The Dying Man on Everest Scenario (Poll The 2nd)

In My Humble Opinion
1

As a lot of people seem to have found that this nonetheless interesting thread about the ethics of Everest had a pretty cut-and-dry answer, i’ve decided to create a scenario with a little more moral ambiguity at play.

Consider this;

You are ascending Everest as part of a small party - let’s say about half a dozen people, including yourself and a Sherpa. You have been within the “death zone” since you arrived at Camp IV yesterday. You started the final push for the summit several hours ago and it’s not quite dawn yet. Thus far, the weather has been fair and you and your mates are fairly confident everyone will summit and make it back safely.

As you approach a rocky outcropping on your path, you see in the beam of your headlamp a man hunched over beneath the rocks - frostbitten, but breathing. You discover that he’s conscious and lucid enough to tell you his name (let’s say it’s Jake), but he’s otherwise confused and can’t stand up or walk under his own power. You radio base camp with his location and are informed there are no other teams close enough to effect a rescue, and says it’s your call.

You have only a minute or two in which to make a decision and there is little opportunity to converse with the rest of the team and gauge their opinions. These are your options;

Option 1: No matter what the rest of the team decides, you stop your ascent and attempt to help Jake to his feet and down the mountain, even if it means doing it yourself.

Option 2: If nobody else in the party is willing to help Jake, you take initiative and help him by yourself. If any other one person in the party stops to help him, you go on.

Option 3: If any one other person stops to help Jake, you will stop and assist them, but you will not take the initiative to help him down on your own.

Option 4: You will help Jake down only if the entire team decides to abandon the ascent and help him down as a group. If at least one person wishes to continue on, you will go with them.

Option 5: You will help Jake if, and only if, the Sherpa decides to stop and help Jake and asks you to help as well. If the Sherpa stops to help him but does not ask you to, asks you to help him but does not wish to help him himself, or asks any other member of the group to help him, you will continue on.

Option 6: You will not help Jake, no matter what the rest of the party chooses to do, even if it means finishing the ascent on your own.

You understand the following conditions to be true:

-If nobody helps Jake, he will die by the time you pass him again on the descent.
-If anyone helps Jake, there is still a significant chance he may die before or after reaching Camp IV.
-If anyone attempts to help Jake, there is a chance they may become injured themselves in the attempt. If this happens, they will most likely not be rescued, and both Jake and them will die.
-Once you or anyone else (besides the Sherpa) commits to recsuing Jake, they will not abandon him unless he dies.
-The Sherpa is a mountaineer non pareil who has summited Everest by this route several times before and is unlikely to die no matter what.
-The Sherpa will abandon Jake if he deems he is beyond saving, or to save his own life.
-If the party continues without the Sherpa, there is an increased chance of someone dying. The smaller the group is that continues on, the greater the chance becomes.
-Once committed to rescuing Jake, it will be impossible to attempt the summit again. You will be forced to retreat to Camp III and re-acclimitize before another attempt is possible, and if weather conditions worsen you may be forced to abandon the mountain entirely for the year.
-You cannot leave any of your supplies with Jake or you will not have enough to complete the ascent.
-Nobody else is climbing the mountain today and nobody outside your party will be able to help Jake or any other member of the party except by radio contact.

I, personally, choose Option 5 - I choose to defer my decision to the most experienced member of the team. If he believes that Jake cannot be saved, I will assume that he knows what he is talking about, and I will assume if he chooses to take him down the mountain himself that he believes the team can make the summit without him.

What is your choice?

2

I’ll stick with the Sherpa, as that’s my best chance of saving my own ass. (The mere fact that my ass is on Everest means that it needs saving.) I would, however, try to persuade my group to help Jake if it seems feasible. Is it a fair assumption that the entire group trying to get Jake off the mountain is safer than only part of the group attempting to do so?

3

Just leave me to die, brother! I appreciate your good will, but I started at the bottom, just like you. I knew the risks, and I took them. Don’t risk your life to save mine, but if you have a hit or two of morphine, I’d appreciate it!

-Jake (RIP)

Truthfully, if the Sherpa says we can save him, I’m all in. This is my complaint with the other thread. In reality, I think the Sherpa says “I am sorry, it is too dangerous to try to save him.” Because the Sherpa fucking knows that this guy already has a death sentence.

I’m not a mountain climbing guy, but I stand by this 100% If the Sherpa thinks we can save a life, I’m all in. I just think that this is just as unlikely a scenario as the original.

4

See my response to the previous thread.

I haven’t done “high” climbs, only stuff which doesn’t need those wimpy cords and nails, but “helping someone who’s hurt takes priority over any climb” was ingrained; it was the kind of thing that you don’t need to stop and think about.

5

You are relaxing in the new “Edmund Hillary” lounge and snack bar…located just below the top of Everest. This is accessed by a high speed pressurized elevator, through the center of the montain. You are savoring a scotch and water-then you see a climber (obviously disoriented) wandering outside-he looks to be in bad shape. You are not authorized to open the airlock and let him in-do you:
-alert the manager to open up and take the guy in?
-grab a chair and break a window…get the guy in (then plug the hole with something handy)?
-do nothing, and "let God’s will be done)?

