Arbin was 15 years old when he climbed Everest in 1999.
He was one of the few Nepali non-Sherpas to climb the mountain and would have become the youngest then if his team had had enough oxygen. He was only 98 meters from the summit when he had to make a decision: to summit, set a record and risk the lives of team members, or return alive.
The story he rarely revisits now began when he was nine years old, the day Pasang Lhamu Sherpa became the first woman to summit Everest. Pasang, caught in bad weather conditions, died while descending. But her conquest inspired Arbin, born and raised in Pokhara, to look at the mountains in a new way. He wanted to conquer Everest. Nobody except his mother believed him.
Arbin didn’t know any climbers, or what one did to climb mountains. He began writing letters to everyone he could think of: mayors, ministers, prime ministers, and even the king. No one replied. He kept writing.
When he was eleven, his mother told him, “If this is what you want to do, I’m not going to stand in your way.” She put him on a bus to Kathmandu where his uncle picked him up and took him to Singha Durbar.
“My uncle pointed out the Prime Minister’s Office and said he’d wait for me outside,” says Arbin. Sher Bahadur Deuba was PM then. The personnel wouldn’t let him meet Deuba. Arbin kept returning every 30 minutes until a security guard took him aside and told him to wait outside the meeting room, to say everything he had to say to Deuba on the three flights of stairs to the PM’s office. The little boy did as told but Deuba’s security guard caught him.
“The speech I’d prepared flew out of my head and I blurted that I wanted to climb Everest, (so) please help me train. All Deuba said was ‘Dhaat!’” says Arbin. His uncle took him to eat momos and sent him home.
Meanwhile, word had spread around Pokhara, and a journalist came to interview him. The boy’s determination spread by words of mouth, and his school, Kumudini Homes, offered sponsorship for his training on condition that he kept up his grades. Arbin, who had already written letters to Nepal Mountaineering Association, also received additional help from them.
Arbin was in grade seven when his father passed away. He began training in earnest. He woke up at 4 am, and armed with a torchlight, carried a 25-kilo rucksack he’d filled with sand and wood shavings up and down the Sarangkot heights before heading to school.
“It took me more than an hour, one way, in the beginning. Later, I could go up in 30 minutes,” he says.
He climbed smaller mountains and trained with professional climbers. His final training on Paldor was with a small group for 45 days. “I felt really prepared then. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally confident,” he says.
But he still didn’t have enough money. When he returned from training, though, he found that Pokhara had decided to back him up all the way. School students chipped in with their lunch money, local businessmen wrote personal checks. His mother called a meeting with Pokhara’s mayor and community members, to form a committee to find sponsors and manage funds. King Birendra granted Arbin and his team a 15-minute audience at the Royal Palace.
“King Birendra was very relaxed and interested. He looked at my palms and said it was good,” says Arbin. He pulls out his laptop and plays a small clip of the interview.
“I had so many meetings in Kathmandu. Shambhu Tamang (the youngest Everest climber then) gave me his ice axe.”
Arbin had met Padma KC, who became a father figure, taking over Arbin’s equipment and expedition management. He accompanied the boy’s team to the Everest Base Camp. They’d stayed for nearly 10 days when Arbin had diarrhea and was taken to Pheriche’s health post. A few days later, he returned and they set up Camp I and Camp II. Camp III was a riskier place, and only when the 15-year-old returned after a night there without oxygen did the other climbers believe he could make it.
Padma had acquired walkie-talkies from American climbers and given one to Arbin. At 4 pm, Arbin and his team arrived at Camp IV. At 9 pm that night, they left, following an American team that had gone before them. A woman from another expedition had fallen into a crevasse and people were rescuing her. The line moved very slowly.
“The sun, it was absolutely beautiful. A big glowing ball in the sky. To one side was Nepal, and on the other, Tibet,” says Arbin.
They were climbing slowly, holding the safety rope as they moved. The oxygen mask, adult-size, sat too big on Arbin’s face. He couldn’t see clearly while walking on cliffs; so for safety reasons, he took the mask off.
“It was left foot, after right foot. I was tired and excited. I took the names of people I knew, each step for someone. A guy was yelling at me. My crampons had fallen. I bent to put it back on. You don’t think much then. At such moments, having not eaten for days and exhausted, such extreme moments are when life is important.”
Arbin was at the base of the Hillary Step, just 98 meters from the Everest summit, when his team’s head Sherpa told him that they were running out of oxygen. Arbin had to decide: whether he wanted to reach the summit and not have enough oxygen for descent, or return 98m from their destination. He tried to make radio contact with Base Camp but failed. He could be the youngest climber, and die in the bargain; or he could return alive with his teammates.
“I had three other lives to think about and their families. There was no question: We turned back.”
When they reached Camp IV, Arbin was struck with snow-blindness. He couldn’t see, and his eyes kept tearing.
“I divided up my rucksack and dumped my oxygen cylinder at Camp IV. Everything was blurry, we had no medicines,” he says. Another expedition team gave him painkillers, and on his own, Arbin rushed to Camp II from where he where he received help before descending to Base Camp
“It was like having pepper thrown constantly into your eyes. I was lucky it wasn’t permanent,” he says.
The whole of Pokhara came to receive him at the airport as they had when he’d flown off to Lukla.
“It was incredibly overwhelming and humbling to see so much local support and encouragement,” he says now, “I’m glad we were able to make it back. I don’t regret returning from the Hillary Step. I don’t look at it as a failure, rather as a wise choice made.”
Ten days after his return, Arbin had Ninth Grade final exams to take. There were rallies and ceremonies to attend and sleep to catch up on.
“I’d kept good notes, so I was prepared for the exams. But there were things I had to decide. I’d climbed Everest and lived my dream. I had to ask myself if I wanted to be a professional mountaineer, and I didn’t. I really wanted to do something in the sciences,” says Arbin.
After Grade Ten, he joined I Sc at Kathmandu University. “Science fascinated me. I had Newton’s and Einstein’s posters in my bedroom ever since I was in school. In Kathmandu, my uncle bought me science equipments,” says Arbin. When he wasn’t dreaming about Everest, Arbin pulled out his “lab” from under his bed: broken radios, lenses, speakers, wires and motors. He built telescopes and model planes.
In 2003, he enrolled at the University of Idaho for a semester, transferred to Boston where his sister lived, and studied psychology and sociology “for fun.” He worked at a grocery store and was robbed at gunpoint.
“It was a group of young boys, and I thought they were joking. I was shaken but I was robbed again a few times after that. It became pretty common. I’ve talked to people who’ve been robbed 27 times,” he says.
Finally, he decided to get serious about Science. He transferred to Mankato, and under the guidance of his advisor completed the restoration of a 400kv Van de Graaff accelerator using both the original system and spare parts. Now he’s at Iowa State, working with scientists at the Ames and Brookhaven National Lab.
“Our goal as a group is to understand the spin structure of proton through polarized proton collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC),” he says.
Arbin’s Everest dreams have long been laid to rest. But twice a year, he still makes it a point to go to Colorado and hike the Rockies with his friends.
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