The Women

Compared to most foreign expeditions, the Nepalese women's team is young, inexperienced and financially disadvantaged. A normal Everest expedition team would have had the experience of climbing at least one other peak at an altitude of 6,000 meters or more. The 1996 Indian women's Everest expedition, for example, trained rigorously and climbed the 7,822 meter Nanda Devi peak prior to their Everest attempt.

However, what the Nepalese women's team lacks in experience, it makes up for in courage, drive and determination. There is also a strong fatalistic element that surrounds this climb. The women believe that they will succeed and that God will see them through. The limitations of their climbing abilities or experience seem secondary.

Dolma Sherpa

Then there is 22-year-old Dolma Sherpa. She has been trained by the Nepal Mountaineering Association and also climbed in Manang and to the Annapurna Base Camp. Dolma has lived most of her life in Kathmandu City and lacks the sturdiness of the other mountain-raised expedition members.

She ran away from her village in Khumbu to go to school in Kathmandu where she recently finished her Intermediate Certificate for Commerce (equivalent to Grade 12). Dolma is also the only literate woman in the team. She hopes to keep a journal of the expedition and later publish a book.

Dolma had gone to visit a Buddhist Lama to find out what the expedition would hold in store for her.

"He said the climb does not look promising and that I should not push my luck. The Lama thinks I should only go as far as I can and not to take any unnecessary risks," she says.

As a Buddhist, Dolma respects the Lama's advice but she is not completely willing to accept it as prophesying the actual climb.

"All of us have put in so much effort and we all feel that we have what it takes to reach the summit, so it is hard for me to accept the Lama's words," she says.

Dolma and Lakpa have trained together in Manang while Mingma and Dawa were in Austria at the same time, however, the four of them have never climbed together. They will be going on an intensive ice and rock climbing trip to Langtang, north of Kathmandu, a month before they set off for Everest Base Camp.

Lakpa, the expedition leader says there has been so much support from all sides that she feels God will definitely see to it that they succeed.

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