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

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by 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.

My only idea is that oxygen at an earlier point might, *might* have allowed the man a chance to make it down the mountain.

As you say, a choice and at that a choice that I would hope that I would prefer to offer to a human life over my chance to be the 39,053rd to stand upon the world's highest summit.

[notyoueither]

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.

We can know if they tried.

They did not by their own admission.

They suck. Sir Edmund Hillary said so.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Agathon
Look, we don't know enough about the man's condition.

We know he was seen working on his oxygen system by several climbers. Does that sound like someone with no chance of survival?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Sandman

We know he was seen working on his oxygen system by several climbers. Does that sound like someone with no chance of survival?

Could be. I've read stories of severely hypoxic people doing that.

This guy was only 300m from the summit, and was severely hypoxic according to reports. The kiwi guy said he was "too far gone".

Do you realize where that is on the peak? That's above the Balcony and about midway from there to the South Summit.

You can rescue people from the South Col, but once you get a reasonable distance above that, rescues are very dicey propositions. And this guy was very far from the South Col.

[Drake Tungsten]

Apparently Aleister Crowley was one of the leaders of the first professional expedition to make an attempt on K2. WTF? How come Led Zep never wrote a song about Crowley's mountaineering exploits? Or did I just miss the real meaning of Misty Mountain Hop?

edit: Kanchenjunga too...

[Lawrence of Arabia]

the guy had his oxygen mask, and two bottles of oxygen, which he had used. No one would have to share their mask, just give him one of their extra bottles of oxygen...

the guys oxygen mask malfunctioned, thats why he was dying in the first place.

[Lancer]

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



Damn we're sick.

[Colon™]

'Dead' Everest climber 'is alive'
Everest

An Australian man believed to have died as he descended Mount Everest has been found alive.

Lincoln Hall, 50, was presumed to have died on Thursday when he was left behind by his Sherpas after he started hallucinating and refusing to move.

But another climber found Mr Hall still alive on Friday, triggering a large-scale rescue effort.

Duncan Chessell, whose company DCXL is helping in the rescue, said Mr Hall remained in "grave danger".

"It's going to be a miracle if he can get out of it. He is in bad shape," he said.

The incident came amid continuing controversy over whether a New Zealand climber, Mark Inglis, was right to leave behind British climber David Sharp, who died on Mount Everest earlier this month.

Tea and oxygen

Mr Hall, an experienced climber, reached the summit of Everest on Thursday.

Another member of the climb, German Thomas Weber, died shortly before reaching the summit, according to a statement issued by expedition leader Alexander Abramov.

Mr Hall became weak as he and two Sherpas descended, and then became incoherent and semi-conscious, according to Mr Chessell, who had been informed of events by radio.

The Sherpas tried to move Mr Hall down the mountain, but after several hours' effort and running out of oxygen, they were told by their expedition leader to leave him behind, Mr Chessell said, speaking in Australia.

Mr Abramov's statement said Mr Hall had died as he descended.

But on Friday, an American climber - Dan Mazur - came across Mr Hall and found he had survived the night, at more than 8,000m (24,000ft) and was still alive.

After giving him hot tea and oxygen, a radio call was made to Mr Abramov, who ordered an urgent rescue mission.

Mr Chessell warned that it was too early to say if the rescue would be successful.

"It's a big risk for them to go up there. It will take at least three days to get him back to safety," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5019288.stm

[BlackCat]

Doesn't change things a bit - as you may have noticed, his sherpas had to leave him because their lifes was at stake.

Somehow I think that you see climbing Mt Everest as a walk in a park.

[Colon™]

For chrissake, how many times do I have repeat this crap? IS IT REALLY THIS HARD to make a distinction between "endangering their own lives by helping him" and "as good as dead anyway"? You don't need to be a friggin lawyer to understand what the difference is.
So, ONCE MORE... OF COURSE I don't expect those sherpas, or anyone else, to help if it endangers their own lives. However, if the motivation is that there's no point in it, then there seems to be reason to doubt that line of thought.

You're certainly not helping this discussion with caricaturesque statements like that.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Doesn't change things a bit - as you may have noticed, his sherpas had to leave him because their lifes was at stake.

