Posted on 06/14/2006 5:50:58 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Dying Brit climber 'too big' to rescue off Everest
By MICHAEL FIELD
The New Zealand mountaineer who ordered climbers to leave a dying Briton near the summit of Mt Everest says it was impossible to carry the big man off the peak.
Double amputee Mark Inglis was one of four New Zealanders in a group of 40 who walked past dying David Sharp during their descent of Everest on May 15. Most of them were part of a Discovery Channel film crew, which included Queenstown cameraman Mark Whetu.
The crew filmed the dying British mountaineer in his last conscious moments on the mountain.
Inglis' party and the Discovery crew were under the direction of Himex, a major professional guiding company run by Kiwi mountaineer Russell Brice.
Brice revealed yesterday that Sharp was lying on top of the body of an Indian climber known as "Green Boots". The Indian's body had been in a small 8500m high cave since 1996.
The gruesome events on top of Mt Everest this summer, in which 11 people eventually died, sparked a storm of controversy led by Sir Edmund Hillary, who said the attitude displayed by the climbers was horrifying.
As Inglis was last week having surgery on his frostbitten hands, a fuller story of what happened has begun to emerge as professional climbers and support crews get home.
Brice said on the day of the incident he had been based at the North Col camp, watching his clients' progress through a telescope.
At 1.41am his "sidar" or head sherpa, Phurba Tashi, radioed saying he was at "Green Boots" but made no mention of Sharp. Ten minutes later the main group, including Inglis, reached that point.
"At no stage during the ascent did I know that there was a man in trouble," Brice said.
Most of Brice's climbers reached the summit between 6.15am and 7.03am, but Brice said he noticed two of his clients were ascending too slowly and ordered them down. Both needed help to get off. After reaching the summit, Inglis began his descent and joined the other two climbers at the Third Step at 9.15am.
Fifteen minutes later Brice said "one of the climbers called me to say that there was a big man about to die". This was the first he heard of Sharp's predicament.
"I established that David was still alive but unconscious and that his arms were frozen to the elbow and his legs were frozen to the knee, and that he had frost bite to the nose," Brice said.
"The climber said that David had an oxygen system with him but was not wearing it, and was trying to assist with getting the mask back onto David."
Brice said he was acutely aware of the "struggle" going on to get Inglis and the other two off the mountain and knew the sherpas had been out of camp for more than 10 hours and were low on oxygen.
"I told the climber who encountered David to continue down the mountain as at this altitude and with this terrain it is not possible to carry an unconscious person with only the people that I had on the mountain at that time."
A Turkish group tried to help and Phurba found some oxygen and gave it to Sharp.
"They attempted to get David to his feet, but he kept collapsing, so they shifted David just a few feet into the sun."
Brice said he had worked with Phurba, one of the strongest sherpas on the mountain, for years.
"We have been involved in many self, and assisted rescues over the years, so I know that if there was a chance to help he would willingly do so, and would have immediately called me to start the logistics that would be required. His silence was ominous."
Brice said he had no idea of Sharp's movements before his death and had no reports about him in trouble before finding him at "Green Boots."
He assumed people did not see him on the way up because it was extremely cold and their hoods and oxygen masks would have severely restricted vision.
"Our people saw David, but assumed that this was the body of the Indian who died in exactly the same place in 1996, and whose body I had told members to expect to see," Brice said.
"In fact David was lying right on top of the Indian when Phurba found him on the descent. Our people saw David and assumed that he was already dead."
Brice found out who the dead man was and although it was not his responsibility, telephoned Sharp's family.
"I told them that we had seen David the day before, and that we had left him even though he was still alive, but in an unrecoverable state, and that he was confirmed dead that morning.
"This was a very hard call to make but something that I felt had to be done."
Brice said had he known on the way up that Sharp was in trouble he would have investigated the possibility of a rescue. Since 1994 he had initiated or been involved with 15 major rescues on Everest.
"During this time I have been responsible for the unenviable job of removing about 10 bodies from the mountain, something that we never mention."
"I285 around Atlanta kills far more than that each year."
LOL! Yep. Its kind of a flat Everest. Not as cold, but twice as dangerous. Minimum speed 85 MPH. Minimum distance between cars 5 ft.
