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 ...
It's a very good read.
Into Thin Air : A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (Paperback)
by Jon Krakauer
Adapted to a documentary film that was so so.
In fact, if I remember correctly from Jon Krakauer's terrific book "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Disaster at Everest", it takes monumental effort just to put one foot in front of the other.
Recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385494785/qid=1148413002/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-7668063-7294364?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
If he 100% abandoned he own quest for the peak and used all his resources to ATTEMPT to save the life of a human being. Assuming he was close to death, the effort would have a limited chance of success.
(s)
Then again the guy with no legs had 36,000 dollars invested in selling his future story. A 36,000 dollars expedition is more was more important than the mere possibility of saving someone's life.(/s)
The lure of possessing the ultimate "bragging right" does tend to dehumanize. I've seen something similar at close range. In this age of affluence, where beautiful homes and cars are no longer status symbols, the badge of the Unique Experience is the ultimate object of Desire.
Nah, just let it die.
Possible, but not sensible. People who are flipping out at the callousness of the other climbers have to understand what it means to climb to altitudes above 26,000 feet. As many have pointed out, simply surviving and getting yourself up/down at those altitudes is a tremendous feat.
Could the other climbers have tried to bring him down instead of pushing on to the summit? Sure. But the simple fact is that if you choose to climb to those altitudes, you also choose to accept the consequences, and you don't expect anyone else to help you if you can't make it.
Everyone who goes up there knows what's at stake. There are lots of dead bodies that will be up there for a very long time, and lots of climbers who reached the summit or returned from the summit by stepping over or around dead and/or dying climbers. Its just the way it is.
The man was mostly frozen. He had been there for awhile in thin air. When you are mostly frozen you are sleeping, especially in the thin air. They probably woke him up when they found him. There was nothing they could do. You can't warm him and you can't stop the continued freeze. Either your own body works, or that's the end in this place.
In the book, Krakauer comes across as a real a-hole himself; a typical lefty journalist. However, he wrote a very compelling book.
Wow, see post 182. Just a few seconds apart. :)
Leave it freezing by the side of the thread?!?
...Just kidding! Consider it "tabled".
It is difficult just to propel your own body forward in that environment. Every motion, every movement is challenging due to the environment and the altitude.
As Jon Krakauer mentions in his book of the Everest Disaster, if you hurt yourself or make a mistake, there is nothing anyone can do.
The article says they made their decision to leave him on the way up, not down. If the guy was still responding & able to take nourishment, some of the 40 man group could {should?] have tried to get him down to the highest established camp which I think would be at about 22,000 feet.
Huh? Where is that indicated in the article? They had sufficient oxygen to share some with the man while they paused on their upward trek, and they obviously had enough to both continue to the summit, and then descend.
There is no indication that they could not have simply ceased their attempt to reach the summit, and used the consequently conserved oxygen to supply the dying man during an attempt to get him down to a lower elevation.
Frankly, I view this as a reasonable argument for imposition of the old tort rule that once you've commenced aid (giving a little oxygen), you are duty bound to continue with that aid in the saving of a human life, or you may be held liable for the resulting death if the death could have been prevented by the continuation of aid.
This is pretty shocking behavior.
I read "Into Thin Air" in about seven non-stop hours. I literally couldn't put it down. When I finished it, I didn't sleep well for a few days.
Jon's latest, "Under the Banner of Heaven", is sort of a drive-by shooting of some sects of the LDS church. He comes across in his (admittedly, very capable) writing as a sneering elitist. At the epilogue, he admits to being an atheist.
Still a good read.
The first thing they teach you as a first responder is don't put yourself into a position where you become a casualty yourself. 'cuz now, you have 2 casualties.
His "Into the Wild" book was good too. I believe it was before the Everest one.
"I am Supertramp!" ;-)
That would create a strong incentive to provide no assistance at all.
I read Krakauer's book. I also went to hear Beck Weathers this past fall at a lecture (he was the miracle survivor). And just to make sure I got the whole story, I read "The Climb" by Bookreev, giving his version of the disaster. I'm pretty convinced these climbers/sherpas did all they could for this soul.
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