Double Amputee climbs everest...and passes by dying man w/o helping.

[Sandman]

How is stopping to help someone more risky than continuing a thousand feet upwards?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And how do you know that the expeditioners all just said, our expedition is more important rather than realizing he'll die no matter what we do, since he's had no oxygen for a while and has no gloves?

The gloves thing is a classic example of hypothermia. When a person is freezing to death they will often have these strange sensations that they are super hot and will take off all of their clothes because they feel so warm. Just another example of the mind trying to fool the body.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman
If anyone read that link I provided earlier, you'd have found out that a Sherpa did try to give him oxygen, and lived to tell the tale. So stop pretending that to stop and help is a death sentence.

That Sherpa is a better man then the other 40 combined. FACT!

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Um... people are arguing both. Didn't you see the first page where people were saying they are on Mount freaking Everest, not in their front yards?

Yeah, and I've asked for instance whether they normally have a "buffer-supply" of oxygen, and whether aborting the mission would have provided them with additional oxygen.
I've already said for several times by now that if it'd endangered their own lives then there's a perfectly valid excuse. I just object to this line of argument that he was as good as dead anyway. At the very least, that wouldn't fly in a Belgian court.

Originally posted by BlackCat


None of your exaples does in any way compare to an Everest climb.

They compare in so far that it is possible for someone with extremely little chance for survival to make it out alive. Put simply: as long he's not dead, he's not dead.

[Dinner]

Even if Nepal doesn't have such a law then the guilty bastards should be tried if they go home to a country which does have the law. If a guy can get arrested for screwing a 13 year old girl in Thailand when he gets back home then certainly a person can be arrested for callosely letting a man die even if it is on another continent.

[notyoueither]

No.

Child sex laws are specifically extraterritorial, and even then they are a problem.

[Urban Ranger]

You have to remember that, even if the Inglis team manages to get the Sharp guy down to their own camp 4, it is likely that they couldn't do anything to help him. There's not enough emergency medical equipment to do so. They could give him oxygen, sure, but that's not going to help, in the end.

It's quite different from a mining accident.

[Jon Miller]

illegal != wrong

legal != right

legal != not wrong

JM

[Lancer]

I just can't see the "Double Amputee" offering to lend a hand. Don't know why, just doesn't seem fitting.

[notyoueither]

I think part of the problem is that you can't carry them down, even if you aren't a double amputee.

The 'good guy' in this story is offering to recover personal effects. He is not, and neither is anyone else, offering to recover the body.

I think that puts a different light on the ability to help.

A double amputee should find it easier to lend a hand though. Hell, he can toss it.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
They don't? There sure is in Belgium: anyone who refuses to help a person in need, whilst he could have done so without endangering his own or someone's life can get imprisoned for up to a year. It's not because mountaineers have this certain ethos that they should be treated differently.

Exemption noted. Argument disqualified.

Originally posted by Sandman
If anyone read that link I provided earlier, you'd have found out that a Sherpa did try to give him oxygen, and lived to tell the tale. So stop pretending that to stop and help is a death sentence.

The Sherpa did not, however, try to move the man.

Originally posted by Oerdin
That Sherpa is a better man then the other 40 combined. FACT!

A fact recognized in that they can function rather well without oxygen assistance at that altitude.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by Sandman
If anyone read that link I provided earlier, you'd have found out that a Sherpa did try to give him oxygen, and lived to tell the tale. So stop pretending that to stop and help is a death sentence.

The Sherpa did not, however, try to move the man.

My problem would be with people all along the line before the Sherpa.

I'm not convinced that someone earlier could not have given oxygen when the man could have recovered enough to get down with some assistance, but then again...

People don't carry anyone down that mountain. You walk on your own or you die from what I understand. How capable is someone when they have begun tearing off their clothes from hypothermia (no gloves)?

[Straybow]

My problem would be with people all along the line before the Sherpa.

Why? They couldn't have moved him either. I agree with the man's parents, who accept his death as inherent risk of the endeavor.

He wasn't sitting right beside the other climbers. In a place like that you can't safely wander off your route. If the guy didn't have the strength to move towards them there was nothing they could do. If he had been able, I have no doubt others would have assisted him even at the risk of scrubbing their own ascent.

The Sherpa took the risk of going to where he lay anyway just in case that 1% chance something might help. That was a choice, not a requirement. Perhaps other climbers weren't strong enough that their Sherpas could leave them.

There is intense debate in another case from several years ago on some other mountain I can't recall. Two climbers were roped together. One slipped and was dangling into a crevasse. For some reason he couldn't climb the rope back up. The other did not have the strength to pull him up, and so he cut the rope and made his way back alone.

The doomed climber survived the fall. Having nothing to lose, he crawled blindly through the crevasse and actually made it out. He then crawled for a couple days more and happened upon the base camp. All with a broken leg and other injuries.

The majority of climbers condemned the one who cut the rope, but the miraculous survivor said he would have done the same were their situations reversed.

A somewhat older case is from K2 iirc. Two brothers broke off from a team and made a tricky "speed ascent" with very little in the way of supplies. On the way back they encountered some troubles, and couldn't get down a slope or cliff to return to camp (rope too short or some such). Other climbers saw them and thought they were just waving rather than trying to get help.

The two then went down the steepest face. The stronger climber went ahead scouting the route. The weaker apparently fell to his death. Now, years later, some of his remains were found. They seemed to be too far from the base of the face merely by ice movement, indicating that possibly the lost man hadn't fallen where the brother thought, but perhaps made it much farther down and died of exposure.

The armchair speculation continues. Every decision, every facet of evidence is subject to heated ex post facto debate. The climbing community is much like this forum: predominantly people with way too much ego to ever be wrong, even when they can't possibly know.

[Agathon]

Look, we don't know enough about the man's condition.

On Everest, there is a point where you are just going to die, no matter what happens. You might still be reasonably self-aware and capable of limited movement and communication, but you are going to die no matter what happens.

When one of New Zealand's best known climbers got caught high on Everest 10 years ago, everyone knew he was a dead man, even though they could still make contact with him for quite a while. Even if a miracle had dragged him off the mountain, he would still have died. Normal rules do not apply above 8000m.

Add to that the fact that oxygen deprivation makes testimony unreliable and we have no real idea of what happened.

However, it is customary among Everest climbers to stop and help anyone who can legitimately be helped, if there is no comparable risk to oneself (and even then some people will attempt supererogatory deeds). If it turns out that this guy was not past the point of no return, then they should have helped him.

[Agathon]

Some people in this thread need to spend some time reading about the facts involved in climbing 8000 meter + peaks. Normal rules do not and cannot apply.