Because It's There: Putting Everest Online

IF the 25-below-zero temperature, howling wind and grim effects of altitude sickness do not make most of those trying to scale Mount Everest feel a world away from home, the near-complete lack of communications on and around Everest surely does.

This year, just in time for the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's first ascent of Everest, climbers on the mountain will have the chance to connect with the world below by e-mail. That is because Tsering Gyaltsen, the grandson of the only surviving Sherpa to have accompanied Hillary on that famed climb, is planning to build the world's highest Internet cafe at base camp.

It is fitting that the added comfort comes courtesy of a Sherpa, one of the clan of Nepalese who take charge of getting most everything up the mountain for the usually wealthy adventurers seeking the thrill of topping the world's highest peak.

But in contrast to many climber services, this one does not stand to benefit foreign-run outfitters primarily. Although it is an obvious perk for the climbers, the residents of a nearby town may get Internet access because of it, and the mountain may get a bit cleaner.

The technical challenge is significant. Wireless radios will be positioned on moving glaciers, and gear must be insulated against temperatures far colder than they were designed to withstand. And at the helm of the project is Mr. Gyaltsen, who is not wealthy and has no formal technical training.

But tenacious he is. From halfway around the world, Mr. Gyaltsen has attracted an all-star cast of technologists in the United States dedicated to furthering his goal.

It started when Gordon Cook, author and publisher of a monthly newsletter, The Cook Report on Internet (www.cookreport.com), met Mr. Gyaltsen by chance during a visit to Nepal in November. Mr. Cook was so intrigued by Mr. Gyaltsen's success at independently restoring phone service to his town, Namche Bazar -- cut off for more than a year after Maoists tore down a government-owned telecommunications tower in 2001 -- that he started asking friends to lend their expertise to his work. ''I put my full network at Tsering's disposal,'' Mr. Cook said.

At the time, Mr. Gyaltsen had set up a satellite Internet link and cybercafe in Namche Bazar, a six-day hike below the Everest base camp, and was trying to figure out how to make it more available to his neighbors. Then one night over a beer, he and a friend who works for the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a nonprofit environmental group that is responsible for disposing of the mounds of garbage on Everest, hatched the idea for an Internet cafe at base camp.

The proceeds would help bring in money for the committee, which Mr. Gyaltsen said that as a Sherpa he felt it ''my duty to help.''

Mr. Cook brought in Dave Hughes, a leading wireless-technology thinker who has studied the performance of wireless equipment in extreme weather in Alaska for the National Science Foundation. One of the first calls Mr. Hughes placed was to his friend Jim Forster, who holds the title of distinguished engineer at the networking giant Cisco Systems.

Mr. Forster eagerly donated three Wi-Fi radios on behalf of his company. Such radios enable the creation of wireless networks that can relay data within a couple of hundred feet or as far as several miles as the crow flies, much the way that local-area networks, or LAN's, work in offices.

''What I like about this project is that it demonstrates that the technology developed for a LAN in a building can be applicable beyond that,'' Mr. Forster said. ''This may be as far outside the building as you can get.''

From his base in Colorado Springs, Mr. Hughes, 74, is using a Web-based conferencing system as a long-distance tool to teach Mr. Gyaltsen and his colleagues how to set up the base-camp network. Mr. Gyaltsen is working with technicians on loan from two Internet service providers, Square Networks and Worldlink, based in Nepal's capital, Katmandu. Another friend of Mr. Cook's, Mike Trest, an independent consultant and satellite expert, is helping to teach the Nepalese about satellites.