Honestly, I don’t read it that way. I have friends who’ve summited 8000m peaks, and they have related just how incapable they are of thinking clearly, let alone helping someone out. Every climber up there knows the cold equations, that if they get in trouble the chances of survival is very slim. You can’t rely on others, even if they have the ability to help. They did try to help, and decided to move on.
I can’t condemn her and her team. I won’t complain if others feel differently.
take your time, pls …
a shitty, shitty person that climbed all fourteen 8.000+m mountains in 3 months and one day
I think it’s fair to say that a great many people would have more respect for her had she stopped in her tracks and did really something to help a helpless person dying next to her. … but 3 months and one day probably weighs more on the bragging-rights-scale …
no energy to help your neighbour, but energy to keep climbing upwards and probably make a great number of pics and videos from the summit, b/c the world has a right to know that you climbed 14 mountains in 91 days…
one Q that I ask myself: had that person been her father, would she have done more to safe him? … I am fairly certain the answer is YES … so - everybody free to draw their own conclusions
well - she has to live asking herself some Q’s for the rest of her life… not me
Stopping to try and help someone in grave distress, even if in vain, is a greater achievement than climbing to the top of any mountain at any speed. This should not be debatable.
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But was it in Record Time?
Given your disclaimer, how can you possibly justify such a decisive condemnation?
Of course it’s true that if someone fails to provide aid that will clearly save someone’s life at the cost of their own expedition they should be condemned. But this assumes a level of clarity and certainty that is extremely unlikely during the incident. It’s perfectly plausible that enough people were already giving whatever aid was possible, and incremental people would have made no difference at all.
This mountain is so dangerous that people are getting into difficulties all the time, and people often die. Everyone who goes up knows that. If SOP is that everyone must completely abandon the objective of their expedition as soon as anyone on the mountain is in any difficulty, it would be pointless to even begin - nobody would ever summit. So nobody who climbs K2 wants that to be the SOP. It’s always going to be a judgment call - this is not the first time climbers continued past someone who subsequently died, and it’s won’t be the last.
It’s just the way things are on that mountain.
Eh, redacted. Not worth getting into.
And yet the record books are full of the names of people who got to the top and back down again and make no mention of who helped the most people on the mountain.
I agree that morally what you say is superior but our society, based upon actions, does not value that.
Ultimately it is what we value in ourselves not what society thinks that matters.
The problem is that we all live in a larger society. If what I value in myself is at odds with what society values there might be a lot of friction and difficulty.
It’s hard for me to understand from the description in that case what actually happened. It sounds like there was a guy stuck upside down, a bunch of people were trying to help him including people from her camp, and they basically said “we got this” and she went on, not understanding the gravity of the situation. I know I’ve been in bystander scenarios where my presence wasn’t doing much. But I’ve also never climbed a mountain so maybe I’m missing some context.
The alternative, that this woman knew a guy was dying and that he had no hope of saving if she continued, but she continued on, seems unlikely.
Presumably there’s a middle ground here but I’m having trouble seeing it.
There were a few dozen climbers who walked past the guy. So there is no more reason to attack her than these other climbers. She is also no super mountain climber so much more qualified than anyone else. She had Sherpas and other porters to fix ropes, carry supplies, etc. Super mountain climbers would do all this themselves. While obviously a very good climber, her success in climbing all those peaks so quickly was because of logistics, helicopters, hiring top notch sherpas, porters…
Here is another account of thIs K2 tragedy.
What is so painful about this is the exploitation of the vulnerable. Hassan seems possibly unqualified and most certainly under-equipped to be doing this job. Yet there he was. He had a sick mother and needed the money. There is plenty of blame to go around. Let’s put that in the damned record books for society to feast upon.
Speaking as a non-super climber: Sherpas? Rope-fixing teams? Corporations? Lines of climbers?? Camera teams???
No thank you.
For someone to die that high on a fourteener, and to be so unqualified, the moment that they’re committed to dying does not come without prior warning signs to the climber. If the climber is gripped with summit fever such that s/he ignores those signs, well, that is on them.
For all of us who partake in risky activities, even many that are much less extreme than summiting the highest Himalayan peaks, there are frequently warning signs to us that need to be observed and analyzed and, if ignored, can lead to death.
I’ve never done anything I’d consider extreme, or that most of you would consider extreme, but I’ve done some somewhat risky ventures or lifestyles.
At the points where death will result, those Oh Shit I Really Eff’d Up moments, if there happens to be someone there who can save my ass, if they do then I’ll be forever grateful. But if they do not, for whatever reason, then for me (or anyone else, like us here on The Dope) to blame them would be a copout on my part and would also be me not accepting responsibility for my own actions.
That may sound harsh, but it is the truth.
That climber eff’d up and it cost him his life. It is a highly risky activity that frequently costs people their lives. But they know that going in.
Over the last 40 years I vividly remember the 7-8 times when someone else’s action saved my butt. I put myself into a compromised position but they reacted properly and my mistake did not cost me serious injury (and likely not my death, but still…). I remember those moments and they go into my brain’s database on what not to do, and it has made me safer.
It is too easy for some Dopers to blame someone else for Mohammad Hassan’s death.
Hassan fucked up. Pure and simple.
And I think those who exploit the vulnerable own the lion’s share of the blame when the vulnerable perish in unsafe conditions.
I think most people (certainly myself) don’t blame her for Hassan’s death … but I blame her for not doing more to help a peer a stonethrow away - but prioritizing a completely senseless… record
to a certain degree the criticism its about that highly perverted value system that - together with $$$$ - crept into mountaineering… when the proverbial lawyers and dentists started pouring in and shelling out $100k a pop for bragging rights “walk along this rope til it ends” summits, stepping over others in the process…
It stopped being a community of higly skilled sportsmen and started being a business… and pretty much turned into a $hit$how
Yes it did.
And, Sandy Hill didn’t make the summit on her own strength (this was May 1996). She was short-roped to the summit by her Sherpa guide. And then she had to be dragged off the mountain and back to camp IV, or else she would have died without that help. (The Real Story of Sandy Hill Pittman, Everest’s Socialite Climber | Vanity Fair)
And yet her wiki page calls her a mountaineer. (Yes I know she claims the 7 summits…)
You are blaming her for a hypothetical that we don’t know corresponds to what actually happened. We don’t know that there is any additional aid that she could have provided that would have made any difference. Without this information, you cannot just condemn climbers because they don’t immediately abandon their objectives just in case whenever anyone gets into any difficulty.
Get off your high horse. How many homeless people do you drive past every week? Some of them will certainly die, but you just get on with your life without giving aid that might save them. How many people die of malaria every year? Yet you get on with your life, buying things you don’t really need instead of trying to help them.