August 24, 2001

Exhibit Celebrates People and Landscape of Nepal

Sagarmatha National Park Exhibit
Exhibit is up until May 26, 2002
Location: Kerry Wood Nature Centre, 6300 - 45 Avenue Red Deer (403) 346-2010
Hours of operation: 10-5 p.m. daily

The changing landscape of the Khumbu Valley, Nepal and the culture of the Sherpa people who live there is the focus of Sagarmatha National Park. Using text and historical, aerial and contemporary photographs, this exhibit documents landscape change in the Khumbu Valley over the past fifty years, as well as the history and lives of the local Sherpa people.

Sagarmatha National Park covers an area of 1148 square kilometers in the Khumbu region of Nepal, including Mount Sagarmatha (Everest) and surrounding peaks, and the Khumbu Valley.

The Sagarmatha National Park exhibit, was created by Frances Klatzel and Alton C. Byers, Ph.D.

The project is supported by a Banff Centre for Mountain Culture grant and by the Ev-K2-NR Pyramid Project, Bergamo, Italy.

Frances Klatzel makes her home in the Canadian Rockies and the Himalaya. For eleven of the past twenty years she has worked in Nepal, mostly in the Everest and Makalu areas. From 1983-89, she created a museum and Sherpa Cultural Centre at Tengboche Monastery near Mount Everest. As part of this work, Frances helped the Abbot of Tengboche write a small book on the culture of the Sherpa people, Stories and Customs of the Sherpas. Her photographs on Sherpa culture have been the focus of several exhibitions and a book of these photographs and writings will be published in 2001.

Dr. Alton C. Byers is a mountain geographer specializing in mountain protected areas, integrated conservation and development programs, and historical/contemporary landscape change. He received his doctorate from the University of Colorado in 1987, focusing on landscape change and human-accelerated soil loss in the Sagarmatha National Park, Khumbu, Nepal.