Clad in blue nylon safety harnesses, students scramble up the Tibet Guide School's climbing rock, moving quickly and smoothly from one handhold to the next on the six-story-high concrete slab.
"Hoi!" shouts one as he nears the top of the ochre-and-slate-colored structure in the front yard of the facility. Others, in T-shirts, fleece jackets, jeans and shorts, are grinning from below, kicking at the gravel with their climbing shoes.
The school is an unusual development effort, training Tibetan children from poor families to work as guides on the fabled Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks that draw thousands of climbers from around the world every year.
Tibet is one of China's poorest areas, but has some of the globe's most challenging summits and spectacular scenery -- assets that communist authorities are trying to harness in order to develop the region.
"The children of peasants and herdsmen can train here and get a job later," said Zhang Minxing, general secretary of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which founded the school in 1999. He said it is the first of its kind in the country. Graduates get jobs at the school's Himalaya Expedition Co Ltd., which serves climbers who hope to conquer the 8,848-meter summit of Everest via its northern slope in Tibet.
In addition to the 40 students who have already graduated, 30 more are enrolled -- a total that includes eight women, Zhang said. Most are in their late teens.
"I've been climbing since I was a child," said Awang, a deeply tanned 23-year-old graduate from the small village of Nilang, near Tibet's border with Nepal, who has scaled Everest three times. "It's great that this school can help our people."
The aim is to even out the economic disparity that critics say has allowed China's dominant Han ethnic group to secure the best jobs, while ethnic Tibetans have been left behind. "This will help improve the incomes of the local people," Zhang said.
Even so, he said the school -- which has received 7 million yuan (US$875,000) from Beijing -- plans to expand to let enthusiasts from outside Tibet study climbing once its facilities are big enough.
The students live in the compound of pastel-colored, three-story concrete buildings just minutes from the center of Lhasa but with a backdrop of mountain peaks.
The two-year curriculum mixes outdoor training such as ice-climbing techniques with classroom lessons on mountaineering theory and language skills in English and Mandarin.
Hundreds of mountaineers pour into Nepal and Tibet every year in an attempt to reach the top of Everest.
"It's the highest peak in the world," Zhang said. "Everyone wants to climb it as their highest achievement."
In addition to the Himalayas, Tibet has two more major mountain ranges, with five peaks over 8,000m and more than 200 over 7,000m.
That translates to brisk business for Himalaya Expedition, which charges clients from all over the world about US$1,800 for each guided ascent to Everest.
Last year, guides from the Tibet Guide School helped a team of Chinese mountaineers reach the Everest summit during the 50th anniversary of the first successful ascent in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Nepal's Tenzing Norgay.
The school also has organized trips up Everest and other peaks to pick up trash left by mountaineers. A room at the school exhibits trophies from those jaunts -- a pile of empty oxygen tanks, ripped tents and worn-out climbing shoes.
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