On 8 July 1963, President John F Kennedy welcomed two rather incongruous friends to the rose garden of the White House. Jim Whittaker had two months earlier become the first American to stand on the summit of Everest. The man on the summit with him, and more than a foot shorter in height, was a Tibetan-born Sherpa called Nawang Gombu, who would become the first man to reach the summit of Everest twice. When the president came to award Gombu the National Geographic Society's Hubbard medal for his achievements, Gombu returned the compliment, draping a khata (a Buddhist ceremonial silk scarf) around Kennedy's neck. They shared a joke about the Sherpa's strength, before the president reached down to squeeze Gombu's heavily muscled thigh.
The journey made by Gombu, who has died aged 75, to the summit of Everest and to the White House was almost as extraordinary as that of his uncle Tenzing Norgay, who had reached the top with Edmund Hillary 10 years earlier.
Gombu was born in the Kharta region to the north-east of Everest. His early life was marked by the complexities of his parents' marriage. His father, Nawang, was a monk, the younger brother of the local feudal landowner. His mother, Tenzing's beloved older sister, was Lhamu Khipa, a nun from a family of serfs. The two eloped, causing a scandal, and for a time they lived in Khumbu, a Sherpa district on the other side of the border in Nepal.
As a young boy, Gombu was sent back to Tibet to become a monk at Rongbuk monastery, an hour's walk below what is now Everest base camp. Gombu's grandmother was a cousin of the head lama, Trulshik Rinpoche, but the connection offered him no protection from the brutal punishment often meted out to novices who failed in their studies.
After a year, Gombu fled with a friend, crossing the Nangpa La into Khumbu, where the first western visitors were beginning to explore the southern approaches to Everest. When his uncle arrived with a team of Swiss mountaineers in 1952, Gombu begged the now famous Tenzing for a job on his next expedition. So it was that the 17-year-old Gombu became the youngest member of the Sherpa team Tenzing organised for the 1953 ascent of Everest led by John Hunt.
As had been the habit on British Everest expeditions, each climber was assigned a Sherpa. Gombu found himself paired with the doctor Michael Ward, who was surprised when this "roly-poly Sherpa" distinguished himself by becoming the first in history to ask his sahib to walk "a little more slowly as he was finding the pace too fast."
Gombu never had much problem speaking his mind. In 1953, he found himself climbing alongside Hunt while carrying loads of oxygen up to a higher camp. He asked the British army colonel why it was that Gombu was carrying two bottles while the burra sahib could only manage one. Hunt laughed and told Tenzing, who flashed him an admonishing look. Yet Gombu worked hard for the team, making two carries to the South Col, helping in the crucial task of putting sufficient oxygen supplies and other equipment at the disposal of the summit team. For this he was awarded the Tiger medal from the Himalayan Club and the Queen's coronation medal. Gombu was also one of six Sherpas selected to train in Switzerland as the first instructors at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, established on Nehru's order to train "a thousand Tenzings". Gombu's future was now assured, and he moved to Darjeeling to take up his new duties. He continued to work on expeditions, joining an American team to Makalu in 1954, Claude Kogan's all-female team on Cho Oyu in 1959 and the first Indian expedition to Everest in 1960.
That effort ended not far short of the summit in bad weather, but Gombu got a second chance in 1963, when he got a note from the leader of the 1954 Makalu team, William Siri, who was Norman Dyhrenfurth's deputy, checking that he was the same Gombu who had done such sterling service almost a decade before. Gombu proved equally stalwart on Everest that spring, forming a close bond with Whittaker, a Seattle-based guide who was as bluff and down-to-earth as Gombu.
The Americans had two objectives: an attempt on a new route via the West Ridge, but first of all the first ascent of Everest by Americans via the route Tenzing had taken. Whittaker, with a background in competitive sports, was not the type to waste time on chivalric notions of great deeds that might well fail, and preferred to take the known path to the summit – and Gombu went with him. Even then, their chances were almost scuppered. The top camp was placed too low at 27,450ft, and the Sherpas helping them refused to leave their half-used oxygen bottles for the summit team's benefit, despite Gombu's pleading with them. Leaving the tent at 6.30am on 1 May, Whittaker and Gombu found themselves blasted by strong winds, ice crystals swirling around their bodies, but their faces bathed in sunshine. Despite the conditions they reached the summit at 1pm.
A few feet short of the top, mindful of the media firestorm that had engulfed Hillary and Tenzing over the issue of who reached the top first, Whittaker ushered Gombu into the lead. Gombu, grinning behind his oxygen mask, politely declined: "You first Big Jim!" Finally, they stepped on to the top at the same time. His friendships with the American climbers would last the rest of his life.
In 1965, Gombu climbed Everest again, reaching the top with Awarae Singh Cheema, as part of the first successful Indian team, fulfilling Nehru's ambition of putting Indians on the summit. Gombu received more honours and was promoted at the Himalayan Institute, becoming Tenzing's deputy and taking charge when his uncle retired in 1976.
Gombu returned to Everest in his late 40s with another American expedition, this time on the North Face. The latter part of his life was devoted to the Sherpa Buddhist Association, helping the families of Sherpas injured or killed in the mountains. As one of the last of the Himalayan Club's "Tigers", he fought for Indian Sherpas to have the same employment rights in Nepal as their Nepalese cousins.
His first wife, Dawa Phuti, died in childbirth. Their daughter, Rita, became a climber, almost reaching the summit of Everest in 1984. Gombu's second wife, Sita, and their four children also survive him.