Le tigri delle nevi

Year: 2004 Pages: 336 The title of "Snow Tigers" had been assigned since the 1930s by the Himalayan Club, the prestigious British mountaineering club based in India, to Sherpas who distinguished themselves in the ascents of the great mountains. Currently the Sherpas who can boast this are considered to all intents and purposes the guides of the Himalayas, but it has not always been so: until relatively recent years even the best of them were considered simple porters and were treated with paternalistic sufficiency at best or , at worst, with arrogance. This book, through the reconstruction of the German expedition to Nanga Parbat in 1934 - during which a team of Sherpas was abandoned at high altitude in the middle of a violent storm - tells of the awareness on the part of those men of their own abilities, which it led to the recognition of their professional dignity and the evolution of their relationships with foreign mountaineers.