Somehow I think that you see climbing Mt Everest as a walk in a park.

The Sherpas had already summited and were on their way down, to safety. He was passed, however, IIUC, by folks on their way UP. If youre headed up, you still have SOME slack, so you can summit and return, no?

If everyone who passed him was someone on the way down, that would be one thing. But if the folks who passed him were on their way UP, one could argue that they put their chance to summit ahead of this guys life.

On the other hand this guy himself went on to summit after a member of his team died under unexplained circumstances. Which hardly makes HIM look good either.

All together, it makes the whole thing look an enterprise where the glory of summiting, and the drive for money (for guiding people who really shouldnt go) has gotten the best of things.

But then we've already gotten that idea, from reading books like Krakuers.

[BlackCat]

@LOTM - Colon has put another story into this thread concerning another group, and it was that I answered - no offense - it's a tough thread .

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Colon™
For chrissake, how many times do I have repeat this crap? IS IT REALLY THIS HARD to make a distinction between "endangering their own lives by helping him" and "as good as dead anyway"? You don't need to be a friggin lawyer to understand what the difference is.
So, ONCE MORE... OF COURSE I don't expect those sherpas, or anyone else, to help if it endangers their own lives. However, if the motivation is that there's no point in it, then there seems to be reason to doubt that line of thought.

You're certainly not helping this discussion with caricaturesque statements like that.

No need to yell - I'm not that far away

Seriously. When I read your postings I get the feeling that you expect people to react as if it was an accident at the local highway driveoff. That may be a mistake of mine and not intended.

Imran had early in this thread a comment that I guess that we both would consider stupid - not stopping to help at a car accident - I guess that we both would do that. He may be excused being a yank where you don't know if it's a real accident or a trap.

Your second story tells that human beings are pretty stubborn and doesn't lay down to die that easy. Still, it doesn't change anything when the people in the original situation should make their descision. Anything in their experience - including radio communications - said that there wasn't anything thay could do. That you can present another story that contradicts this doesn't change anything - they were in place and had to do their evaluation.

Considering that 40 people where I assume that at least half of them are sherpas desiceded that they couldn't do anything, I think that there really wasn't anything they could have done to help.

[Colon™]

The problem is that those calculations wrt the chances of survival could be influenced by their desire to reach their objectives. Not that I would want to put like Kaak when he's equally caricaturally stating that they left him to die because they wanted to reach the top, but I have there's reasoning in terms of a trade-off like "ok, either I go for the 1/million chance he survives, either I go for 5/10 chance I reach my objective". In normal life we tend to accept great costs for a small chance of rescuing a person's life and we don't accept self-interests to influence a decision in this regard.
All of this assuming that the prerequiste of self-preservation has been met. I also certainly won't doubt that the people on the spot are in the best position to calculate whether they'd be risking their own lives by helping him.

That 40 people came to the same decision doesn't really say a lot. Climbers are a circle of their own, such circles usually have their own mores, and it wouldn't surprise me all of those people similarly didn't solely base their decision on self-preservation. Agathon already indicates that climbers seem to think of it as a "just the way it is".

And I had to shout, you were not trying to reason with me.

[BlackCat]

And I had to shout, you were not trying to reason with me.

I actually did, but felt that I was repeating myself - lots of postings had given me the impressin that the situation should have been treated as a local accident in the neighbourhood, and that isn't true.

I'm quite aware of the fact that an initial thought would be "****, if I help him, I screw my chance to get to the top", but I don't buy this argument. After all, climbing Mt Eversest isn't a "you have only one shot at this" event, and I think that every person going for this peak would want and expect help from another group if in distress.

I guess that you are right when you presume that climbers of this hill are egositic bastards (a pretty rough way to say that they have a goal), but that doesn't make them inhumane.

Besides that, one thing is the climbers, the other is the sherpas. That is those locals that are making a living out of crazy people trying to climb this peak. First of all, they are experts - if they aren't, noone will hire them - next, they wouldn't give up anybody if they thought there was a chance - they are humans after all - add to that they have to protect their reputation - if they just let people die, it would be bad for them.

You may think that it's the climbers that descide what is going to happen - I disagree - nothing happens unless the sherpas says yes.