6

It is pretty well established that attempts at helping are more likely to kill the helper than to save a life, thus I would not help, and would advise others not to as well. Actually, though, I would not be in that situation, and the potential for such ethical conflicts is one reason. A couple of my friends climbed Denali, and I was invited and declined. They both made it back, but one friend had absolutely no business doing it… Even less than me. There was real potential that someone would have had to leave him there to save themselves. The other friend is an experienced climber, but I lost some respect for him over taking a novice up that mountain.

7

Sherpas aren’t some magic genies that always know what to do at altitude. Some are better than others are operating up there, and some make poor decisions at sea level. I’d listen to a climbing leader, and I would have reservations about attempting any rescue in this situation.

8

My own safety absolutely comes first. Option 1 is clearly a suicide mission, along the lines of jumping into a rushing flood with the naive idea that I’m a good enough swimmer to defy a natural disaster and drag someone to safety. I’m not convinced that Option 3 is any more sane. And if I’m understanding Option 2 correctly, it would seem that leaving someone else to care for Jake would probably be dooming them to the same fate.

My first choice would be to listen to the Sherpa or team leader. They are the experts on the mountain, and have better insight than anyone’s moral compass on what can actually be done to rescue someone. Now, if everyone unites to save Jake, and there’s a reasonable indication that if everyone pitched in that rescue is possible, I would say that’s the most preferred solution, which seems close to but slightly different than Options 4 and 5. Bottom line is that splitting up seems to guarantee a bad outcome for many more people than just Jake.

9

My choice is not listed: help him unless doing so would get yourself killed. The Sherpa would be a very good adviser, but ultimately it’d be my own decision.

10

I choose option 7: put him on the skilift and wish him well in his ride back down the mountain.

11

No ski lifts are allowed. From the thread “Would a Ski Lift on Mt. Everest Make Sense?” it was determined that mountain climbers climb because it’s difficult. Therefore all distressed climbers must be dragged over the rocks all the way back down.

12

ISTR Brian Blessed (yes, that Brian Blessed) once climbed Everest without oxygen and made it almost to the top before turning back to save another climber’s life. If it’s good enough for Brian Blessed, dammit, it’s good enough for me.

13

Screw the climb. Even if the sherpa says he’s a dead man, I’m still taking him back to camp and ditching the climb.

14

You guys must be overlooking key parts of the Everest experience:

“…rescue operations are virtually suicidal in the Death Zone. A Nepalese police inspector and a Sherpa who tried to recover Hannelore’s body in 1984 both fell to their deaths. It was finally high winds that blew her remains over the edge and down the Kangshung face.”

No mention of what ever happened to the Sherpas and Nepaleses’ remains…

15

This is me, too. This particular dilemma is one of many reasons I have no interest in climbing Everest.

16

And she was only 100 meters outside of camp 4.

The Sherpa and the Nepalese inspector fell to their deaths, their bodies are somewhere unreachable. I haven’t been able to find out if that happened on their way to Hannelore’s body or while attempting to move it.

Keep in mind that ‘camp’ in this case means ‘a flat spot reasonably safe for pitching tents’. There’s no facilities of any type. There’s only your gear and the gear of whoever else is up there at the time, and all of you only just brought enough to support yourselves. The nearest tent with an indoor temperature above freezing is all the way down at base camp, which is a four day hike. Same goes for spare oxygen, medical supplies, and water. Getting your survivor back to camp 4 means that you can stick him in a tent and sleeping bag in an area where the air is a bit thicker, but not much more. He’s going to be in desperate need of oxygen, water, and food, and you just don’t have it. You and he are still in danger until people can bring up more supplies, which may be a few days. Longer, if the weather turns against you.

17

I’m sticking with the Sherpa no matter what.

18

One of the above sites is about the attempt to rescue Spanish climber Inaki Ochoa after he fell unconscious.

Another team member, Russian Alexey Bolotov, was missing. One climbing companion, Romanian Horia Colibasanu called for help on the satellite phone. The Nepalese were looking for help. They found Kazakh climber Denis Urubko. He called a doctor in Romania, and then called the base camp to talk to a Swiss team about to embark on their way up.

A helicopter from Kathmandu picked up Don Bowie, Canadian-born adventurer to add to the team. A back-up team contained more Russians, Poles, Romanians and Nepalese.

(How in the world do all these people understand each other?!)

Anyway, Ochoa died during the 5th day of the rescue attempt. His body remains on the mountain.

19

OK, I know it might be a bad idea to try to save the guy, but here’s my thinking:

I’m definitely NOT going to continue the ascent. I’m not going to stand on top of Everest knowing someone is dying nearby. No way. (Fuck the £25,000, the prep, the weather, fuck all that)

So I’m going down. I have the energy and supplies to reach the top and go back down.

I can spend that energy and those supplies trying to help this man. If it goes badly and I come to the point where energy & supplies are no longer sufficient, I can ditch the rescue attempt then.

It has been done before and I would rather die knowing I tried than live knowing I left someone to die.

I say this sitting on my sofa with my warm laptop on my knee.

20

Mostly in English, although there’s the occasional bout of Itañolo, French et al. My coworker Rox is Romanian: she understands 90% of what we say in Spanish so long as we’re not talking at ourusualspeeds, often the difference between a Spanish word and its Romanian equivalent is one syllable. I can also understand when she talks in Romanian so long as she does it slowly.

(Itañolo/Itagnolo: a spontaneous mixture of Italian and Spanish which comes into existance within 5 minutes of two us striking a conversation)