A New Westminster man helps people experience one of the most fabled places on Earth – and step into the lives of villagers in Nepal along the way.
Eoin White was working as a Burnaby firefighter back in 2005 when he visited Nepal and climbed to the Mount Everest base camp. The experience was “so incredible” that White wanted to share it with his friends, and that’s just what he’s been doing ever since.
“I discovered on my very first time there that I could deal directly with the Sherpa people that lived in the mountains,” he says. “They have all become my family now in the last 15 years. I am the pappa. I even have grandchildren now.”
White began creating the infrastructure and connecting with people in the mountains who could help with future treks, including porters, Sherpas, yak drivers and people in teahouses along the trek.
“Directly or indirectly, from all the porters I have, the yak drivers and the different families, my treks directly affect over 60 people,” he says.
Through word-of-mouth, Sherpa Encounters has helped nearly 400 people between the ages of 12 and 73 years to climb to the Mount Everest base camp. More than half of the people to attend the treks each year between October and December are returnees.
“It’s very unique there,” White says. “These people become attached to the Sherpas and the families they meet and the homes we stay at and visit, and the people we get to know. They start having a vested interest in their wellbeing.”
That connection to the Nepalese people was evident with the outpouring of support that came after the region was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2015. White raised more than $90,000 to help people rebuild their homes and lives.
“We built six complete homes,” he says. “We did extensive repairs to five more and we gave eight of our families $2,000 each, which would be like 10 years income for them, because they had to relocate. Their villages were gone.”
But the commitment of White and others goes beyond responding to disasters and extends to the day-to-day lives of people they encounter through their trips. They’ve donated money and goods such as medical supplies, host soccer tournaments, outfit teams with soccer jerseys, provide school uniforms to an entire school of 68 kids, buy a wood stove for a family they’d met, and more.
“We have established birthing clinics throughout remote regions of the Himalayans. I generally come up with a couple grand for that each year,” he says. “Last year I took over 200 kilos of infant wear. A lot of these young girls they come into these clinics and they don’t have anything. They have a baby and they’ve got nothing.”
Each person who goes on trek with Sherpa Encounters takes one piece of their own luggage and a duffel bag supplied by White that’s filled with items for the people in Nepal.
Longtime New Westminster resident Ivan Tuura contacted White to inquire about taking part in a trek. Within a week, he was flying to Katmandu and trekking to the Mount Everest base camp, which has an elevation of 17,600 and is about 10,000 feet shy of the top of Mount Everest.
“It was really neat,” he says. “It was a long trek. It was 10 days up and five days back. I think we got back in four days.”
A retired New Westminster firefighter, Tuura had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro about 10 years ago with some local firefighters, who told him he must climb to Mount Everest base camp someday.
“It was in the back of my mind to go one day,” he says.
In addition to enjoying a “fun adventure” by trekking to the base camp, Tuura was happy to see White’s charitable efforts in action. Once they made it back down the mountain, Tuura joined White on an excursion into a remote part of Nepal, where they delivered some soccer gear and watched a youth soccer tournament.
“They raised a bunch of money and brought big duffel bags of stuff,” he said. “He did a hell of a good job.”
During the climb, one person in the group developed pulmonary edema (excessive fluid in the lungs) en route to the base camp and had to be helicoptered out. Because of his background as a firefighter and equipment taken on the treks, White prides himself on being able to get most of his climbers to their destination.
“I get 97 per cent of the people to the top who go with me,” he says. “Yes, I have had some helicopter evacuations, but of the 380 people I have taken, I’ve only had to ship out half a dozen. One of the reasons I do that is I have my own portable hyperbaric chamber. I have five bottles of oxygen. I have two regulators and I have a plethora of applicable altitude medications and I know how to use them.”
White is proud of the impact that Sherpa Encounters has had on people at home in Canada and abroad in Nepal.
“It wasn’t like I had this great idea and this big plan. One thing just led to another,” he says. “The (Canadian) people are so enamored with my family and my associates there – they see how little they have and how little it takes to help them and they get a great deal of pleasure out of it. And they want to go back. They see the mountain. They want to come back with me and see how everyone is doing.”
