer line to the left and breaking through deep snow to a bench. There, he found Lopsang vomiting and took the ropes. Ang Dorje fixed one rope; Beidleman then used the long white polypropylene rope to fix another long pitch and dug out the remaining ropes toward the South Summit. He recalled reaching the South Summit at about 9:58 a.m., close to Hall’s roughly 10 a.m. cutoff for that point.

This sequence gives Lopsang’s illness a concrete place in the summit effort. The condition is not described through a medical diagnosis or a detailed treatment account; the evidence records the visible symptoms and their setting. It also shows how the work proceeded around him: others took over rope sections and continued upward, while the expedition’s schedule and the need to open the route remained pressing concerns.

Responsibility and Retrospective Questions

At the later discussion, Lene Gammelgaard said that before the summit bid, people had already been talking about Lopsang being extremely sick. She questioned the decision to send a vomiting Sherpa back onto the mountain, suggesting that altitude might have been the cause, and asked who was responsible for keeping him off the route. Her statement frames the illness not only as an individual physical condition but as a question of judgment and duty within a commercial expedition.

The account does not supply a definitive answer about who made the decision, establish a diagnosis, or report a formal medical assessment of Lopsang. Instead, it preserves differing recollections of the plan alongside a consistent central detail: Lopsang was sick and vomiting during the summit push, yet continued with the members and remained part of the rope-carrying and summit-day sequence. That unresolved contrast—between his evident illness and his continued participation—makes his condition a point of scrutiny in the expedition’s reconstruction of the climb.