Everest climber left to die alone

Washington Times ^ | 5/23/06

[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.

*********

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.

[Diggler]

"Sir Edmund Hillary, who made the climb before it was a "holiday" for the idle rich,"

Sir Edmond Hillary was the idle rich. He was on "holiday" as you say.

"Sir Edmund Hillary, ... disagrees with your climbing conclusions and expertise.

I doubt it.

"I'll have to choose his opinion."

Hillary wasn't there. If Hillary carried a dead body back, then you have a point about what he would do, otherwise not.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/24/D8HQB8BO0.html

Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 became the first mountaineers to reach Everest's summit. Hillary said in an interview published Wednesday in a New Zealand newspaper that some climbers today did not care about the welfare of others.

"There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don't regard this as a correct philosophy," he told the Otago Daily Times.

"I think the whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top," he told the newspaper.

Hillary told New Zealand Press Association he would have abandoned his own pioneering climb to save another's life.

"It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," he said.

He said that his expedition, "would never for a moment have left one of the members or a group of members just lie there and die while they plugged on towards the summit."

[Mr. Brightside]

You and I are becoming more calvinist every month.

A Calvinist would believe that it must have been time for this man to die.

"His ways are above our ways... He has an appointed time for every man to die... Who are we to question the acts of God?"

If anything, Calvinism would teach that this was his fore-ordained time to meet the Lord.

[The Red Zone]

Seems the difference between Sir Hillary and the forty who passed the dying man, was that Sir Hillary was wise enough to have a whole team. The forty were doing it in tiny groups or even by their lonesome.

[Mr. Brightside]

"His ways are above our ways... He has an appointed time for every man to die... Who are we to question the acts of God?"

And I almost forgot the number one cliche at a Calvinist funeral, "You can never tell what God is going to do. He moves in mysterious ways."

[JCEccles]

This was a test that 40 men failed,

41. You forgot to include the dead man.

The entire Everest "thing" is an exercise in reckless self-indulgence, an act of homage to personal vanity. All these men voluntarily and with relish signed up to play a variety of Russian roulette. The dead man pulled the trigger on a chambered round and lost. The others put a cartridge back in the revolver, spun it, and continued to play.

The dead man has no special moral advantage or standing over his comrades.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Our Sherpas (guides) gave him oxygen. He wasn't a member of our expedition, he was a member of another, far less professional one."

I guess that means the hoi-polloi aren't worth the try?

[The Red Zone]

If you are breathing oxygen through a cannula or simple oxygen mask (you breath it in on your own) then you can never get enough oxygen to provide you what you need while in the death zone. No matter how much oxygen you have, you can't stay there.

The air pressure there is 1/3 of that at sea level -- I thought I remembered back from the days of the Apollo and Soyuz docking, that the Apollo carried a pure O2 atmosphere at 1/5 sea level pressure (vs. the Soyuz which carried an Earth atmosphere mixture at full sea level pressure). Soyuz cosmonauts would have to go through decompression in order to visit the Apollo craft, as would Apollo astronauts upon returning from a visit to the Soyuz. But there was no special preparation required other than the normal training of the spacemen.

[Mr. Brightside]

Seems the difference between Sir Hillary and the forty who passed the dying man, was that Sir Hillary was wise enough to have a whole team.

If I'm not mistaken, the only other person climbing with Hilary was sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

[P-Marlowe]

If anything, Calvinism would teach that this was his fore-ordained time to meet the Lord.

Does that excuse those who left the man to die alone on the road? No. If anything it condemns them. God placed that man on their path as a test of their character and everyone of them failed it. They came. They saw. They abandoned. What they did was shameful. 40 men could have lowered the man down to where he could have been given hope. 40 men followed Sir Edmnud Hillary's physical footsteps. But they did not follow his example. In essence they accomplished nothing except to bring shame upon themselves.

"I think the whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top," [Sir Edmund Hillary] told the newspaper.

