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From Mount Everest to Pikes Peak

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Contributed by: Dave Hughes on 2/26/2008

Now how can a Pikes Peaker entertain a visiting Nepalese Sherpa who lives every day higher than our mole hill of a mountain? Our Peak is only 14,000 feet high. That is less than half the altitude of 29,000 foot Mount Everest on whose slopes he and his ancestors have lived for centuries!

Tsering Sherpa from Namche, Nepal into which one has to trek for at least 3 days from the closest tiny air strip, announced last week that he and his wife Lhakpa would be visiting the U.S. in April and May. And wondered if he could visit me in my Old Colorado City haunts during their trip. Sure, I said. Wonderful. Come ahead.

Tsering is the Sherpa who contacted mefour years ago asking by e-mail for my technical help as he undertook to open the world's highest Cybercafe at 18,000 feet, up where the Everest Climber's Base Camp would be during that 50th anniversary of the first ever successful climb of Everest by Edmund Hillary in 1953. So that the climbers and support parties and brave and conditioned reporters could "communicate" from the high base camp - where they never had been able to do before.

Well, I gave him the right advice to go along with the 18 yaks he had to use to carry the satellite system, big batteries and solar panels up there and place them where the wireless data radios (that I got Cisco to donate to him) could link them all up. All my advice by e-mail.

Then a year later he begged me to help him "way down" (only 15,000 feet!) in Namche, Nepal, into which I would have to trek for days to help him install a network of wi-fi radios linked to a satellite system at his trekker lodge.

Whew! It took me a couple months going up and down Barr Trail on Pikes Peak to get my 75-year-old Korean War legs in shape to hike up to his home. Which I did in November 2003. And lived to tell about it.

Now, Tsering, very successfully in partnership with "Yeti Airlines" provides Internet communications to the hundreds of trekkers and climbers that pass through and rest in Namche enroute to Everest itself. And, as he told me, he is going to be able to set up a new satellite-wireless-internet arrangement right at Base Camp again and again. Trotting around at 18,000 feet for Tsering and his Sherpa friends is nothing! Which is why ANY Everest climbing wanna-be westerners (or Asians for that matter) have to depend on legions of strong Sherpa's to carry their gear way up there. (It took 300 paid Sherpa porters to support the 20 man British climbing team that put Hillary on top in 1953)

So what will I do with him when he comes to Old Colorado City in May? At 80 years old I don't think I will be racing him up Barr Trail! And he may just shrug if I drive them to the top, or take them up the Cog railroad.

However, a lot of locals of the Pikes Peak region who followed in the press and online my adventure on the slopes of Everest in 2004, might be entertained by a presentation by Tsering in our History Center about "Life on Mount Everest"!
He handles English very well after years of talking with Americans, English, Germans, French as they stay at his lodge in Namche resting up and acclimating themselves for the push even higher.

And I can support him with a big screen projection of scenes from the Himalayas, Namche, Everest, and all the colorful characters who risk their necks climbing the highest mountains in the world. Heck, now that I have the History Center at Bancroft Park wirelessly connected to the Internet, I could even have Tsering access real-time at the podium, pictures of his place in Namche in Nepal. And/or chat real time via Skype Voice over IP with his employee back at their lodge in Namche (except I have to remember Nepal time is 11 hours different from Colorado time. 2PM Colorado time would be 1AM in Nepal! Not a normal time for Sherpa's to get up out of their warm bed and answer a computer phone from crazy Americans. )

And his wife can answer (translated undoubtedly) questions about raising and getting educated two children in a village higher than Pikes Peak!

So should I plan that?

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

Submitted By: Pete Van Vuren

posted on 3/3/2008 @ 8:08:08 AM

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Mr. Hughes, When will we see you and your Sherpa friends in a Cisco ad? It seems like a great plug for Cisco. I remember thinking of you back in 2007 as I was looking into alternatives for internet service for a AIDS orphange outside of Ndola, Zambia. We were discussing some options when someone said "we could just pay the extremely high cost to have very slow and very unreliable landlines put in, and wait the unknown number of years to have it done..", and I responded, "No, Dave Hughes would never do it that way." We ended up using some 802.11a backhaul units, and in true African style, they were used units that came from a now defunct wireless provider here in the Springs.

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Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 2/27/2008 @ 3:40:20 PM

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Gee, I am becoming Visa Central for young techs around the world!

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Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 2/27/2008 @ 3:39:08 PM

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February 14th, 2008 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN This is a reference letter on behalf of Eylem Culculoglu, Turkish Citizen for his application for a Temporary Visa for a visit to the United States. As a retired US Army Colonel who, as a technical telecommunications expert traveled to Istanbul, Turkey in the early 1990s to make academic presentations I got to know young Eylem who was starting a career in telecommunications. Knowing him periodically over the years, we have communicated frequently as he both kept me informed of his success in Turkey– including his becoming a reporter and editor in a technical journal –Aktul Magazine, his fulfilling his Turkish military obligations, and most recently his employment for Bilisim Magazine in Turkey. Eylem is a quite responsible young man, and I see no reason why he should not be granted a travel Visa to the US. David R Hughes Colonel (Ret), US Army 6 N 24th Street Colorado Springs, CO, 80904

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Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 2/27/2008 @ 9:35:43 AM

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Of course my wife's first question was 'What will they eat?. We don't have any Yak Steaks around.' Good question. I'm trying to remember what they ate while I was way up there in Namche.

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Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 2/27/2008 @ 9:24:08 AM

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Well its STILL a long way around to the other side of the world to 'communicate' effectively. Tsering asked me to get a letter to him to support his US Visa request. In order to have my real 'signature' on it I faxed it. Took 5 attempts after 10PM my time (hey thats my bedtime!) and three cell phone calls before it got into his hands. Arg!

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Submitted By: Tim Bergsten

posted on 2/26/2008 @ 1:46:57 PM

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Heck yes! Do it.

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

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Dave Hughes

Colorado Springs , CO

Dave Hughes has posted 77 stories and 87 comments since joining on 3/1/2007. Dave Hughes 's average story rating is 4.9.

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