Very interesting book for me. I knew (know?) very little about mountaineering.
Most of the "forgetting" seems to happen when it comes to communicating about larger, less notable expeditions.
“The mountaineers were accompanied […] by 362 porters, so that the expedition in the end amounted to over four hundred men, including twenty Sherpa guides from Tibet and Nepal, with a total weight of ten thousand pounds of baggage”
I don’t know the details of that expedition, but typically, the sherpas make multiple trips up and down the mountain to bring the necessary material up to height, so that those paying can relatively comfortably acclimatize at height. Climbing Everest almost always is a team effort.
Even if you ignore those porters , those “twenty Sherpa guides from Tibet and Nepal”, IMO, deserve to be mentioned there more than Jan Morris, who didn’t make it further up the mountain than 22,000 feet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Morris).
(and aside: ten thousand pounds of baggage seems very low to me. That’s less than 30 pounds per porter ⇒ I guess that’s what made it to the highest camp)
If I remember correctly (it's a while since I read Hillary's account of the expedition), only three of the sherpa were able to go up to camp 4, and two of those them had to turn back due to altitude sickness. Tenzing Norgay did not have the technical knowledge to operate the oxygen systems. Also, crampons were far less advanced back then, so the mountaineers were also responsible for cutting steps every few days for all the routes that the porters were using to haul gear.
Basically you either join Gurkha and fight for British, go for mountaineering career, become a corrupt government official (which you can't just join due to nepotism) or try to leave if you have money for it.
This 'critique' goes both ways and kind of show its natural to humans - when both Tenzing and Hillary came back to India from Nepal (Nepal didn't have an international airport back then, and it took quite a bit of time to built one, all expeditions went through India's sea ports) - Hillary was almost completely ignored, and Tenzing was the only one to be celebrated.
I understand the motivations ie due to past shameful english colonialism, plus good old nationalism. But its like that everywhere. It doesn't make it any more acceptable these days obviously.
Kind of ironic to me that the less famous one is the only one with the photo! Ha!
I'd be very surprised if a man of Tenzing's calibre and achievements could not figure out something so trivial.
Edit: I've found some citations that support your point, I apologize.
Although, I'd add (a) Tenzing's account states that he offered to take a photo but was declined. And (b) a more fair description would be "because he had never used a camera before" rather than "didn't know how to work a camera".
The later suggesting a lack of intelligence or civility (though I'm sure that wasn't your intent), I'm probably just nitpicking :-).
This potentially could be a reason as well that he wasn’t brave enough to admit.
That theory doesn't make sense to me.
What is somewhat sadder is the fate of the porters on which almost every expedition and trek, except the purest of pure self-supported alpine expeditions, still relies. These are poor people who are typically from the lowlands, acting as sole breadwinners for their families, doing difficult, dangerous manual labor at high altitude without beneficial genetic adaptations or decent clothing. There are some good small charities trying to improve their conditions, for example https://www.canepal.org.uk/
Do these exist? From what I understand Sherpas are the ones building the routes every year... So even if you hike alone, pack all of your stuff into base camp alone (good luck! many trips), carry all your own ladders and ropes, and pack all of your stuff up to each subsequent camp alone... you're still hiking on routes that Sherpas built at the beginning of the season...
There are a good number of expeditions of a higher standard of mountain ethics which still happen and still many new routes to claim in the Himalayas. But these are far removed from the world of the stereotype of the type of person who wants to climb Everest who get all the media attention - look up Nick Cienski for a good example of virtue signalling, ego and narcism.
If you're interested, The Alpine Journal is an excellent resource for capturing all the lesser known alpinists doing amazing things with little to no media attention and a tiny budget. Among the low key mountaineers the is even a bit of a culture of not reporting first ascents, due to the bureaucratic nature of permits - allowed to climb one peak, but not one next door. Those in the know, who are looking for a more pure climbing experience, prefer India and Pakistan where permits are easier to obtain, there are virtually no climbers and hundreds of new routes to do in unspoilt valleys.
> Their names are just usually dropped when talking about it, which is a shame.
Reminds me of Amir Mehdi's story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Mehdi#K2_(1954)
Basically every expedition in Pakistan in the past struggled with this, and they even had an additional budget for this.
While on a cruise ship last July (well, 2019) I made friends with a Nepalese security screw and we talked about Nepal and their family occupations. It's very sad to hear of how disposably sherpas are treated on the vanity tours by unskilled foreign climbers. Basically the sherpas end up dragging along their clients and they face outsized risk on the way.
[0] https://medium.com/galleys/a-postscript-to-into-thin-air-e23...
Edit: found a source to balance, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB864852385619851000