Two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker shares a name with a 19th century alpinist, the first woman to summit the Matterhorn, in 1871, and the Eiger, in 1864 (feats she accomplished in a full-length dress — traditional women’s attire in the Victorian era).
In her new documentary, Walker tells the story of a present-day climber, Lhakpa Sherpa, a native of Nepal who has written her name into the mountaineering record books: Lhakpa has summited Mt. Everest an astounding 10 times, more than any other woman.
On the heels (or crampons) of a theatrical run that qualifies it for Oscar consideration, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa debuts on Netflix today.
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“Anyone who sees the movie can imagine how much I wanted to do justice to Lhakpa’s story and her whole family,” Walker explained at a recent Q&A at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles. “I felt like if ever someone deserved having the best documentary made about them, it’s Lhakpa.”
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What’s remarkable about Lhakpa is not only what she has accomplished as a climber, but the obstacles she overcame to fulfill her dream of ascending the world’s tallest mountain. In the patriarchal culture of Nepal, girls like her were denied an education; instead of getting her own chance to study, Lhakpa strapped her younger brother to her back and toted him off to class.
“Two hours to school there and back every single day,” Walker tells Deadline. “She says that she’s a ‘very good yellow school bus,’ but she didn’t get an education. To this day she’s illiterate and it’s held her back so much.”
Lhakpa’s grandmother attempted to discourage her ambition of climbing Everest by telling Lhakpa that Yetis lurked on the mountain, eager to snatch her if she stepped foot on the slopes. That did not deter Lhakpa, nor did her gender when boys in her village first got the opportunity to work as porters on mountain climbs. She demonstrated her might to prove she could handle the task.
“She picked up a rock. She said, ‘My cousin, this boy, cannot throw this rock. I can throw this rock, look!’” Walker says. “So she cut her hair off… and she got a job by pretending to be a boy, this incredibly physically demanding job as a porter carrying a hundred pounds up mountains for days on end. And then she got promoted to kitchen boy where you have to run extra fast — you set up the kitchen tent and cook dinner by the time the Western tourists get up there, and she was being promoted up the ranks. But that was the beginning of her having to work so extra hard for what she wanted.”
Through circ*mstances explained in the film, Lhakpa was able to convince the prime minister of Nepal to allow her to attempt a climb of Mt. Everest. On May 18, 2000, she became the first Nepali woman to reach the summit of Everest and return safely (in 1993, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa summited Everest but died during the descent). She may have grown up without wealth, education, or opportunity, but she has never lacked determination.
“I’m a wild girl, nature girl,” she says in Mountain Queen. “I want what my heart want.”
Lhakpa found love twice, but not the fairytale kind. She had a son by a Nepali man, but he cheated on her. Later, she met George Dijmărescu on Everest, a man of tremendous physical strength who had settled in the U.S. after escaping communist Romania. They made a life together in Connecticut, raising their two daughters – Sunny and Shiny. Lhakpa worked cleaning houses, and during climbing season she and George would return to Everest to summit the mountain. George could climb it without supplemental oxygen, despite smoking and drinking during ascents.
But the relationship with Dijmărescu would almost cost Lhakpa her life. As seen in the film, drinking brings out a mean and violent streak in him and at one point he punches her, a moment recorded on video. “[He] becomes very violent and even knocks her out, on camera, at basecamp,” Walker recounts, “and she has a near death experience.”
“She goes through this incredible suffering and yet she manages to keep climbing,” Walker continues. “She says, ‘Everest fixes my soul. Everest is my doctor.’ …She’s very much tuned into the natural world, and it very much is her church, and climbing is an expiation for her. It’s how she sort of works with all the difficulties she’s been through and transcends them.”
Lhakpa would go on to raise Sunny and Shiny as a single mother. Grown into young women, Sunny and Shiny become an important part of Mountain Queen as their mother embarks on another attempted climb of Mt. Everest in 2022. Shiny joins her mom for part of the ascent, ascending as far as basecamp.
“It was scary at first, but I think being by my mom’s side and with my family around me gave me the confidence to keep going,” Shiny said at the Academy screening Q&A. “I was just really grateful to have experienced it.”
Sunny stayed home in Connecticut during that climb, appearing to suffer from depression. It was Lhakpa’s goal for the Everest climb to bring mother and daughters closer together, and their joint appearance at several Q&As, including the Academy’s, indicates the degree of healing they have experienced.
Describing the impact of the documentary on her, Sunny said, “It’s made me more mature, and I understood my mom’s story, where she’s coming from.”
Walker has directed more than two dozen films, series, and shorts, including Blindsight, a 2006 documentary also shot on Mt. Everest. She earned Academy Award nominations for her feature documentary Waste Land and the doc short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa is expected to be another Oscar contender.
“The movie’s uplifting. And despite some of the really heavy subject matter, it’s not at all, I don’t think, depressing. On the contrary, I think it couldn’t be more uplifting,” Walker says, describing Lhakpa as “hilarious and charming…. And the world is going to see that July 31st — 190 countries, including very strikingly, it’s going to be the first ever thing that Netflix has put Nepali subtitles on. And that’s going to be really impactful. I think it’s going to really shift the culture in that region because it is a very patriarchal society, still, in which it is hard for people to believe what women and girls are capable of.
“I think that her story being available, it’s going to be of tremendous importance in the world and I’m really excited for that.”
