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Tourist board criticised for new regulations, which also prohibit solo ascents with the aim of reducing the number of accidentsSolo climbers, blind people and double amputees have been banned from climbing Everest under new rules the Nepalese tourism ministry believes will reduce the number of deaths on the mountain. The changes have provoked criticism from the US ambassador to Nepal and a former Gurkha soldier planning to scale the peak after losing both legs in Afghanistan. The new rules have been under discussion for a month and were implemented this week, Nepalese officials told the Himalayan Times. British cancer patient...

Sharp unrescuable, says Chinese mountaineer Updated: 2006-05-28 09:14 Chinese female mountaineer Luo Lili regretted David Sharp's death in the Mount Qomolangma but said the British climber was at a nearly unrescuable height. "Mountaineers all know the height above 7,000m is very dangerous and usually deemed as an unrescuable height," said Luo on Saturday, who just returned from a May 15 scaling of the world highest peak. Sharp, 34, ran out of oxygen and died in a snow cave just 300 meters from the summit on his way down the Himalayan mountain. Dozens of people had walked right past him, unwilling...

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...

HE remembers the women sunbathing naked on the deck of a passing yacht. He remembers, too, the lurking menace of a Russian intelligence-gathering trawler, watching from afar as one of the most audacious American coups of the cold war unfolded on the ocean floor, 16,500ft beneath the Pacific surface. David Sharp recalls every detail of the 1974 mission known as Project Azorian, one of the most ambitious, expensive and politically volatile clandestine operations launched by the CIA. As one of the CIA’s agents in charge of recovering a sunken Soviet submarine and its cargo of nuclear-tipped missiles, Sharp spent 63...

A stricken climber left to die on Everest was saved by an American guide and a sherpa who found her by accident as they returned from the summit. The dramatic rescue of the Nepalese woman has reopened a passionate debate about mountaineering ethics, a year after the controversial death on the mountain of the British climber David Sharp. The woman, identified only as Usha, was found on Monday morning suffering from severe altitude sickness about 550 metres beneath the 8,848m (29,028ft) summit. She was at a similar altitude to the cave where Sharp died on May 15, 2006, after an...

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...