you are aware they had to actually step over the dying person (black pants, yellow jacket) to get to the summit …
that was not some abstract “let’s solve homelessness/malaria” thoughts, that was actually going out of your way to not help.
I don’t know if that puts me on a high horse, but I seriously question the priorities and value system of that “community” - oddly enough the only person helping/staying with the Pakistani was a drone/camera operator (that - as I understand it - had no plans to summit) …
All the other ones - all had more important things to do that day, it seems.
Yup. It’s pretty concrete, there’s nothing abstract about it. But that’s what high altitude mountaineering in this day and age. Everyone up there knows the cold equations and that’s what they signed up for. I would praise someone who stopped to help Hassan regardless of the inevitable outcome. But I wouldn’t blame someone who continued to the summit either.
Stayed with him and did what, exactly? If you don’t give him oxygen and haul him down the mountain, he’s dead. The article did mention, however, that the dead man was working as part of a team—sounds like they were not exactly properly organised.
Thanks for the article, this provides a lot of context. There were a ton of people stepping over this guy to reach the summit. Anyone could have helped. I suspect this is a diffusion of responsibility kind of situation, where everyone figured someone else would help. To my mind it doesn’t make Sandy Hill Pittman notably any worse than anyone else who ignored the guy… But it points to a problematic culture that would allow something like this to happen.
This desperate man was probably ill-equipped because he couldn’t afford any better and he wanted to get help for his mother. And a bunch of rich white people and their hired help walked right over him. That’s a culture problem.
I’m not sure what you mean by “near impossible” when you seem to suggest in your next sentence it can be safely done with 3-4 strong people. Those ideas seem contradictory to me.
There were a lot more than three or four people going up that bottleneck. That photo showed at least thirty. So I don’t see how this would be a problem.
I guess it is a convenient narrative for all up there (that are unwilling to take a shot at helping) that it is impossible to help a person in distress …
we should not normalize or even promote this (evidently debunked) gaslight-narrative by repeating it - as it were an established fact. It just took one committed person to save another one.
Again, I “jugde” the persons for their lack of trying - not for their lack of results.
Agree, and well stated. Stepping over a person in distress on a remote mountainside, because everyone else is doing so, because they knew the risks, because I alone cannot help them, because I assume someone else will, because my goal…seems wrong because it is wrong.
That took 2 trained sherpas (on what looks like much more conducive terrain, although Idk what it was like the whole way).
In the case we’re discussing, I doubt ordinary climbers could have done much, if anything - all appear to be headed uphill on an extremely narrow path. Going in reverse doesn’t seem to be an option if anyone is behind you.
Very few humans have the genetic gifts to operate like that in that environment. Most of the people with those gifts are Sherpa, and even then few are capable of a feat like that. Occasional Westerners have the abilities but they are few and far between.
And yet the picture shows many people there. Even if one by themselves couldn’t do anything, are you saying that a dozen couldn’t do anything to help a fellow human in dire need, even though they do have the physical capacity to climb over him to the top, take selfies, and then descend, climbing over him a second time?
what fits this “convenient narrative” space is that a few mountaineers seem to mention that he was already dead when they jumped over him (still pre-dawn) … when later drone footage showed that he did still move with (post-dawn) daylight 2 hours later.
so, there might be quite a bit of " stretching the truth to make it fit your story" in many of those mountaineering defenses (past and present)
And to think one can round up a few people from dozens, who are on separate expeditions and teams, and each climber has paid upwards of $50,000 to $75,000 to be there, not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in prior climbs and training, and also the lengthy times away from families and friends while training, to help someone they don’t know, well, that’s very naïve.
I’m confused by this story. It mentions the porter was hanging upside down in ropes, but then there is video like I link to below. Is there a definitive article on the event?
For the record, I was a SAR member for many years and I did an alpine rescue of someone that had fell, dislocated their shoulder, and had to spend a chilly night on a treacherous location. I wasn’t the official SAR response though: We were in to summit peaks while there was snow and came upon the group. My partner and I did a ton of work for this rescue including the rope work and rope harness required while they waited for local SAR. This was at the 10K level and we were wiped before we were done. I couldn’t imagine trying to do this at higher elevations and without training.
Not impossible, but very difficult. It would be extremely hard for any group of people up there, all at the limits of their abilities, to assist a non-ambulatory climber without putting themselves at great risk. I think you underestimate the amount of effort it would be to get Hassan to safety compared to the effort required to get themselves to the summit and back down.
One thing to keep in mind is that people at those altitudes are just plain dumb. I saw a documentary once where climbers on Everest were tested for mental acuity, at base camp, and then again at the various higher camps. IIRC the tests were stuff like simple stuff like hand-eye coordination and basic math. Performance at the higher camps practically fell off a cliff. Expecting people to have good judgement above 8000m is a fool’s errand.
At those altitudes it is very hard to rescue someone who cannot assist you at all. If the reporting is correct, though, the climber in question did stop with her team. Members of her team along with some others went down below the ropes to bring Hassan back up to the path. It was her cameraman ( not the drone operator) who stayed with him and gave him oxygen for several hours until his oxygen ran low and he needed to get more.
The man was part of a group fixing ropes. The rest of this group who were mostly trained and experienced porters, were not able to rescue him. Part of the problem is that each climbing group contributes porters to the rope-fixing crew so he was working with people he may not have known well.
Also, as people have noted, at those altitudes it can take all of your breath and energy just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Clearly, there is plenty of blame to go around. His team is to blame for inadequately equipping him. The rest of the rope-fixing team is to blame for not helping him immediately. The climbers are to blame for continuing on to the top and not stopping to help. I actually assign somewhat less blame to this climber because she did stop, members of her team did get him back to the path, and she did leave one of her team members with him giving him oxygen while she summitted. She actually did more than just step over him on the way to the top while members of other teams really did just step over him.
Also, when you look at the picture, the location of the fall was at a very narrow area. It would be hard to carry someone without losing your balance and falling. There is not room for several people to work together. There were ongoing avalanches that made some teams turn back. It was the middle of the night and dark. Finally, we don’t know how much he was injured but we do know that his oxygen mask was cracked which would make it harder to share oxygen.
I just wanted to repost the link to this article which does support the climber’s story.
So your position seems to be that letting people die is fine, provided that they can be kept out of your immediate vicinity and that you don’t have to step over them while they are dying. I agree that stepping over a dying person is intuitively horrible, but is our moral intuition really correct here? Millions of people (for example) dying of malaria is a fact, it is not “abstract” except in the sense that the suffering and death is not in front of us (in the West) every day.
So there are easy actions all of us could take that would certainly save lives, yet we do not act. Whereas there is no clarity that there was any further useful aid that Kristin Harila or her team could have provided beyond what they already did. What moral difference does physically stepping over someone really make?
I don’t know if she is blameless, but I have no time for the supercilious unexamined moral certainty shown by some in this thread.
As others are discussing, I think the bigger issue is whether he and others are exploited by wealthy climbers, and whether for him risking his life in going there was a free choice in the same sense that Harila made a choice to be there; and indeed whether the reaction to a paid helper getting into difficulty is the same as the reaction to a paying client getting into similar diffculty.
