Thamserku in my Eyes

Jeff Botz took this image of me with his 8 x 1o negative view camera in May of 2001, a few hours effort straight up out of the village of Tengboche where we slept the night before. You may have heard of Tenboche because Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were blessed in the village's monastery on their fateful approach to as Jeff puts it, "Everest not Everest" The people who live on the Nepal side of the tall(est) mountain in the world recognize it as Sagarmatha meaning The Stick Which Churns the Ocean of Existence. The day before we had walked from Namche Bazaar and through the last hard wood and evergeen forest that we would see traveling north. When we stepped up onto the little plain that Tengboche rests on I saw Sagarmatha's dignity rise into the sky.

While Botzie was setting up for this picture I was looking through the binoculars at the broad side of another mountain named Thamserku(6608m). I was not really posing for this picture, I was already up there when Jeff realized there was a picture to be made. As I looked through the binos Jeff shouted over the wind, "Looks good, hold still" and at that second I was realizing that Thamserku's top was layered across with 600-800 feet of snow, perhaps in some of the giant crags up to a thousand feet. Amazing.

The picture as I have presented it is a relatively small scan of the 8 x 10 negative then turned positive. So, the quality is only enough to get the point across. Imagine that Jeff made a print of this image for me that Christmas at 24 x 30 and it is perfectly clear to where you can even see my wind burned cheeks and read the writing on the prayer flags carrying their prayers up to Sagarmatha.