Posted on 05/24/2006 3:16:47 PM PDT by Mad Dawgg
OTOH, it seems to be a pervasive attitude in our culture these days. I've met some pretty callous people. Common courtesy isn't so common any more.
thanks
Sad, but facinating story.
Good people: " If I don't do this, no one else will."
A member of the party tried to give Sharp oxygen, and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit, he said.
His own party was able to render only limited assistance and had to put the safety of its own members first, Inglis said Wednesday.
So they "put the safety of their own members first" by continuing to the summit? How about postponing your climb and helping the guy? Mark Inglis is a scumbag.
That's exactly right.
What happens if all 40 who passed him by instead decide they're going to save him and get him down? Does anyone think they couldn't have done it?
My daughter was born in 1986. We named her Hillary.It was a beautiful name from a Saint of the Church and a character from a Dorothy Sayers novel.
We were terribly dismayed when the horrible woman named after the obscure beekeeper came along. Everybody thought we named our daughter after the horrible woman even though she was no more than an obscure corrupt lawyer at the time.
My mistake. I thought he was named after her.
You learn more about a man after two days on a mountain than you could knowing him twenty years in the valley.
Just unbelievable and so disgusting.
To leave someone to die alone. and then to admit that is what they did shows they don't even think that was awful.
Someone should shame these people and let them know we don't count their " achievement ".
I'm glad somebody with some heft spoke up. I thought it was absolutely disgraceful.
Exactly.
Don't forget that the "old school" could be ruthless as well.
The men who settled the American west, the real mountain men who went first, could be very unforgiving to a stranded stranger, but very loyal to their friends as well.
Remember "A Man Called Horse" (Dorothy Johnson, 1975)?
The English explorer is mauled by a bear and left to die by his own party.
Even early 20th century explorers avoided deep attachments to the hired help and especially the animals. Many loyal dogs made a one-way trip to the North pole.
Not a chance in the world.
At that altitude even with oxygen the most fit person struggles to put one foot in front of the other. You or I would be lucky to make the trek to base camp (I've treked the 'Desolation Wilderness' which is MUCH lower and tamer then the trek to Everest base camp.).
Even the dimmest of the tourists knows this before going up. If you haul yourself up there you ether haul yourself back down or die on the mountain, no third option. A brutally simple calculus.
Hillary likely thinks a 'gentleman' should have made a vain effort. He knows how pointless the effort would have been.
Hugh Glass comes to mind as well as a mountain man epic figure. Your point is well taken, but I guess I was looking to the expeditions that sought glory in the age of exploration - we're more properly in the age of narcissim. No question that fame drove many then, but they were a distinctly different breed of men, mostly principled and much, much tougher than the adrenaline junkies, eco-tourists and sundry others that seem to flock to Everest.
Agreed.
"Age of Narcissim", indeed ;)
If the stricken climber is not able to walk, it is quite impossible.
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".
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
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