Editorial cartoon on the subject, in today’s Wellington Dominion (newspaper).
Once Sharp had spent the night out, he was likely to be dead no matter what people did. It’s an unfortunate fact, but it’s true. Yes, there was a slight possibility that he could have been revived, but it would be at the cost of a great deal of risk and effort, and if there were more injuries then a larger number of folks would be in danger.
I don’t think people here really appreciate the harshness of the environment above 26,000’. As a friend said, you’re basically dying every minute you spend up there. The key is to get down before it’s too late. The reason people contact the folks in base camp is because those folks can think clearly and tell you what to do. It’s rare (but possible) to be able to function up there. The few folks who can do that are either Sherpas or freaks of nature like Boukreev (who rescued many folks in 1996). And they best ones eventually die up there anyway, it’s a crap shoot.
People who have committed to climbing Everest (or any 8000 meter peaks) understand the risks. They know that if something goes seriously wrong, they are most likely dead. That is part of the mindset that allows some of them to make it to the top. You know that it’s move forward or die; if you are in trouble you turn around before it’s too late. I don’t think that any of those folks would hesitate to help people out where it makes sense. If they have it, climbers often give extra oxygen bottles to other climbers who run out, or tea, or share tents, etc. But an unconcious climber at 8000 meters is an order of magnitude more difficult. If that person can’t assist in their own rescue, they are most likely dead.
This isn’t to deny the attitude that these climbers have sacrificed and suffered to get themselves up there, and it’s extremely difficult to give up that dream because of something that appears to be a lost cause. This was Sharp’s third attempt, IIRC, he was determined to summit at all costs. At some point you have to question why should other, prepared groups who did everything right have to sacrifice their dreams because of someone else who put themselves in danger. Since that’s not an ethical decision I ever want to face, I wouldn’t attempt something like Everest even if I could.
High altitude climbing really isn’t like anything else out there. The people who do it face cold hard facts of life and death every time they venture up there. I’m sure they all pondered situations like this, and will have to live with their decisions. Based on my limited knowledge of what it’s like up there, I can’t condemn them for their choices.
Sure. My climbing group is an all or nothing proposition - either we all summit or none of us do. If one of us gets hurt, loses a glove, or just plain can’t hack it, we’ll all turn around. But we’re not world-class climbers; we’re not in the same kind of physical shape that climbers in the himalayas are, and we’re not anywhere near as motivated as those people are. If a team of four begin an ascent on Everest and one of them can’t hack it, he doesn’t expect the other three to trun around with him.
That’s not to say that the other three won’t stop to help if the fourth gets seriously hurt, especially if he’s not beyond help. They’ll do anything they can, but “anything they can” is often not enough. That’s something that most climbers understant when they set out.
There’s another safety issue with groups that I think is underrated - you’ve got a couple of other people looking out for you. You’ll have four sets of eyes on the O2 supply instead of just one, and you’ll have a couple of people checking you when you say to yourself, “sure, I’m running low on oxygen, but I think I can make it.” You’re roped in to three other people, and your safety is their safety. When they’re tethered together, four people will probably make better decisions than one person alone will. Solo climbers like Sharp don’t have this additional safety net, and they sometimes make bad judgements because it’s missing.
How do you get the guy down to the camp? If he was 300 meters below the summit, then he’s 600 meters above Camp IV. He’s absolutely helpless - he can’t move, can’t tell you how he feels, can’t help tie himself off or even shift his weight to help you balance him. If you’re on the Appalachian trail, 40 people could switch off with a fireman’s carry and get the guy wherever he needs to go pretty easily, but Everest isn’t the AT.
You’re saying that somebody who’s already pushing the limits of his endurance should put an incapacitated, 180 pound man on his back and descend something like this. If I tried to do that, I would fall and die. You?
Wasn’t aware a fireman’s carry was even an option in a mountain climbing rescue. I was thinking more in terms of a rotating 8 man tether.
I’m not discounting the difficulty in the attempt. Just the attempt.
This is getting silly. I would like to help every person that I can and I would teach my kids the same, but there are limitations in every situation as far as what I can do to help. I could dedicate my life to helping every single person I come into contact with (that needs my help) but I haven’t…and I suspect you haven’t either.
