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She started working as a porter from the age of 15 carrying the standard 30 kilo loads for treks and expeditions. The tallest of a family of 11 brothers and sisters and born at an altitude of 4,400 meters, Lakpa's mother always told her she would one day make her family proud. Lakpa is determined to fulfil her mother's prophecy.

A cook on several expeditions, Deputy Leader and a mother of two, Mingma Yangzi Sherpa is 1 from Khumjung, in the Khumbu region. She wanted to climb Everest with her husband, an expedition leader who encouraged her to train and promised to see to it that she reached the summit.

"He told me that I'd be famous and that we would both benefit. I was happy that my husband wanted so much for me," says the 32-year-old Mingma Yangzi.

The stage was set. The couple would attempt the mountain as a team. While they trained together, Mingma's husband realized she was much stronger than he was. He changed his mind. He wanted her to accompany him as a porter, carrying the oxygen cylinders he would require for his ascent.

"I was shattered. This man who had told me that he'd make sure that I got to the top now wanted me to go as his porter. It killed my desire to climb," says Mingma.

The couple divorced and Mingma forgot her mountaineering ambitions while she concentrated on raising two children and running a small lodge in Tengboche from where she has a clear view of the peak. But when foreign guests would repeatedly ask her about climbing in the Himalayas, she realized that there was only so much second-hand information she could pass along.

"There is a vast difference in experiencing something and simply hearing about it," she says.

In 1995 Mingma's desire to climb was rekindled when an American friend invited her to join an expedition. That same year she started training again.

When the women's expedition 2000 was announced, Mingma was a strong candidate because she had proved her climbing skills while training in the Austrian Alps.

Another young Sherpa woman proved her climbing abilities in the Austrian Alps. Dawa Yangzi, 20, the youngest member of the expedition says she would rather face Everest than Kathmandu's taxi drivers. Dawa's parents had warned her to be ware of city men who lure unsuspecting village girls to sell to brothels in India. A Khumjung native, Dawa also started working as a porter at a young age.

In 1993 when she was on an Indian women's expedition, an 18-year-old had reached the Everest summit.

"I thought how come we Nepalese haven't done it, we can do this too. Since then I have wanted to climb Everest very much. I was very upset when I returned from that trip, I was only a coolie, a porter carrying other people's loads and didn't have enough money to try to reach the Everest summit," she says.

When a cousin brother told her of the women's expedition, Dawa knew she had to be a part of it.

Finally, 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.

Everest or Chomolongma has given the Sherpa community so much in terms of wealth, prosperity and fame as the intrepid climbers of the Himalayas. But it has also taken many lives. More recently, Chomolongma or Mother Goddess of the Earth has become notorious as the "Death Zone".

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