The story of how a very special photo of the Dalai Lama came into my life and left in the most extraordinary way.

December 08, 2019 by David Liaño

I clearly remember standing in front of one of those circular racks that typically hold postcards. Instead of holding photos of idyllic beaches or stunning monuments, this unique rack was full of postcard-sized photographs of the Dalai Lama. One of the photographs stood out because it was the only black and white portrait of His Holiness. His face had the same peaceful and untroubled expression that's known around the world. I picked up the photo, held it in my hands for a moment and decided to get it. I could have never imagined the extraordinary journey I was about to begin with that photograph. Our travels would take us around the world several times and up to the summits of magnificent peaks all over the planet.

I got the photograph around September of 2004 and I'd been studying of Buddhism for four years at Tibet House in Mexico City. I heard that the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, would be visiting our country. It was an incredible opportunity to attend 3 days of teachings and learn from an extraordinary spiritual teacher. But I had just returned from an expedition in Tibet where I had summited Cho-Oyu, the 6th highest mountain in the world. I got to see the land that the Dalai Lama was forced to abandon in 1959 after the Chinese occupation. Attending these teachings was an even more meaningful experience. On the last day the Dalai Lama spoke, I decided that I would bring the photo with me on my next climbs.

The portrait of the Dalai Lama was not the only photo I carried. Around the same time, I bought a disposable camera and I took a photograph of my family at the time. (father, mother, brother and two dogs. The family has grown now!). I wanted to have an image of them that I could bring during my expeditions to show my gratitude for their support.

I kept that photograph and the picture of the Dalai Lama together and I made a little protective pouch out of a cardboard box. I cut out two rectangles slightly bigger than the 4x6 photographs and taped them together with duct tape. The photos would be "sandwiched" inside the pouch and I would put that inside a Ziploc bag. With that simple protection from bending and moisture, I took my photographs on their first expedition to climb the highest peak in Antarctica on January 2005.

Two months later, I travelled to Nepal for my first expedition to Mount Everest and the photos came with me. In Kathmandu I got a flag of Tibet to keep them company. The photos were with me every step of the way, inside my backpack. It was a very tough season, but I was able to reach the summit of the highest point on Earth! Up there Cheewang Nima Sherpa took photos of me holding the photograph of the Dalai Lama and another one holding the Tibetan flag. Before I started my descent, I called my family on the satellite phone and I picked up a few rocks from the summit.

Back in Mexico, I got in touch with the office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. I sent a package with my photographs at the summit as well as a summit rock. I included a letter explaining my solidarity with the Tibetan people and their struggle to preserve their culture. To my surprise, I received an incredibly warm reply from the Honorable Tenzin Taklha, Joint Secretary of the Tibetan Government in Exile. The reply said: "The rock and photos have been presented to His Holiness. I am pleased to convey to you his prayers and good wishes”. With that, I was determined to bring the photo of the Dalai Lama to every one of my climbs and adventures. And there were so many of them!

The photo reached the highest point of all the remaining Seven Summits. It reached the summit of Everest a total of 7 times and to the top of other 8,000 peaks. It survived, as I did, the earthquake in Nepal in 2015 while I was on the glacier at Camp II on Everest. It was with me during my singlehanded sailing adventures. It was also my companion during many of my paragliding trips. I even had it when I crashed during a paragliding take off and I was unconscious for some time in the remote Rolwaling Valley of Nepal. It also came with me when I rode a bicycle across Nepal to the Maya Devi Temple in Lumbini, where tradition says that Shakyamuni Buddha was born.

I also lent the photo to some friends for their summit photos.

2018 was a year of significant change in my life. Among other things, I tried to climb the four highest mountains in the world (Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga and Lhotse) in the same year. In the middle of May, I climbed Everest and missed my chances on Kangchenjunga and Lhotse. But in July I travelled with my photo of the Dalai Lama to Pakistan to try to summit K2, the second highest mountain on Earth.

K2 can be a deathly mountain. Its climbing history is full of tragic accounts. There is a memorial near base camp where climbers and trekkers are reminded of the dozens of people that have lost their lives trying to reach its top. Before starting our climb we had a Buddhist puja, in spite of being in a traditionally Muslim country. During the puja, the photo of the Dalai Lama came out again to share its blessings.

Two people died that year on the mountain, but we pushed on. K2 marks the border between Pakistan and China. The summit is actually divided between the two countries. In the early hours of July 22nd, 2018, I took the last few steps on the gentle snowy slope that leads to the summit of K2. It was a windy morning. The odds had been against us, but we reached the summit!

