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Continued from previous page
Trekking and climbing provide evocative metaphors
for transcending challenges and attaining goals. During
mid-day and evening seminars for the next 10 days,
we use a range of topics to reflect on our personal and
team leadership. From “Responsibility Under Extreme
Stress” and “Divergent Concepts of Leadership and
Teamwork” to “The Buddhist Path to Awakening” and
“Alternative Paths to the Top,” we ask ourselves a number
of questions:
- Can the mysterious hidden valleys of Tibetan lore, some
resembling the fictional Shangri-La of James Hilton’s novel,
Lost Horizon, offer fresh insights into the meaning of leadership
and teamwork?
- Sherpas traditionally elect people to serve as village heads
only if they do not aggressively seek the position. Anybody
who wants the job for personal benefit is viewed as unfit
to serve the community. How do non-Western ways of
approaching authority reveal different possibilities of leading
and working together as a team?
- In the first American expedition to Mt. Everest, one group
chose the unclimbed but riskier West Ridge, a second group
the previously climbed but more certain South Col route.
What motivated the teams to take such different approaches,
and, in turn, what distinctive forms of leadership and
teamwork did each require?
- What went right — and what went wrong — on the
fateful day of May 10, 1996, when three climbing expeditions,
all nearing the summit of Mt. Everest, were hit by a
violent storm?
- What does it mean to attain a summit? How can we
incorporate the experience into the rest of our lives? What
should be next?
TRAILSIDE CLASSROOM
Our day begins around 5 a.m. with Sherpas and Sherpanis
serving tea and coffee through the front flap of each of our
tents, followed by basins of hot water for washing. Break-fast
ranges from bacon and eggs to oatmeal and pancakes.
Other meals are equally lavish,
 if
sometimes heavy on rice and noodles. We also sample the
local staples: small boiled potatoes dipped in salt and
tsampa — roasted barley flour mixed with butter tea into a thick paste.
On the fifth day our leaders propose organizing us into
three groups dubbed “power walkers,” “photo freaks” and
“conversationalists.” The breakfast discussion, however,
reveals that almost everybody is opting for the third. Our
leaders revise the scheme, and soon a first group sets off
under the new name of “Save our Power” to signify a strat-
egy of moving fast but efficiently. They are followed by
“Contemplation with Stimulation,” whose charge is to talk
about what they see, and at the back is the “Funeral Pro-cession,”
whose ironic motto — “Arrive Alive” — questions
the others’ strategies for the day.
The power savers report at our lunch seminar that they
experienced a “religious” problem on the trail. Sacred mani
stones carved with prayers frequently appear trailside, and
Buddhist tradition requires that passers-by keep them to the
right. Occasionally the rugged terrain necessitates cir-cuitous
paths to abide by the custom. One of the power
savers refuses to take the long way around, asserting he was
doing so in the name of the group’s goal of saving energy.
His companions decide to penalize him for his cultural
infraction: he will have to cede each a chocolate bar.
As we wend our way higher, bamboo and pine give way
to rhododendron and juniper, followed by no forests at all.
We cross deep gorges on footbridges, some solid, others
rickety or swaying over seething torrents. Often we share
the narrow crossings with heavily laden yaks, and when
they are coming toward us, their sharp horns stretching
from handrail to handrail, they always win.
On our way to Dingboche, our highest campsite of the
trip, one trekker becomes nauseous and dizzy following the
sudden onset of a splitting headache — classic symptoms
of life-threatening altitude sickness. After several hours of
further ascent, we decide that immediate descent is essen-tial,
and he returns with a Sherpa to a trailside clinic
specializing in mountain sickness. We lament the loss of
a team member — the camaraderie already matches that
of a summer camp — but he fully recovers in the thicker
air at 12,369 feet and goes on to have experiences as rich
and rewarding as ours. The Sherpas draw him into their
culture and reveal an artifact from the Himalayas’ X-files:
the scalp of a yeti, the abominable snowman.
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