Ang Dorje (Chhuldim) Sherpa (born 1970) is a Nepalese

Sherpa SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) is an organisation originally set up in 2002 to run and manage the SHERPA Project. History SHERPA began as an endeavour to support the establishment of a number of open ...

mountaineering guide, climber, and porter from Pangboche,

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

, who has reached the summit of

Mount Everest Mount Everest (), known locally as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Qomolangma in Tibet, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at it ...

24 times. He was the climbing

Sirdar The rank of Sirdar () – a variant of Sardar – was assigned to the British Commander-in-Chief of the British-controlled Egyptian Army in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Sirdar resided at the Sirdaria, a three-block-long prope ...

for Rob Hall's

Adventure Consultants Adventure Consultants, formerly Hall and Ball Adventure Consultants, is a New Zealand-based adventure company that brings trekking and climbing groups to various locations. Founded by Rob Hall and Gary Ball in 1991, it helped pioneer the com ...

expedition to Everest in spring 1996, when a freak storm led to the deaths of eight climbers from several expeditions, considered one of the worst disasters in the history of Everest mountaineering.

Early life

Ang Dorje was born in 1970, in upper Pangboche, Nepal, near the Khumbu Valley as it passes down the slopes of Mount Everest. He grew up among Himalayan climbers; his father, Nima Tenzing Sherpa, was a climber with expeditions led by British mountaineer

Chris Bonington Sir Christian John Storey Bonington, CVO, CBE, DL (born 6 August 1934) is a British mountaineer. His career has included nineteen expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest. Early life and expeditions Bonington's father, ...

in the 1970s and 1980s. He followed his father in work with climbing expeditions beginning as a porter at the age of 12. "I always wanted to climb when I was little," Ang Dorje says. He attended private school in Nepal, with assistance from western clients impressed by his work ethic, as he continued his mountaineering work with several expeditions in the Everest area. His efforts were rewarded when in 1992 at the age of 22 he reached the summit of Mount Everest.

Sirdar and guiding career

Ang Dorje has led many successful expeditions on Everest, frequently as climbing sirdar for Adventure Consultants, the guiding service founded by Rob Hall. During the disastrous 1996 expedition on Everest, he and Lhakpa Tshering Sherpa attempted to rescue Hall and others, in the deadly storm conditions that ultimately killed 8 climbers. They ascended 900 vertical meters to just below Everest's South Summit, only to be halted by impenetrable storm conditions just 100 meters from Hall. They waited 45 minutes before being forced back by the storm. Ang Dorje later commented on the incident saying, "It was very sad. Very difficult." The rescue efforts were recounted by

Jon Krakauer Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American writer and mountaineer. He is the author of bestselling nonfiction books—'' Into the Wild''; '' Into Thin Air''; '' Under the Banner of Heaven''; and '' Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pa ...

in his account of the disaster, ''

Into Thin Air ''Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster'' is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and seve ...

''. In addition to his work as climbing sirdar on Everest, Ang Dorje has also worked as a

mountain guide A mountain guide is a specially trained and experienced professional mountaineer who is certified by local authorities or mountain guide associations. They are considered to be high-level experts in mountaineering, and are hired to instruct or ...

on Everest, as well as

Aconcagua Aconcagua () is a mountain in the Principal Cordillera of the Andes mountain range, in Mendoza Province, Argentina. It is the highest mountain in the Americas, the highest outside Asia, and the highest in both the Western Hemisphere and the ...

Mount Rainier Mount Rainier ( ), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With an off ...

Kilimanjaro Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world, at above sea level and above its plateau base. It is also the highest volcano i ...

, and Island Peak.

Climbing accomplishments

As of 2025, Ang Dorje had reached the summit of Mount Everest 24 times since 1992 (in both spring and autumn, all via the

South Col The South Col is a col between Mount Everest and Lhotse, the highest and fourth-highest mountains in the world, respectively. The South Col is typically swept by high winds, leaving it free of significant snow accumulation. Since 1950 (when Tibe ...

route),

Cho Oyu Cho Oyu ( Nepali: चोयु; ; ) is the sixth-highest mountain in the world at above sea level. Cho Oyu means " Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan. The mountain is the westernmost major peak of the '' Khumbu'' sub-section of the Mahalangur Him ...

seven times since 1995, and had also summited

Broad Peak Broad Peak (; ) is one of the eight-thousanders, and is located in the Karakoram range spanning Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan and Xinjiang, China. It is the 12th highest mountain in the world with elevation above sea level. The first ascent of t ...

(1995),

Gasherbrum II Gasherbrum II (; ; ); surveyed as K4, is the 13th highest mountain in the world at above sea level. It is the third-highest peak of the Gasherbrum massif, and is located in the Karakoram, on the border between Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan and ...

(1997) and

Ama Dablam Ama Dablam is a mountain in the Eastern Himalayas range of Koshi Province, Nepal. The main peak is , the lower western peak is . Ama Dablam means "mother's necklace"; the long ridges on each side like the arms of a mother (''ama'') protecting he ...

(in 1996, via the southwest ridge route)

Personal life

After meeting American

computational linguist Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

Michelle Gregory at the southern

Everest Base Camp There are two Base camp#Shelter, base camps on Mount Everest, on opposite sides of the mountains: #South Base Camp in Nepal, South Base Camp is in Nepal at an altitude of (), while #North Base Camp in Tibet, North Base Camp is in Tibet at (). ...

, in 2002 he immigrated to the United States. The couple married a year later. He returns to climb Everest each spring, in part to visit his family. He completed his 19th summit of Everest in 2017. Ang Dorje also works as a

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

mechanic at

wind farms A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

region of the United States.

Everest summits

* 2025 - 24th summit * 2024 - 23rd summit * 2023 - 22nd summit * 2021 - 21st summit * 2019 - 20th summit * 2017 - 19th summit * 2016 - 18th summit with

* 2013 - 17th summit * 2008 - 14th summit * 1992 - 1st summit

References

External links

Death and survival on top of the world: Sherpa guide recalls the tragic 1996 Everest expedition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorje, Ang 1970 births Living people Sherpa summiters of Mount Everest Nepalese mountain climbers People from Solukhumbu District Nepalese emigrants to the United States Nepalese summiters of Mount Everest