The Sherpa Photo Fund was the brainchild of Aaron Huey, a National Geographic photographer who visited and photographed in Nepal. In April of 2014, an unprecedented tragedy occurred on Everest as an avalanche swept 16 indigenous climbers to their death. Aaron asked the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation to co-host an online fundraiser to help raise funds for the families and the communities of deceased Sherpa climbers.

Over the next four weeks, The Sherpa Photo fund featured images from ten National Geographic photographers who donated work to sell for $100.00 apiece. With the momentum and power of social media, the fund brought in nearly four hundred thousand dollars to the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation.

Since April, the ALCF has communicated and visited with families of deceased climbers and partnered with the Juniper Fund to allocate money to families. We sent Juniper Fund $150,000.00 from our Widow Relief fund to be distributed directly to families over a period of years. We also have fifty thousand set aside for advanced education scholarships for children of deceased Nepali climbers.

From our community fund, we sent $25,000.00 to Himalayan Rescue Association’s "Everest ER" for their ongoing medical and rescue efforts that benefit indigenous climbers working on Everest.

From our community fund, we continued to support our Denali Exchange program, sending two Sherpa climbers to work with rangers on Denali this season, learning vital skills for high altitude rescue and management of climbing and the alpine environment.

From our community fund, we have allocated $150,000.00 toward finishing our facility to house the Khumbu Climbing Center. The earthquake safe and passive solar building is under construction and will house the program and a state of the art climbing gym. It will sustain the KCC into the future for all Sherpa and indigenous climbers to learn skills to ensure a safer and better future.

The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation and the Sherpa community are grateful to the ten photographers and the thousands of people who purchased prints.

This project was organized by National Geographic photographer Aaron Huey and Outside Magazine Senior Editor Grayson Schaffer, with generous donations from: Jimmy Chin, James Balog, Cory Richards, Renan Ozturk, Teru Kuwayama, Pete McBride, Gordon Wiltsie, Andy Bardon, Robb Kendrick, and Max Lowe.