At 3 A.M., Lhakpa Gyalgen's alarm went off at Base Camp, but he dozed until 3:07, when Tenzing Chottar rattled his tent fly. “He had been reading holy books and prayers,” said Lhakpa Gyalgen, who is from Thame, in Nepal, and was a lama at Kathmandu's Kopan monastery before becoming a climber. Tenzing Chottar, 27, grew up in Ylajung, a mile up the Bhote Kosi River from Thame, and had a wife and a four-month-old boy. Lhakpa Gyalgen, 30, also had a young son, a two-year-old born blind. He and Tenzing Chottar lived near each other for most of the year in Kathmandu's Sambala neighborhood.
Lhakpa Gyalgen, who is five foot nine, with closely set eyes that have trouble focusing, had worked on Mount Everest for several years, but this was Tenzing Chottar's first expedition. Physically, he was just right—short, strong, and energetic—but in the Himalayas, there's no substitute for experience.
