Posted on 05/23/2006 8:42:02 AM PDT by Paddlefish
Staying with him is probably not right: Would you "stay with" a person in a burning car?
no prudent person would.
But to leave a live person in a burning building just because YOU wanted to keep walking on your tour is wrong.
Wrong. Descending a mountain is much more dangerous than climbing it. And complicating a descent with 250 pounds of dead (or dying) weight makes an already dangerous job, one that's killed scores on Everest, exponentially trickier.
Evidently not. This happens periodically, and the math works out that providing "assistance" is not only futile, but dangerous.
Climbers assume a level of risk, part of the risk is the understanding that little can be done to help you should you become unable to help yourself under extreme circumstances.
Not like this guy was hanging out on the shoulder, in need of a lift to the hospital.
Expeditions are not equipped to rescue helpless, stranded climbers. The choices were either continue to the summit, or stop and climb back down. Neither involved rescuing anybody.
I agree.
People from all over the world travel there to join that "special" club of people who have made it to the summit. It's all about the individual and his supposed conquering of the mountain.
Hog swill! It's the height of self-involvement. I'm not surprised at all that the climbers who paid 35K had an attitude about one of the pikers who paid 6K. I'm also not surprised they left him.
This amputee-climber reminds me of the story from the New Testament about the guy who was let out owing a big amount of money, but then turned around and started choking someone who owed him much less, demanding to be paid.
This amputee-climber is that person. Who saved him? This guy is despicable.
My brother is an avid rock climber, as a young man he was on an alternate team for Everest but wasn't needed. He's now near 50 and still climbs. He's had many friends die climbing, and has himself suffered near-fatal embolism in Peru. He's also a moonbat liberal, unsurprisingly.
The author's account states that 40 people stepped over this guy and kept going. Imagine you are gasping some of your last breaths and you see/hear dozens of people walk past you, a moment of hope, and then you see they keep going.
Between the lot of them they couldn't have done something? No, this is more about craven selfishness. Wanting to finish your personal journey after so much investment. As another poster said, when they saw the guy, their journey to the top ended right there.
I recognize that it might be a very hard decision from a self sacrifice position, but the correct decision would have been to team up and help the guy. I agree, one person staying with the guy may not have been wise, but 40 people couldn't have banded together? And the fact that the stranded guy was stupid and ill-prepared is not an excuse either.
Were they even trained on how to lower a 200 pound frozen body THREE MILES down a 30 degree ice slope?
Just because you have recieved training to climb the mountain does not mean you know how to perform a mountain rescue.
And just because they had BARELY enough supplies and equipment to make the climb themselves, you assume they had all the proper equipment, rations and supplies to evac a dying man off the mountian?
Keep in mind they have only 24 hours to get in and out of the death zone themselves.
Thanks, Abner.
I'll read it now.
But did you even have the equipment and training to attempt his rescue?
Perhaps. I can understand leaving someone behind if the danger for staying is too great and I can understand the possibility of a futile attempt to bring him down, but I cannot fathom NOT providing aid and comfort while he lay dying.
It does sound callous.
Not one person...not one....could spare the time or compassion to spend it with this dying man.
Anyone here remember the doctor from Texas who was left as dying and managed to drag himself to a camp (downhill), there he was again determined to be dying. His wife, who was not on the climb, wouldn't give up on saving him and sent a helicopter (which was not supposed to be able to go to that altitude) and when it got there the dying doctor gave his ride to another person that he thought was worse off. The helicopter was able to come back and save him. I guess there are mountain climbers and then there are the other kind of mountain climbers, huh?
Anyone interested in the unforgiving nature of extreme climbing should read Jon Krackauer's book "Into thin Air" about the disastrous guided climb back in 1996.
Start with a deadly activity, add climbing guide profit motive, throw in some totally inexperienced wealthy thrill seekers. There are some totally heroic stories in it along with some totally stupid decisions.
Is that anything like "I am a rock..."?
Their egos are bigger than the mountain.
BUMP
Beck Weathers
I'd say this story pretty well sums up the "spirit of the age."
On Kilmanjaro last year (I'm 51 years old), at 18,700 feet, without oxygen, I decided to turn back within an hour of the summit (19,300') due to the fact that I was losing conciousness and falling down from time to time. I'm here.......the dead climber on Everest is not.
Ya pays yur admission, ya takes your chances.
I will take your word that a rescue descent from this altitude is futile and dangerous. In some ways this story makes the legless climber/writer/documentarian a far worse person. He would have been far more valiant to never speak of it, as it is he will use the story for profit. Even worse than just walking past a dying man, IMO.
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