As you are reading this, Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa are scaling Mount Everest and are just days away from reaching the top — and creating history.

All these years, Sherpas have been the forgotten footsoldiers helping others climb to the top of the world, their own achievements and tragedies — a third of the 200-odd deaths are those of Sherpas — a mere footnote in mountaineering history. (The most common story cited: both climbed the mountain together for the first time in 1953 but Edmund Hillary was knighted while Sherpa Tenzing Norgay wasn’t.)

So Apa and Lhakpa hope that they will shed this burden of history at the summit. They are leading an all-Sherpa team up the extraordinary slopes to “highlight the hidden accomplishments of the Sherpa people in their role in extreme altitude climbing,” according to Roger Kehr, base camp manager of the SuperSherpas expedition.

The first ever all-Sherpa expedition on Mt Everest, where Kehr and Jerry Mika are the only two non-Sherpa members providing logistical support, has come as a “role reversal”. “The Sherpas are free to climb without the concerns of supporting Western climbers,” Kehr told The Indian Express.

While Apa holds the world record for climbing Mount Everest a record 16 times, Lhakpa is credited as among the fastest climbers (10 hours and 56 minutes) to the top of the 29,035-feet mountain.

Their current ascent though is aimed at “telling the Sherpa story that has never been told,” Lhakpa told The Indian Express from base camp a few days before the final summit push got underway. “Many Westerners come to Everest and make hollow promises that if we get them to the top they will help but we never hear from them again. They disappear like a crow flying in the fog,” he said.

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