[xzins]

Nope, the calvinist would believe that God had foreordained a good work for him to do.....attempt to do what Jesus commended the Good Samaritan for.

(I can't believe I'm arguing this side of the discussion....what's going on here! :>)

[The Red Zone]

At what height were these two the only ones still going up?

[Mr. Brightside]

This works-based argument sounds pretty Arminian to me.

Calvinism teaches that God is Sovereign. And that if it was God's will for the man to live, he would still be here today.

Also your argument goes against the "irresistable grace" philosophy that Calvinists believe. That if God sheds his grace on a man, it is impossible for him to resist it. And if God does not offer a man grace, it is impossible for him to be saved.

So a true Calvinist would believe that if this was truly a foreordained Divine opportunity for good works, these 40 men could not have resisted.

Kind of an Irresistable Rescue theology.

: )

[The Red Zone]

The late C. S. Lewis would not have been philosophically able to look at Christianity as a Calvinist. He would view that as having been turned into a robot. It's notable that most of the New Testament writers scarcely seem to be concerned with the question.

[Mr. Brightside]

At what height were these two the only ones still going up?

I was wondering the same thing.

We do know that they were the only two that summited. (yes, summit is used as a verb, even though some freepers don't like it.)

[The Red Zone]

From the way Sir Hillary was commenting about this, I would have to conclude that he still had a goodly force of men at the heights at which the climber in this story succumbed. Such a team is not the cheap way to get to the top, but it's safer.

[DoctorMichael]

Would a Gamow or Certec bag have helped this guy?

Maybe a little bit but 1) you would have had to have dragged the thing up to where he was and 2) depending on how far gone he was, it would only provide temporary relief and there is the possiblity of having to physically carry the man off the mountain (this would be no easy feat at 28,000 feet, on Everest's steep summit ridge with 10,000 foot drop-offs on either side of you).

Are such enclosures ever used above Base Camp?

Don't know, as I've never been on a major pay-to-climb expedition like this. However, heavy stuff is usually not carried any further than you have to on Everest. My guess is that a well-provisioned (and expensive, since a porter would do the hauling) pay-to-climb service may have one of these at the high-camp (this would be at the South Col on the route we're discussing here). Nonetheless, the range of services available through the guide-service you are on would vary widely.....look at the costs cited in the article ($6,000 -$35,000) and ask yourself what you would be provided with by a $6,000/person climbing service.

[xzins]

A real calvinist believes God ordains everything (to include this sentence that I just typed.)

Therefore, the ACTIONS TAKEN are themselves the evidence that they were foreordained.

For the climber to have been helped would be evidence that it was supposed to happen.

That he was not helped is evidence that it was not part of the script. However, the heart of each of those 40 climbers was revealed by their actions, because in calvinism they retain free will. Simply put, they were not the Good Samaritan.

If I have this understanding of calvinism wrong, I've pinged an expert, frumanchu, who will explain better than I am able to.

[DoctorMichael]

This has been an good Post as it has posed an interesting philosophical question:

"What are the limits of human Altruism?"

[Mr. Brightside]

And I am no expert on the subject.

I just grew up in it and live in the heart of it today.

And unfortunately, I have been to a few too many Calvinist funerals in the last few years and heard the same cliches over and over.

[Mr. Brightside]

continued...

And it seems to me that Calvinists want to have it both ways. One of my friend's wives died in childbirth.

My friend and his father are both Calvinist pastors. At the funeral, we heard a lot of statements like, "God moves in mysterious ways.... For some reason unknown to us, God called her home... His ways are higher than our ways... Who are we to question the acts of God?"

And two months later they sued the OB for malpractice and made a small fortune.

If God ordained this event, if the doctor was simply (unknowingly) carrying out the will of God, how can you sue him? If God blinded or confused the doctor so the woman would die, how can you blame the man?

Is he so powerful that he could have resisted the Almighty?