Helping an incapacitated climber at 8000+meters would, I suspect, be beyond my capacity. It would depend on how I personally felt at the time, if I thought I could save his life I would try. It seems, from the information we have, that he was very likely a dead man.
If you’re serious about the cat, If I saw the cat still was alive I would stop and get it off the road and make a call or two (local shelter or volunteer group). I would not spend any money on a vet however.
I’ve taken animals to the shelter or called the local person who can help (volunteers they were). I helped rehab a kitten that got caught in a door and had to squeeze the poop out of it (literally) until it could control its own bowels again (he fully recovered). I’ve also adopted a cat. We’ve got three kittens now and four adults, so cat stuff hits close to home, so to speak.
The guy was stalled out, on descent, about 300-400 meters below summit. He was fried. Anybody coming within 300-400 meters of the summit, either ascending or descending, is very nearly fried.
Attempting a rescue in that circumstance, that close to the summit, pointless. You’re just going to add to the body count.
Many of the dead guys on Everest get that way on descent. Because descending is harder than ascending. You’re tired on the way down.
Climbers, especially climbers who choose to climb solo, have a duty to plan properly, with the right margins of safety. If in doubt, stop the climb. If in doubt, have extra O2 cached. Take extra fucking trips, and train harder, so you can carry more O2, and have extra available in your high camps.
I, for one, refuse to condemn climbers in these situations.
Hell, the doomed guy would likely have not been cleared to go under the ethics of British teams like old EH. The more recent alpine/no O2 cult of Meissner and friends would argue that you shouldn’t try it unless you can do it, Alpine style, without O2. If you can’t, if you must use O2, then you’re not safe. And the more time you spend “resting” in higher camps, the more you decline at those high altitudes.
If you show up to do an 8K+ peak, solo, without Sherpa support, then expect to be self-sufficient.
I think it was not only rude but criminally negligent of David Sharp to delay Inglis and company, putting them at additional risk, by selfishly refusing to die before they got there. Serve him right if he could still see forty people approach, consider, and pass by, having concluded that he wasn’t worth it. The article doesn’t mention if anybody checked on him on the way back down: they may have been too tired. Fortunately, David Sharp did not manage to prevent Inglis from being the first legless man who climbed Everest, which is either a huge achievement or a trivial absurdity, depending on your point of view.
It’s a given that offering assistance or even mere comfort would have been difficult and marginally increased the risk faced by other climbers, who had done nothing to invite any threat to their ease and safety except for being at the top of an uninhabitable giant rock – no, let’s not go that way. Let’s just say that in assessing their options, they preferred the difficult and risky course that resulted in getting to the top to the one that involved sacrificing that goal for the sake of a dying man, a fellow climber, whom they did not know. Well, okay.
I sometimes drive my car, which is an inherently dangerous activity. Many people drive, with varying degrees of skill and prudence. Sometimes they get into trouble, through no fault of mine. Sometimes they get into accidents and are badly hurt, dying, too far away from help to be saved. If I were to encounter such a situation, I would have to consider the fact that I am not in any way able to offer them material assistance, that stopping by the side of the road substantially increases my risk of being hurt, and that I have someplace I really want to go. Some personal goal for which I hope to be honored, say, or even make it into the record books. I still can’t make the scenario play out in any way that involves leaving a person to die alone. But I can see myself doing what Inglis and forty others did, under the circumstances.
It can truly be said that they caused no harm, that Sharp brought about his own demise, that they were correct, speaking practically, in treating him as a corpse. I might suggest that any activity involving the ability to so effectively suppress the instinct to help or comfort the sick/hurt/dying should serve a worthier goal than the transportation of more garbage up a mountain.
Nobody did anything wrong except everybody, for freely agreeing to play a frivolous game whose rules are necessary, universal, and repugnant.
Other people in this thread have mentioned Into Thin Air by Jan Krakauer, and I’ll second this recommendation. Here’s the article which led to the book. It brings it home just how difficult it is climbing Mount Everest and what conditions are like. If I hadn’t read it, I’d be among those saying someone should have saved him. Since I have, I’m simply not sure.