I have read the book about the 1995 expedition. National Geographic had a nice series called "Mountain Men" It profiled all the "big" mountains, Matterhorn, K2, Everest, etc. There is no correlation to saving a person drowning to someone dying on Everest, as some posters have tried to make. I have never tried to climb a mountain, but after reading and watching these programs, it takes every ounce of energy to just put one foot in front of the other. People who climb Everest or K2 are not greedy. I see it as the ultimate test of mind over matter.
That would make it above the Third Step in your picture and quite impossible for an immobile person to be saved.
But 300 ft. from the Green Boots cave is off the ridge and someone can be pushed/belayed on his ass all the way down to Camp Three.
Not fun....and the bumpy descent may kill him if he can not assist, but definitely doable.
I want everyone to look at Mr. Brightside's photo.
Someone above the Second Step and immobile....is dead....no question about it.
Someone at Mushroom Rock (between First and Second Step)....with just a little mobility and a minor miracle...a slim chance.
Below the First Step, and odds change to about 20% (of getting him down...not necessarily surviving) if healthy people are near.
"That being said, 40 people could not carry a man down from the summit of Everest."
First, the circumstances at that altitude are so deadly that I'm not one to second-guess what they should or shouldn't have done.
But from what I've read the guy was immobile by the time they understood his predicament.
If so, that meant lowering his body down the Steps, etc., *all the while trying to keep him alive*, and with all the implications thereof. Also, of those 40 people, maybe 5 were physically capable of participating in a rescue. If that.
At altitude in the Himalaya you are focusing on two things: putting one foot in front of other, and breathing. Period. Each and every step is a monumental effort of body and mind. And let's not forget that the descent is always demonstrably more dangerous than the ascent.
So what if they did? Maybe they thought he was resting for a bit. Maybe he even acknowledged that he was OK.
We really don't know what happened there. So every critique is a pointless exercise in "coulda shoulda".
I know two people that died and another who developed cerebral oedema over the course of two hours at much lesser altitudes in the Everest region.
Of the two deaths, one was a 22 year old kid, the other a 54 year old Austrian guy with years of mountaineering experience. Both died in the same week on the 18,500 foot Cho La Pass that connects Gokyo Valley to the Khumbu Valley. The older guy had an apparent heart attack, the younger guy I don't know for sure but everyone said he was going up way too fast without proper acclimitization.
As an aside, they had to pay a Sherpa some obscene amount of money to bring a yak up to the Pass and recover the body (Sherpas don't like hauling dead bodies around).
The third was a woman in our little trekking group who went from a minor to a splitting headache, and then vomiting, in a couple hours. It was pretty obvious what was happening to her, so her boyfriend took her down from Lobuche to the lower-altitude next town where she recovered almost instantly.
Going down several hundred meters is usually (not always) enough to fix the problem, if you catch it early enough.
"Sounds like HIS GREED did him in."
Not to besmirch the dead, but behind every critique made by an experienced mountainer (except the crank Sir Edmund) is this unspoken thought: "Sharp was a fool to go solo, he took his life into his own hands, he was climbing beyond his skills and abilities, and he endangered other people on the mountain with his hubris."
Good thing "Sam McGee from Tennessee" didn't try to scale Everest. He'd still be complaining. Brrrrr.
Yes, and we're all very impressed.
Well I don't doubt the difficulties of performing a rescue and even some of the climbers did provide oxygen, but for 40 climbers to walk over, around and beside a man in need of help is pathetic.
The thought of climbers matter-of-factly navigating their courses and using the exposed and still-clothed corpses of long dead anonymous climbers as reference points is more than a bit grisly.
Reminds me of that great 70s book, "101 Uses for a Dead Cat." 101 Uses for a Dead Mountain Climber.
"What is your location?"
"We are 150 feet past Green Boots and almost to Frost-bit Brit."
Why would a frozen man be any heavier than he was before he was frozen?
Not heavier. But harder to move.
Unless he was frozen to the ground (possible) I don't see why he would be harder to move. You certainly wouldn't have to take any care with his arms and legs because he was going to lose them anyway.
Of course this Brit might have cost the life of those trying to move him because they needed all their strength to get themselves down. I can understand why they left him but it would be a difficult choice.
Has the question been answered yet, did they walk around him and leave him on the way up or on the way down? The "difficult choice" you are talking about doesn't matter if they did the former.
If that was the case, then why was the climbers original story that they knew he was dying on the way up? That's not speculation, that's recorded on TV.
Both could be true. It would not be unusual for a climber to signal that he is ok, when those around him doubt it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.