Posted on 05/23/2006 8:42:02 AM PDT by Paddlefish
Mark Inglis, an amputee who conquered Mount Everest on artificial legs last week, yesterday defended his party's decision to carry on to the summit despite coming across a dying climber. As his team climbed through the "death zone," the area above 26,000 feet where the body begins to shut down, they passed David Sharp, 34, a stricken British climber who later died. His body remained on the mountain.
Mr. Inglis, 47, a New Zealander, said: "At 28,000 feet it's hard to stay alive yourself. He was in a very poor condition, near death. We talked about [what to do for him] for quite a lot at the time and it was a very hard decision. "About 40 people passed him that day, and no one else helped him apart from our expedition. Our Sherpas (guides) gave him oxygen. He wasn't a member of our expedition, he was a member of another, far less professional one." Mr. Sharp was among eight persons who have died on Everest this year, including another member of his group, a Brazilian. Dewa Sherpa, a manager at Asian Trekking, the Katmandu company that outfitted Mr. Sharp before his climb, said he had not taken enough oxygen and had no Sherpa guide.
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The company charges $6,000 to provide services as far as base camp -- far less than the $35,000 or more cost of guided trips to the summit. Other mountaineers have criticized the commercialism of climbing the 29,035-foot peak, with guides charging huge sums to climbers with minimal experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I read the book, and from my recollection, Beck was left to die, but willed himself to get up and stumble down the mountain....where he was then tended to.
There was a search on the Col during the storm. Beck was part of a huddle of lost climbers. The ones who could walk went back with the rescuer, but Beck and a Japanese woman climber were left for dead.
Beck miraculously awoke and stumbled, literally, back into Camp 4 just a 100 yards away.
They thought he was still going to die but lasted until the storm broke and, since he could walk, they made the descent that saved his life.
I think the best climbing book I ever read was "The Last Step: The American Ascent of K2," by Rick Ridgeway. It was written back in the 70s, and featured many of the legendary climbers of Pacific NW mountaineering. The internal bickering made it very interesting - the politics, the romance, the egos. And at the end it was very moving, with a high-altitude crisis somehwat like the one in this story, but with a happier result.
I know...that stills blows my mind. A helluva man!
Did you see the skeleton of the leopard?
They do carry oxygen. But they can only bring so much.
They have to save it for when they REALLY need it. When their oxygen depletes, their muscles fatigue, their brains start to shut down, their ability to make rational decisions is reduced, etc. Plus they lose their appetite at a time when they need calories and water the most.
One of the other posters here (DoctorMichael) is much more knowlegable of this. He is a climber.
Yes. Do a Google search on "EVEREST CLEAN UP" and you get over a million hits. Base camp is a huge mess and there are "service" expeditions that just go there to clear away the trash. Apparently the latrine area's a disaster.
Cool:
Q: Does this flight improve the prospects for future rescue operations?
A: The thought of rescuing climbers was one of the things that motivated me to do this project. But the forces I encountered were so powerful that to guarantee a safe flight you'd have to design a more powerful copter.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the book or movie of "Touching the Void." There's a moral quandary on the mountain, ending with one guy cutting the rope on the other guy to save his own life.
Ok. It didn't occur to me that they were limited in the oxygen they could carry. I thought they would carry enough to carry them thru the climb.
Wrong Ray. You can not change the essential difference in the stories. No one chooses to be ambushed. The guy who was ambushed iddn't walk into satan's den. These guys chose to climb the mountain. It's their place to make the decisions and their place to take the responsibility.
Death zone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The death zone is a term that refers to high altitudes, encountered by mountain climbers, where the amount of oxygen present cannot sustain human life.
The human body functions at its best at sea level (0 meters) when the atmospheric pressure is measured at 1 atmosphere. This is because the hemoglobin (the red pigment in red blood cells) is saturated with oxygen (nearly 100 %) at that air pressure. Oxygen is required for every bodily process.
As humans go higher, the air pressure drops and so does the amount of available oxygen. At 5,000 m (height of Everest base camp), the amount of oxygen is only half that of sea level's availability. At 8,850 m (summit of Mt. Everest), only one third is available. When the amount of oxygen pressure drops, the human body tries to compensate by a process known as altitude acclimatization. Additional red blood cells are manufactured, the heart beats faster, non-essential body functions are temporarily shut down, and you breathe deeper and more frequently. However, acclimatization cannot take place immediately - in fact, it takes place over a period of days or even weeks. Failure to acclimatize may result in altitude sickness, including pulmonary edema or cerebral edema.
At extreme altitudes (above 7,500 m), breathing bottled oxygen becomes almost mandatory for 99 % of climbers. This is because at that height, available oxygen becomes so low that one can hardly function without supplementary oxygen. Sleeping becomes very difficult, digesting food is impossible (the body shuts the digestive system down), and hosts of other problems manifest without additional oxygen.
Finally, at the "death zone", 8,000 m and higher, no human body can acclimatize. Staying longer than necessary will result in deterioration of body functions, loss of consciousness and ultimately, death.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone"
I wonder if these trekkers who take these dangerous climbs have to sign some waiver that if one falls into distress, no one is obligated to help. More than one "good Samaritan" has been sued before by their aided victim or victim's family.
This rock brings in lotsa money for the Nepalese. I wish they would make it off limits. The first men who climbed to the top were adventurers in the grand tradition when men were men... - the New Zelander got knighted. That breed of man has left us for good - now we see yuppies and Sierra Club types who smoke pot and eat vegan.
Now women go up and also die there. That is a shame. It kind of makes it very ghoulishly democratic. Yes call me a male chauvanist pig - I am a conservative - women have no place there - as they don't in front line military roles. Lots of selfisness happens on Everest. There are bodies there still exposed from the 1920s!
Excellent question. Sounds like they had already abandoned him on the way down.
As you pointed out, everyone who goes up Everest knows the risks - no one dares spare any energy to carry you down from the highest elevations without virtually guaranteeing their own deaths.
Does this mean that even with oxygen, climbers are going to have problems?
What I'm grappling with is, if they have bottled oxygen, what is the problem? If they can't bring enough, I guess that's one thing, but it seems that bottled oxygen should solve, or at least reduce the problem, unless even bottled oxygen at that altitude isn't very helpful.
Deathzone = Usually considered anything above 22,000 feet; it is the altitude at which, no matter how much bottled oxygen you carry, or how acclimitized you get, the human body starts to eat itself up and you waste away and die.
If I might also add another point to my public comments........Most of the posts on the Thread fault the people that didn't help the dying climber. The point I tried to make in my Post #79 (and in my life; this is also why I'm a Conservative!!!) is...........What about the responsiblity of the dying climber? What decision did he make? Is he not responsible in some manner for his own actions? Everest is dangerous; Everest kills people. He knew that when he placed his first foot on it and started the climb.
BTW......10 years ago I did the 14 day trek to Mt. Everest Base-camp at 18,000 feet, solo in the Himalayas. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will always treasure. It was 7 days of hiking up and 7 days back to the helicopter pad in Luklha, and then back to Kathmandu.
"OK. Where was this guys party and why didn't they help him?"
That's the main thing I've been wondering while reading this thread. Was this guy making a solo ascent attempt? If not, why did his part abandon him? They surely had more responsibility toward him than anyone else. If he was making a solo attempt, well ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances. You put yourself in one of the most dangerous places on earth, don't expect someone else to bail you out if you get in trouble.
Shameful.
Then you don't understand that this Samaritan took his life in his hands by being in the wrong place. That is why the story is so powerful to its original hearers.
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