In may 2008, Patrick Z’Brun with a Swiss Expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. Z’Brun, a native of Valais, was funded previously as a mountain guide the study, then a private company built on and 15 years later sold, and then a mountaineering Sabbatical indulged in. This led him, among other things, on the highest mountain in the world, 8848 meters high Mount Everest.
Bernd Steinle
editor in the Department “Germany and the world”.
F. A. Z.
From the Expedition in 2008, a documentary for Swiss television came later, under the title: “Sherpas – The true heroes at the Everest”. The movie and the image band that appeared to showed the Events on Everest not as often from the point of view of Western summit aspirants, but from the perspective of the Sherpas, the Locals who work as guides, porters, cooks, or Route Builder for the expeditions on Everest. “So I was sensitized to this issue,” says Z’Brun.
a mountain climber mentality
The Situation of the Sherpas in Nepal, the Swiss, was amazing Parallels to the development, which began 200 years ago in the valleys of his homeland. “Our mountain people in the Valais Alps, it would not come back in the sense, to go voluntarily into the mountains – it was dangerous, it was tedious, and, above all, they had other things to Worry about than there in the area to wander.” Before the first Englishman came to the Valais. The mountain pioneers needed for their trips, and local men carrying equipment and Material, the meadows, you find the right path through Rock and ice. They needed a mountain guide. “That was for the development of our Alps valleys is a very important Element,” says Z’Brun. “The mountain guides were ambassadors of our Region.”
Just this Chance, to take the fate in their own hands, wanted to Z’Brun now also allow Sherpas – in part out of gratitude for the support and closeness that he had experienced on the Everest Expedition in 2008. That was the impetus for the founding of the Swiss-Sherpa Foundation, which should help to make Sherpas less dependent on foreign expedition agencies that hired them as needed for their organised groups.
Since 2009, the Foundation supports education programs in mountain regions, where outdoor activities contribute to the development of tourism and, thus, a basis of existence for the residents can create. The first step was the formal training of Sherpas as mountain guides advance. In 2012, Nepal was 25. A member of the International mountain guides Association incorporated. “A good 20 Nepalese mountain guides are now certified,” says Z’Brun.