We’ve mentioned Scott Beck staggering into camp in 1996. What hasn’t been mentioned is that Andy Harris, an experienced guide and leader of one of the expeditions died during that trip. A short account of the events can be foundhere. Andy Harris was a highly experienced climber who’d climbed Everest several times and knew what he was doing. I don’t remember the details of what happened to him, but he wound up near the summit, short on oxygen. Other climbers tried to rescue him, to persuade him to go back down. There was a cache of oxygen bottles nearby, but there was some confusion about whether they were empty or not. Mr. Harris was confused and disoriented at times, refused help, and would not move, saying he’d get himself down, if memory serves. One image from Into Thin Air which lingers is of him talking to his wife by a hand radio which had been patched into a call from her cell phone at one of the camps.
In short, if people can try to rescue an experienced, conscious guide and fail, I can see how an unconsious, inexperienced climber could not be rescued. This isn’t a walk in the woods or even the Rocky Mountains; the summit of Mount Everest is difficult dangerous terrain which is traversed when one is already physically and mentally exhausted at altitudes men weren’t meant to live at and at which oxygen deprivation sets in quickly. The simplest, most basic things become difficult, including such things as turning on an oxygen regulator to make sure you have enough air to function. I’m altruistic to the point of stupidity, but I don’t know what I’d do or even be capable of doing. Frankly, after reading Into Thin Air and other accounts of climbing Everest, I’m glad I’ll never be in a position to find out!
For an alternate account of the 1996 climbing season on Everest read Kenneth Kamler’s Surviving the Extremes. Kamler is a doctor with wide experience in “extreme medicine”, has been to Everest more than once, and was the doctor who treated both Beck and Makalu (the other severely injured survivor). By the time of the “disaster”, several people had already died lower on the mountain due to a variety of causes, including one young healthy climber dropping dead of a heart attack at Camp 3.
It took two people to get a mobile Beck down to the doctor. Same for Makalu. Both Beck and Makalu, who were both concious and walking, required a team of a about a half dozen people each to keep them alive until a helicoptor arrived to pull them off the mountain.
You know, the top of Mt. Everest isn’t this wide field-like area. The available walking space is quite narrow. You can’t do a 40-person group carry down the mountain, there’s not enough room to do that.
And that hyberbaric chamber? Foot pump operated. Which of these exhausted, physically deteriorating people gets to use their energy and oxygen to work the pump? And it’s only good for about a 2,000 foot differential, from what I’ve read. So, instead of a 26,000 foot altitude the dying climber has an effective 24,000 altitude. It’s still not compatible with long term existance. Even if it did help the climber inside, how are you going to get the inflated tent down the mountain? That’s even more awkward than and injured/incoherent/unconcious body. There have been no helicopter rescues about Camp 3 - helicopters can’t fly that high (and the one claim to the contrary is disputed and, even if authentic, the chopper in question wouldn’t have been able to take on a passenger). There’s no place to land and airplane. There are no vehicles that can go up that mountain at that point. Either you walk down to Camp 3 or you don’t survive, because no one at that altitude has the strength or energy to carry you down.
No, giving assistance would have GREATLY increased the risk to the other climbers at that altitude.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, those who tried to render assistance and comfort in 1996 to downed climbers all died - and they were some of the most able and experienced people on the mountain.
I’m not a climber, and will defer to Sir Edmund on matters of climbing etiquette and technical aspects, but the thought occurs that even if you have laid out $50,000 to climb Everest, get 3/4 of the way up, then aborted the climb to bring back someone who is clearly in mortal danger (or dying)… surely someone would pay for you to have another go, by way of thanks?
You know, I’m sure a group of philanthropists might chip in some cash, a few people might waive fees, a well-known mountaineering equipment firm might supply things gratis… sure, they might not be doing it for the warm fuzzy feeling (Free PR!), but I’m not sufficiently cynical enough to think that anyone who aborted an Everest climb to help another climber in trouble would find themselves out of pocket as a result.
Article from the NZ Herald today.
and
Into Thin Air talks about a New York socialite who was basically being towed up the mountain on a short rope by a Sherpa.
A blind guy, and now a double amputee have done it.
One gets the feeling that while it’s still extremely dangerous, you don’t need to be in amazing physical condition.
Nothing else to add on the ethical issue.
