Behind the counter at a Whole Foods in Connecticut, a Nepalese woman walks unnoticed. A single mother named Lhakpa Sherpa takes public transportation to work, no one around her would suspect that she has summited Mount Everest in her home country multiple times. This incredible feat of physical and mental discipline is all the more remarkable given that she was raised illiterate in a patriarchal environment. Now, her story of perseverance—not just as a climber but as an immigrant and a survivor—is the subject of Lucy Walker’s moving and emotional documentary, “Queen of the Mountains: The Peaks of Lhakpa Sherpa.”
At the beginning, Walker offers fragments of an interview in which the lively Sherpa, speaking in hard-won English, is dressed in colorful traditional clothing that contrasts with how we will see her later: in mountaineering gear. She shares her belief in a spiritual connection to Everest—for her, a female deity who serves as the North Star—and recalls her childhood in the mountains among the Sherpa ethnic group in Nepal, who all share the same last name and whose first name reflects the day of the week they were born.
Against the backdrop of recent footage of the Sherpas’ home region and decades-old footage of a programme about the heroine’s first summit, she recalls her own lack of opportunities as a result of gender discrimination (she dropped her brother off at school each morning but was not allowed to attend). Her determination eventually convinced the government to fund a women’s expedition to climb Mount Everest, led by a Sherpa. Walker uses multiple cinematographers to capture the documentary’s distinct and geographically disconnected stories. One focuses on Sunny, the Sherpa’s eldest daughter, as she struggles with entrenched trauma. The images shot in the inhospitable climate of high altitude during the climb are certainly the most compelling. These moments of real, not simulated, danger make the viewer immediately aware of the dangers the person behind the camera is escaping.
But on those snow-covered slopes or in a tent swaying in the wind, Sherpa feels in control of her destiny. Everest helps her reset when turmoil unfolds in her personal life. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Sherpa explains that after becoming pregnant with her son out of wedlock, she was unable to return to her parents’ home because her condition brought shame upon them. It was only after she had climbed Everest for the first time and gained fame throughout Nepal that her father acknowledged her, saying she was now equal to her son in status. While this gesture was a validating gesture for Sherpa, it also reflects the alarmingly unequal status that Nepali women endure at home and in the workforce.
Working with several editors, Walker has deftly integrated Sherpa’s distinctive aspects beyond simplistic triumphalism. While Sherpa is in her element on the climbs, she has a strong demeanor but moves with emotional fragility elsewhere, especially after her marriage and move to the United States with George Dijmarescu, a seasoned climber from Romania. Most of the most striking footage comes from Sherpa’s most recent ascent, her record-breaking 10th. The significance of this goes beyond external recognition, because Sherpa needs to regain her composure after years of abuse from Dijmarescu, not only in her homeland but on the mountain, as documented in the 2009 book “Great Crimes,” which detailed a turbulent expedition.
The contrast between the woman introduced at the beginning of this autobiographical piece, who has cut her hair to look like a man and works as a guide on Mount Everest, and the immigrant woman trapped in a country that is not her own with a violent, alcoholic husband, makes “Mountain Queen” a more interesting and exciting tribute to its heroine.
But Walker’s most unexpected insights into her complex and potentially contradictory subject come through the inclusion of one of Dijmarescu’s friends, who agrees to talk to Sherpa’s youngest daughter, Sheni, about a side of her father she had rarely considered. The narrative never apologizes for the monster (or yeti, as Sherpa refers to him) he has become, but it refrains from offering a simplistic moral about troubled individuals. Dijmarescu’s humanity and personal wounds are acknowledged, both for the sake of his children and, on a narrative level, as a way of addressing how one’s own grief never justifies inflicting pain on others.
Sherpa could have been considered an inspiration only for the literal and figurative heights she reached, despite the many constraints on her mountainous path. But her courage in exposing one of the most difficult periods of her life, where she was temporarily stripped of her courageous courage, deserves double admiration. In Walker’s hands, it becomes clear that Sherpa’s genuine humility and positive outlook arose from facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, to which her will was subdued by unwavering determination.
