Dying Everest Climber - What would you have done?

[Two-Words]

Hmmm..
Ive checked this thread 3 times to see where I said " what a tosser", and nowhere can it be found, there are no deleted posts either.

While I dont deny I use the term " what a tosser", nowhere in this thread have I said it.

I dont like to be "quoted" out of context.

Al :confused:

reputation comment

[silkwood]

So far all I've seen on this post is "I've read" or "I'd heard" or "someone told me".
There is a lot of very judgemental comment from a number of individuals who have absolutely no bloody idea what they are talking about.

What has been reported has predominantly been by non-climbers who have an interest in stirring up controversy. Much of what I've read here is best summed up by "sanctimonious crap"!

I've climbed for many years (nowhere near this level) and count a number of very good mountaineers as friends. One lost his life on Everest a few years ago.

We have no idea of the situation, the conditions or the mental state of the participants. Much of the comment about how these people are scum I actually find most offensive. YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!

You can't put yourself in their shoes because you simply can't imagine how it was. There may have been an argument for attempting a rescue (although, from an informed perspective I doubt it) but I don't see how we can reasonably judge this with the information available (and I've had a lot more information than has been generally available). I certainly don't see how such vindictive and malicious comments can be justified.

Can't we discuss how ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT it is that Lincoln Hall got down?!

Sorry to sound so forthright but this self-righteous commentary coming from all (uninformed) angles this week has pi##ed me off! I'm not trying to say I know more than you, I simply don't know. I AM questioning the visciousness of the comments.

Cheers,

[Studley 2436]

So far all I've seen on this post is "I've read" or "I'd heard" or "someone told me".
Cheers,

I think I said that myself. However how many have been to the Himilayas to climb? Really people are just saying this is what I am basing my opinion on.

Reading I did last night about this was that some climbers undersupply themselves trusting that they can relie on help from more conservative climbers.

It is truly amazing that Hall got down. The thing is he was helped by people who were on the way up and abandoned their own summit to help him. Now what happened up there with Hall is something we down here can never understand. Up there on the roof of the world is a desolate place where your own personal survival can be your only objective. So I think Hall's party did the right thing leaving him based on the situation that they had. The rescuers obviously made the right decision too because he came out alive. Up there I doubt anyone is able to think that well. It is too cold and windblown and you can't even breathe.

I think the thing that upset people earlier was that the reports said that people on their way up chose not to help. Edmund Hillary, now there is someone who really does know what is and isn't Kosher for a climber, damned them for not helping.

I still don't think I would ever want to climb it though. Too many people going up and down, I'd rather go somewhere I can experience nature without the crowd rushing by. That's my opinion and I am welcome to it.

Studley

[silentC]

I've had a lot more information than has been generally available

Enlighten us...

[silkwood]

Firstly, sorry for sounding so aggressive in my last post, this topic has really got under my skin. I will add some comment but I would like to point out I don't subscribe to the view that if we have all the available information we'll understand, or be in a position to make valid comment. I think there is way too much such comment from people who have read all the data but in reality have little understanding of a situation. To be honest I think there is more than a little in this forum, where some (only a few) have a comment to make about everything. I get the feeling some of the comments are based upon what's been read, not upon experience. I'm not convinced this is a good thing.

Well, after that rant...

Most commentary from those on the mountain suggests David Sharp was found without any ability to move, apart from his head. He was conscious, though barely, at one point (it has been reported). The consensus APPEARS to be that there was no way he could have assisted his own passage and in all likelihood would not survive the movement.

Now to those who say it doesn't matter, if there was even the remotest chance, they should have tried: have any of you ever taken part in a search & rescue? The amount of physical effort for even eight people to carry someone over rough ground for any significant distance is incredible. It's not like the movies where two guys carry their mate over kilometers of wilderness to the hospital (complete with gorgeous female doctor who falls in love with one of them). If someone cannot assist at all it is bloody hard work. Now consider being up above ABC on Everest. Limited oxygen, hard work just to place one foot in front of the other, your life depends upon your focus.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to effect such a rescue in such conditions. It also puts every participant's life at risk (please, don't say "they had the energy to keep climbing", you have no idea, really). In short it is SOMETIMES a good decision to leave someone in such a situation.

Now this is not to suggest there is no debate in mountaineering circles, there is. Not everybody agrees David Sharp should have been left. The thing is, in this culture everyone is aware of the nuances of such situations and you will rarely hear comments such as "these people are scum". Such comments are ill-informed offensive pulp and have no place in a debate which, in reality, is understood by very few (this few does NOT include me). I have great respect for Ed Hillary and not just for his climbing (which in reality has been a small part of his life) but for his work since. However he hasn't climbed seriously for years, he has a limited persective on current climbing and it's not hard to forget the time when you thought if you didn't place one foot in front you'd die. Hillary commands much respect but doesn't speak for a majority of the climbing community.