What do I do when I reach the summit of a big peak? The short time I spend on top of these massive peaks usually goes the same way. I congratulate my team members with hugs and slaps on the back. I stop for a moment to take in the view and I drink some water. I take out my satellite phone to call my family, to let them know I made it and to thank them for their unconditional support. I enjoy the view some more. Finally, have a few photographs taken while I hold the photo of my family and the photo of the Dalai Lama. I then repack my gear for the descent, enjoy the view one last time and start heading down.

At the windy summit of K2, I began my routine. It was so cold that I kept on one of my heavy gloves while I took out the photographs from the Ziploc bag. A teammate took a photo of me holding the photo of my family. Done. I switched photos to keep the one of the Dalai Lama in front. My teammate took the second photo. An instant later, a strong wind gust wrenched the photo of the Dalai Lama off my fingers. The iconic black and white photograph, my companion for 14 years, flew away over the cliffs surrounding the north side of the summit. It was blown away, into China.

The last photo I took with the postcard before it was blown away, seconds later.

Tibetan Buddhism has many ways of spreading blessings. For example, they have prayer wheels that share the blessings as they go around. They also have multi-colored prayer flags that are spread over the highest mountain passes and summits.

As I saw the photo of the Dalai Lama flying off into China, I thought of the blessings I had received from His Holiness after my first Everest expedition. I knew this was the way those blessings were reaching the Tibetan people at last.

After a long search, I recently found a digital version of the original photo. I plan to print it and take it with me to continue the adventure. The wheel of karma keeps turning…

The Live Love Laugh Foundation at the summit of Everest (Part 2)

June 02, 2016 by David Liaño in Mountaineering

The Khumbu Ice Fall changes every day. Crevasses open up, searacs collapse and every trip up and down is a different experience. Because of the snowfall later in the season the condition were much safer than the first time I went up. Still, as I climbed with Pa Rita Sherpa, we were careful with every step we took and it was a relief when we reached Camp 2 early in the morning of May 7.

After already spending so many days above 6,400 meters that season, my heart rate and breathing felt comfortable that afternoon at dinner in the kitchen tent. Talking with the Sherpas during meals is something I always look forward to. I have been climbing with the same Sherpa team since 2008, nine years, and spending time with them feels like spending time with family. It really feels that way. During my stay at Camp 2 I kept going over the weather forecasts for our possible summit day, May 12, and also the plans for the Sherpa team that was climbing to the summit. It was on May 9 that I was forced to make a decision between using this as my final acclimatization rotation to Camp 4 and try to climb without using supplemental oxygen or to go for an early summit, giving up on my personal goal, and making sure that The Live Love Laugh Foundation’s banner made it to the summit. As mentioned on Part 1 of this post, I felt my work with the Foundation was a priority. I decided to go for an early attempt.

I continued the ascent reaching camp 3, at 7,200 meters, after climbing halfway up the Lhotse face on May 10. The climb was over ice rising at an average of 50º. Thankfully there were very few climbers on the route. That’s one of the advantages of going for an unusually early summit: no crowds. It’s never easy to set up Camp 3 since shelves big enough for the tents need to be choppedfrom the ice. I spent all that afternoon and night by myself since the Sherpas prefer to climb directly from Camp 2 to Camp 4 and spend a more comfortable night at lower altitudes. Enjoying the silence and solitude, I ran the stoves all of the afternoon, melting ice and boiling water, making soup and instant noodles. That’s as far as my cooking skills go on and off the mountains. There was some snowfall on the afternoon, but not more than what was forecasted. Before the sun set below the horizon I was rewarded with an amazing view of Pumori and Cho-Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world.

I woke up early on May 11. During the night I didn’t sleep much but still felt rested and ready to head up. All my gear was packed when Pa Rita arrived and it was time to move. That morning I had been melting ice for about two hours to have enough water for the whole day. To me, the climb from Camp 3 to Camp 4 is one of the toughest parts of the expedition because you can see most of the route and it never seems to get any closer. We continued to make our way up, passing the Yellow Band and the Geneva Spur. The upper part of the Lhotse face seemed to have more snow than any of the other times I’ve been up there and that was a good thing since when the mountain is dry there is constant danger of being hit by falling rocks and ice. The snow keeps all of that buried. Still, as we reached the South Col, the rocky and icy saddle formed between Everest and Lhotse, I was amazed at seeing it all buried under the snow.

