Pemba Sherpa, Team Member | EVEREST:Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition 2004

EVEREST: Friendship Beyond Borders Expedition

First Attempt, One Artificial Leg, Trained Enroute, Summit Success

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Home sweet home for Pemba and his kitchen crew. Part of their difficult job was
to trek to Everest ahead of the team and establish the base camp in March. After
preparing three meals a day for months, they then had to leave base camp later than
the rest of the team in order to disassemble and load up the base camp for
transport via yaks and helicopters back to Kathmandu. Thank you Pemba and crew!

All smiles, Pemba Sherpa receives a blessing by team members at the base camp puja ceremony at the start of our expedition. Pemba and his wonderful cook team provided hot, delicious meals to our team and the doctors of the Himalayan Rescue Association every day.

Expedition Team Member

Pemba Sherpa, Base Camp Cook

A native of the Solukhumbu region, Pemba Sherpa (35 yrs) has served as Base Camp Cook for expeditions for almost ten years. He has become a master at overcoming the challenges of "extreme cooking" -- extreme altitudes, extremely harsh conditions, extreme food source logistics, and extremely hungry climbers.

In 1998, Pemba served as Base Camp Cook on our Annapurna South Face Expedition. Always a quiet and competent presence, Pemba had a talent for making every meal tasty and nutritious. He could produce mountains of rice and lentils every day with ease. And everyone looked forward to his appetizers of prawn chips, popcorn, and delicious peppery papadam bread.

Pemba and his team stayed at base camp longer than any of the rest of our expedition members. He trekked in with his assistants during the cold, wintry weeks before we arrived. They set up the physical layout of the camp in a favorable and safe place on the glacier, then got it stocked with all the food and equipment needed to feed a team of hungry climbers. They also were in charge of guarding our camp, and so they stayed physically at camp for a very long time.

Pemba also served as Expedition Cook for our 1998 Annapurna Expedition.
Unlike Everest, from the Annapurna South Face base camp we had a view of green grass.