Some left and then passed Lincoln Hall at some point and from what I've heard this was probably good judgement. The bloody brilliant thing is that somehow he revived enough to convince others to rescue him (that is, his condition convinced them). It is not a case of this group being more morally responsible.

I know I've raved, please allow me one final comment..

For those who said they wouldn't follow their own goals at the expense of someone else's life consider this: If you mortgage your house to the hilt, commit your life to paying as much as you can to charity, sell all your woodwork tools (yes including the Domino, it is a hobby after all) and live simply you could help to save (literally) hundreds of lives in third world countries. The money you have just been given by Little Johnny in tax cuts could be put to providing real (non-judgemental) answers for our indigenous population. Instead of heading out to the shed in your spare time you could be out helping those less fortunate, donating your time and spare money to charity. I'm in the same boat as most of you. Hands up those who consider themselves SCUM!

Cheers (and thanks for listening),

[silentC]

First thing I'd say in people's defence is that it is human nature to have an opinion and wouldn't it be a boring forum if everyone kept their's to themselves?

Second, it's also human nature to judge other people's actions, often without all of the information. We have all been guilty of that and I suspect many of us have also been victims of it, I know I have.

Still, that's what makes us what we are.

With regard to this issue, yes we do probably put too much stock in what we read in the papers but when it is the only source of information at hand, we have no choice (assuming we wish to stay in touch). When someone who is world famous for his involvement with Everest tells us that it was the wrong thing to do, we believe him.

Perhaps people in climbing circles are too close to the situation to judge objectively. Like any clique, they tend to close circles in the face of outside criticism. That's human nature number 3: "you don't know what you are talking about, I have special inside information not available to you, so your opinion is invalid. You don't know what you are talking about unless you have been where we have been."

It is probably unfortunate for the people who left David Sharp up there that Lincoln Hall was rescued a few days later.

[silkwood]

Good comment SilentC and if I didn't get so heated up prior to this I probably wouldn't have been quite so agitated in my comments. Of course we need to make judgements based upon the information we have. I'm not sure that means we have to make judgements though (at least not all the time). Can't this lead us to prematurely making up our minds and thus setting up a fixed mindset which helps nobody?

I guess I got most annoyed at the vehemence of the responses. For the record, I'm not sure I agree with leaving Sharp, but it's just that..I'm not sure.

Once again, well commented.

Cheers,

[silentC]

I suppose the important thing to remember is that it makes little difference what judgement we make because it's all academic - we have no influence to change the situation one way or the other. In that sense we're just like a herd of cows chewing our cuds at the water trough.

There are other situations in which uninformed opinions ARE dangerous though, particularly when we have a PM as good as Johnnie is at manipulating and using public opinion.

[TassieKiwi]

There are other situations in which uninformed opinions ARE dangerous though, particularly when we have a PM as good as Johnnie is at manipulating and using public opinion.

Indeed.

I agree that everyone should be able to air their opinions. I also think that everyone should read the compelling and gut-wrenching first-hand account (link posted earlier) "Into Thin Air") of an Everest trip that went badly wrong, complete with a miracle story - when Rob Hall and others died in May '96. It is very enlightening on what the 'Death Zone' is like in a storm. -100degC windchill, for crissakes! What is truly telling is that the writer was in such a zombie state that he barely registered that he 'summited', and daily thinks of the good friends/fathers/mothers/husbands and wives that died - some of them directly related to decisions that he made in a stupified state.

Read it. You might think differently afterwards, you might not.

[rrich]

I'm not a climber. I'm too much of an old methane gas cloud to even consider becoming a climber.

Within the last couple of years, our PBS network broadcast a documentry about climbing Everest. Each individual has a finite period of time that they can surrive in the death zone. Each individual has a finite store of energy that they can withdraw for use in the death zone. Unfortunately the amount of time and energy available are unknown until they are depleted. Death then follows.

According to the documentry, once a climber enters the death zone, only that climber can, themself, retreat from the death zone. The reason is that no one else has a sufficient enough energy store to extract themself and another climber from the death zone. It is one of the most brutal facts about extreme mountain climbing.

Another problem is the human lungs. The sacs in the lungs that exchange oxygen and CO2 fill with fluid at that altitude making them less efficient in an atmosphere severely depleted of oxygen. The longer the climber spends at extreme altitude, the more the sacs fill with fluid. Obviously a very grave situation.

The facts, as presented by the documentry, indicate that once a climber's health deteriorates beyond a certain point, the only certainty is death. It is the climber's mind that does the most damage. The climber has this 'I think I can, I think I can...' mentality. The climbers that refuse to acknowlege the the signs of altitude sickness and retreat immediately are usually the ones that fall victim to the death zone.

