What do you mean "we", paleface?
Posted on 05/24/2006 1:58:55 PM PDT by Mr. Brightside
'Raise hell' over Everest deaths secrecy
25 May 2006
By KENT ATKINSON
An explorers' group which runs a news website monitoring attempts to climb Mt Everest says it has been battling to provide more transparency on the way some climbers die on its slopes.
The group said on its website said that New Zealand double amputee Mark Inglis' disclosure that as many as 40 mountaineers continued climbing past a Briton who was in trouble two hours above Camp Four on the north (Chinese) side of Mt Everest had broken some of the secrecy.
Inglis who climbed with professional expedition leader Russell Brice, said the Briton, David Sharp, was left on the mountain, still alive. Inglis said the mountain was littered with bodies, at least nine on the route he took.
"You have to physically step over so many," he said.
The New York-based ExplorersWeb said on a news site written by climbers, it had been fighting the silence surrounding some deaths in the mountains.
"Death is a fact, but silence is the cancer," the group said on its website yesterday. "We must all speak up, ask questions and raise hell.
"Each time, we have been told that the secrecy is only a concern for the victims' families and (that) we have no respect", it said.
"Climbers on the mountain say they don't want to upset the families."
"Time after time, it has turned out that the hush has served much less noble agendas: to cover up foul play in mountains without law".
Ten climbers have been confirmed as having died on Everest so far this season.
This leaves the 2006 season running second, in terms of fatalities, behind the disastrous 1996 season which killed 19 climbers.
Then, the toll included eight in a single day, May 12, when New Zealander Rob Hall died on the slope looking after an ailing client. Another New Zealander, Andrew Harris, 32, of Queenstown, died trying to reach Hall.
Rob Hall's wife Jan Arnold said no one should be pointing fingers of blame at Mark Inglis and his climbing team for not attempting to rescue a dying British mountaineer.
Mrs Arnold who summitted Mt Everest herself said on Campbell Live last night the chances of rescuing a climber stranded above 8000 metres in the "death zone" were extremely slim.
Mrs Arnold said she understood Inglis sought help by radioing to base camp and was instructed to leave Sharp.
This action has brought criticism from Everest's first conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary.
Mrs Arnold said: "This is extrememly difficult to judge from any of us who weren't actually up there and I would not point the finger at anyone in this situation."
" When you are up there you can barely breath, you can't eat, you can barely drink – all you can really do is plod on upwards with this one thing in mind.
"What it would involve to launch a rescue would almost be beyond the brain capacity of a person at high altitude."
Mrs Arnold recalled the moments when her husband Rob called her from the summit shortly before he died.
She said she knew there were attempts to rescue him by the Sherpas and that was what mattered the most.
"It's the trying that counts," she said.
"You would never point a finger, and I feel sorry for Mark (Inglis) to have to face these many fingers and I congratulate Mark on what he's done – I sympathise with him." Mrs Arnold said climbers at the high point are carrying the bare minimum for themselves to survive.
"They're battling right to the very edge of their own ability."
"Rob, my husband, used to say the chance of you being able to be rescued above 8000m is like as if you're on the moon – it's virtually impossible."
The world was alerted to Sharp's death on May 15, the same day he was seen by Inglis, by a blog entry by Brazilian Vitor Negrete.
Since then, Negrete died climbing alone without supplementary oxygen.
Details of Negrete's death were widely known within a day but the Everestnews.com website said nobody would talk about Sharp until Inglis and fellow New Zealand climber Wayne Alexander disclosed that he was left to die by 40 climbers who went past him while he was in trouble.
Sharp had climbed alone after two previous unsuccessful attempts in 2003 and 2004, without oxygen. Both times he was forced to turn back at 8470m.
This time, he apparently reached the summit with the help of two oxygen bottles from his trekking company, which took him only to base camp.
Climbers would normally take Sherpas and four or five oxygen bottles for a summit bid, according to the trekking company which outfitted him.
ExplorersWeb said the China Tibet Mountaineering Association which takes the money for permits to climb on the northern side was "embarrassingly out of control".
"The ignorance of Chinese authorities for anything but to charge permit fees has led to an over-crowded, lawless and dangerous situation on Everest's north side, adding to the risk of the climb itself," the explorers said.
"Commercial budget expeditions are signing up clients by the dozen and base camp has a bar and a mobile brothel. Individual climbers are robbed in high camps, which this year has contributed to at least one climber's death".
If 40 more people lost their lives, it would be a better thing?
I know that; that's why I wrote "some combination of 40 human beings".
Stop with the excuses, already, for god's sake. Being a mountain climber doesn't give one the right to just keep walking. And you're spinning like mad, I've read the articles. I don't need anymore slanted views of this story.
Good night.
There are several "camps" on the way to the summit. They were not close to Base Camp. They were 2 hours from the last tent before the summit. That tent is still in the death zone, where people start dying minute by minute until they get out.
Agreed.
They paid 35 grand for the privilege.
Believe me, the fact that it appears in a dictionary doesn't make it a word.
"Anyways" is in Merriam-Webster now, as is "alot." That doesn't make them words.
The Russian climber Anatoli Boukreev was superhuman in his capacity to handle altitude sickness. When everyone else was disoriented, mentally and physically fighting for their own survival, he had his energy and wits.
But he is the exception to the rule.
What do you mean "we", paleface?
"the fact that it appears in a dictionary doesn't make it a word."
Maybe in your world.
And another account states that this victim paid only $8000 which meant he had no Sherpas to carry his load, no guides, and substandard equipment.
The guy got what he paid for. Why should well prepared and well equipped people be forced to make their own children orphans?
I agree, to an extent. Unless they have the altitude acclimatization of a Sherpa or the DNA of a Reinhold Messner, climbers in the death zone are lucky to save themselves.
What has changed is the commercialization. I get the sense that in the old days, all climbers felt a kinship and if one got into trouble everyone else in range would race in to help. Multiple helpers makes a rescue (barely) possible above 8000 meters. But now with with commercial expeditions, it's just amateurs who don't know and don't care much about each other, guided (sometimes poorly) by professionals who have all they can do to keep functional clients going, let alone badly injured ones.
Yes
South Side of the Sky
"Taking issue with someone spending their own money as they see fit" has nothing to do with large government or small government. Anyone is free to disapprove of other people's choices in life. If I say I disapprove of parents allowing their adolescent and pre-adolescent daughters to dress like prostitutes, that is not an endorsement of a new socialist program to require modest conformity in female attire -- it's just an expression of my disapproval.
I didn't suggest that anyone, much less any government, try to interfere with how these people spend their money. But all this indignant sputtering over how they deal with each other is ridiculous. Not to mention that statements from various sputterers quoted in the article seem to be implying that there SHOULD be some involvement of governmental law enforcement in the activities of these reckless climbers, e.g. the ExplorersWeb saying "The ignorance of Chinese authorities for anything but to charge permit fees has led to an over-crowded, lawless and dangerous situation on Everest's north side" -- sounds to me like they're saying Chinese authorities ought to running law enforcement operations on the mountain -- I'm saying leave whoever's dumb enough to go up there to sort it out for themselves.
I would rather be the hero to that mans life and it would be well worth $35,000.
They all go up there to die. In the cold. Alone.
Go read the Tehran Times or Mecca News Press.... pretty sad lot
Very good point - lots of the posters here who decry the passing by of someone who was not rescue-able, likely expend only the smallest effort to help many in this world who are very rescue-able.
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