SHERPA SLEEPOVER.(The Talk of the Town; staircase of Rubin Museum site of camp recreating summiting of Mount Everest for children)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 26-JUN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

"The weird thing," one of the guides was saying, "is that this feels and sounds exactly like base camp at Everest." She gestured around at the surprisingly noisy scene: the guides stowing their gear in the newly assembled mountain tents, the Himalayan wind whistling painfully through the air, the climbers chowing down on a kind of Nepalese protein gloop ("Looks like yak dung but tastes O.K.," one said), while the Sherpas, off in a corner, quietly tested equipment and pulled at harnesses. The Sherpas, four in all, included Kaji Sherpa, who once climbed Everest in a then-record twenty hours and twenty-four minutes. (The usual Sandy Pittman-style guided ascent takes about five days.)

This ascent, however, was supposed to last only around twelve hours, with four hours off...

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