The climbers that walked past the distressed climber were accepting the grim reality of the environment. The distressed climber probably died the previous day but didn't realize it and just moved into a position where his death became more obvious and still dealing with the 'I think I can' mentality.

There are many cadavers in the death zone and they will probably stay there for all eternty. There is just no realistic way go bring them down. The same is true for the climber that has passed their point of endurance, there is just no realistic way to bring them down.

Sorry mates but the environment on Everest is a killer. Once a climber remains past the limits of their physical endurance, it's all over. Please don't think harshly of the climbers that passed by the distressed climber, there just was nothing that they could do. It's not like passing a disabled vehicle on the side of the road but rather like passing a burned out hulk of a vehicle on the side of the road. There is nothing that could be done.

[silentC]

Understand all that Rich. The problem is that a few days later, a similar thing happened to another climber, except this time the guys who found him aborted their summit attempt and organised a rescue (or so I have read). OK, so he probably walked down under his own steam and maybe the earlier guy was not capable of that. The point is, there are exceptions to the rules that people are quoting regarding survival (or not) in the Dead Zone.

At the end of the day, it was a judgement call on the part of the people on the scene whether or not to attempt to save the guy. Who can know whether the same decision would be made by different people under the same circumstances? Is it as simple as looking at a guy and saying he is beyond help, or are there other factors that would determine how one person, or group of people, would respond? How qualified to make that call were the people who were there? I suppose this is what people are questioning, especially when someone else was rescued in similar circumstances - and after all of the words I have read justifying the first party's actions because of the impossibility of rescue at that altitude. Never say never because as soon as you do, someone proves you wrong

[silkwood]

"I've actually seen the top of everest....from 6000ft"Shedhand

Shedhand, at 6000ft you would have bumped into Kosciouszko!

Cheers,

[rrich]

SilentC,
In yesterday's LA Times there was a much better explanation of the incident. Several sherpas attempted to help Sharp with Oxygen. Aparently Sharp was beyond help at that point. Also, I believe that the rescue was from an elevation much less than Sharp's location.

Evidently Sharp and his partner were on an unguided climb. The partner made the summit and then got back to ABC where he died.

The situation is a tragic one. I think that the mentality is triage like. Save the ones that you can and pray for the ones that you can't.

I shudder when I think about it, but it is a different environment than I am accustomed to.

[Studley 2436]

I was reading that the climb leader of Inglis's group thought that Sharp was allready dead. They were close to the spot where there is a dead climber frozen and still standing there years after his death that's what they thought.

The story also went on that Everest is a bit of a circus. All sorts of theft and sabotage go on. Some people just rock up on the bargain basement end of things and assume that someone will rescue them if they get in trouble. Of course if you make the effort to be really properly set up do you sacrifice your supplies and oxygen that you very well might need because someone is up there without proper preparation? You'd have to be there to know what you would do.

The Oz Army was there and found they had to lock their tents to prevent theft and also had to run an intel op to find out who was with them who was against them to ensure their safety. The Everest climb to me seems to be a sad commentary on human nature. That's not to say anything bad about climbing or climbers beyond that. I can understand the desire to stretch yourself to achieve and the push to face a challenge and succeed. Climbing mountains is an admirable pursuit just that what happens each year at Everest is a different thing. Actually I am pretty sure that a serious climber who ignores Everest but has summited on other 8000m plus peaks would be held by his group in just as high regard.

Studley

[CameronPotter]

Now more stories are coming out with various version sof events, how many of these can be right? Possibly all - if viewed from different angles.

The first reports (ala Hilary) seemed to indicate that this man could be saved. The later reports said that he couldn't. Then they said that he would have died if he was moved. Furthermore, some people say that to spend time with someone up there is to run out of oxygen and die, but some reports say that someone did wait with him for 90 minutes... It all seems a bit confused, although I suspect that a fair amount of the confusion is either grandstanding or tail-covering, I don't know which.

I think that what most people here were complaining about though was more the concept (rather than the people necessarily) that someone's goals might come before another person's life.

As for the comment by Studley:

Actually I am pretty sure that a serious climber who ignores Everest but has summited on other 8000m plus peaks would be held by his group in just as high regard.
Studley

You may be right, I can't say for sure. But I suspect that it would be more akin to someone doing perfect handcut finger joints and another doing perfect hand cut dovetails. They are both joints, they both required precision to do, but the dovies would get more respect. Like it or not, there are benchmarks. These often don't make much sense, but people still use them as a measuring stick. Another example, think about sports. No-one cares if you almost break a record, but if you do break a record, then it is a big deal.

Personally, I agree with you, but I would guess that most people wouldn't...