We arrived at Camp 4 around 2:00pm and it took us a few minutes to set up a tent and get settled inside. We had been using supplemental oxygen from Camp 3 and that made it a little bit easier. Once we were inside our tent and we had the stoves going it started to snow. For hours we had heavy snowfall and I started to worry about the conditions higher up and how that would affect our chances to summit the next day. I tried to stay positive and reminded myself I’d been at the South Col many times before under worse weather and I knew we would get our chance that night. During the afternoon Kenton Cool, the British climber, came by to talk about our plans and it was good to know there would be four other climbers going up that night. We would be the first foreigners to try to summit form Nepal since 2013. During that afternoon an Camp 4 we also go word on the radio that the Sherpa team had reached the summit. A few minutes later the snow stopped. Finally things were going our way and around 6:00pm I made the final call to start climbing for the summit that night at 12:00am. That meant we would have just 5 hours to rest before we had to start getting ready to leave Camp 4.

So up at 8,000 meters, we spent the afternoon of May 11 resting inside our sleeping bags, dreaming of the summit. There was no wind on the mountain and the sky was clear. The sunset was spectacular.

First rotation - Everest 2016

May 01, 2016 by David Liaño

Climbing Everest involves a long acclimatization process. We make several ascents on the mountain before the final climb to the summit. Every time we go up, we climb higher and higher. Some people call each of these cycles “rotations”. I arrived at Everest Base Camp at 5,300m to begin my rotations on April 19, after attempting to climb Mount Pachermo, and climbing to the summit of Lobuje East.

Pachermo is a non-technical peak around 6,200 meters high that this last winter received almost no snow and therefore had many sections covered in blue ice. I was climbing with Phurba Sherpa from Thamo and we decided the conditions were too risky for the little acclimatization benefit the peak had for me. I later climbed Lobuje alone on a beautiful Himalayan morning with no wind. I was very proud to carry The Live Love Laugh Foundation’s banner to the summit. One of my goals for this Everest expedition is to raise awareness about depression and mental health issues, making the climb much more meaningful.

Base camp this year seems as big as the last two times I’ve been here in spite of the disasters from the last two years. It’s still a crowded tent city that sprouts at the beginning of April and it’s almost completely gone during the first days of June. We had our blessing ceremony on April 21st, and the multicolored prayer flags rose over our tents. Just two days later, at 3:00am, I started moving up the Khumbu Icefall and straight to Camp 2.

The icefall is one of the most unstable sections of the route we’re climbing. In 2014 over a dozen Sherpa lost their lives when an avalanche fell over the icefall and just last year the earthquake swept the rout and we had to be evacuated via helicopter from above Camp 1. It’s covered with huge crevasses we cross with aluminum ladders tied together over them. The route through the icefall changes every time we move up and down. It’s difficult to be objective with this kind of analysis but I believe this year the icefall is in one of the worst conditions I’ve seen. Usually snow covers parts of the seracs, making it more stable and passage is faster. Now, after a very dry winter, it’s almost made of chunks of ice, big and small, that obviously came from multiple collapses.

I arrived at Camp 1 after dawn but before the sun hit the glacier. Then came the frustrating climb along the Western Cwm. From the amphitheater made from Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse, snow accumulates and forms the Khumbu glacier. It is not very steep or technically challenging but between the extreme heat and the long distance, it wears out any climber and the hike seems endless. Seven hours after leaving base camp, I reached Camp 2 at nearly 6,500m.

Camp 2 is considered an Advanced Base Camp since it’s “safe” location allows us to have a small kitchen and dining tent, making our stay relatively comfortable. I remained at camp 2 for four nights. The first two were extremely windy but the weather improved later on. Sleeping was hard at the beginning and on the first night, as exhausted as I was, I spent most of it lying awake and listening to music on my iPod. During the days, I tried to move around as much as possible and climbed to the base of the Lhotse face. By the end of those four nights I was feeling the benefits of acclimatization, having no more headaches, moving faster and sleeping better. But it was time to head down to thicker air. I started my descent at 5:30am at the time I considered it was safer to go through the icefall. A few hours later I was having breakfast at base camp. That was the end of my first rotation.

Tomorrow at 2:30am I’m heading back up to Camp 2 and I will be gone for 6 days while I climb up to the South Col at 8,000m where Camp 4 is located. That will be my final rotation before the summit push.

Please take a moment to visit The Live Love Laugh Foundation’s website. You will find very useful information if you or somebody close to you is going through depression or any other mental health issues: www.thelivelovelaughfoundation.l