You might think so, but I’ve never heard of it happening. There are limited slots to go up Everest, and they are booked years in advance. But people get turned around all the time up there for all sorts of reasons, no one pays for their second trip. It’s certainly possible, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest it or actually do it.
Think of the PR when the person you sponsored dies (1 in 5 chance).
Telemark going by your gut. Do you believe Sir Edmund Hillary and his team knowing what you know about Sharp’s condition and Sir Edmund’s rep…do you believe Sir Edmund would have left him behind or stopped the climb to help him?
In Sir Edmand’s time, everyone up there knew everyone else. There were only a handful of folks on the mountain, and I’m sure they would have tried. Those teams were the elite of the elite, all pushing for a common goal. In a rescue situation they would have probably had a much better chance. I’m sure he would do what he said he would do.
Having said that, there never would have been a situation like Sharps. The early teams had exclusive dibs on the mountain for a climbing season and everyone was in their place. Only a very small team of the strongest climbers were picked to summit; it’s not like they would have encountered anyone else up there in trouble. And if someone was in trouble, they would have known about it and acted before it got this bad. Sir Edmand never had to face a similar situation on Everest. I have no idea if he faced similar situations elsewhere.
The game is different than it was 50 years ago, for better or worse. It’s not a game I would choose to play.
So, according to some posters who seem to know, would the decision to continue to the top, or pretty much any course of action other than turning back immediately, David Sharp or no David Sharp. The choice not to accept the risk for the sake of (if rescue was out of the question) not abandoning a dying man, but to cheerfully spin the wheel for the sake of self-aggrandizement, does not speak with the voice of a rational calculus designed to maximize safety: nothing in that place could. It merely proclaims a hierarchy of things for which one is willing to undergo extreme hardship and danger, with ego at the top and everything else somewhere down the list.
As I said, I’m not pointing at anyone shouting “J’accuse!” But I do think that the whole stupid game, requiring the willing sacrifice of a large percentage of its participants and prohibiting any exercise of humanity by the rest, is abhorrent. It’s entering a lottery wherein the outcome can be either brief notoriety or horrible death. The fact that some people will volunteer for it, knowing that the best outcome is to climb over the bodies of their fellows for the prize, doesn’t do much to redeem it.
It seems to me that the case of Beck Weathers, mentioned already in this thread, puts the lie to the claim that someone disabled on Everest is automatically irretrievable. Weathers was abandoned three times by his expedition and yet lived.
I tried to Google some details, and found a pretty facsinating essay on the ethics of Everest rescue here, diusguised as a book review. It’s pretty germane to what this thread is about.
Sailboat
My half-brother is a well-known 8,000-meter climber–well-known in the climbing community, but not famous by any means. In one of our last conversations (we no longer speak), I had dinner with him and Ed Viesturs, and two others. Ed was an impressive guy, but to the point about the dangers of climbing. (By the way, I don’t climb.)
As background, Ed has summitted Everest six times and starred in the Imax movie “Everest.” At the time, Ed had just appeared in a cameo in the movie “Vertical Limit.” He also was on the '96 Everest Imax team that came to the rescue of the ill-fated party.
At dinner, Ed was crystal clear on the dangers of Everest. He said K2 was a technically more demanding mountain–at least compared to the South Col route on Everest–but said Everest was “exponentially more difficult” because of that extra 750 or so in vertical elevation.
Like Telemark said, Ed said everyone, bar none, is seriously hurting near the summit and the reserves one has are practically nil. Ed has been called “the ultimate climbing machine” by Men’s Health magazine, but he told us that he too is really hurting up high–“just hurting less than other people.”
He also clearly said that a successful rescue would be impossible “up high.” He said that, had a climbing team actually managed to reach Rob Hall in 96, they still could not have helped him down, in a seriously weakened state. He was a big man.
Ed recalled an incident with a French climber, a Chantal? somebody, who was rescued almost unconscious from Everest’s South Summit, in the mid 90s. A big team of world-class climbers–on location–came to her rescue and dragged her down to the South Col, as I recall. Ed also noted that she barely weighed 100 lbs. and said the difference between 100 lbs and 200 lbs near the summit is huge.
I still follow my brother’s career and know he would say categorically that the idea of 20 relatively inexperienced, exhausted climbers banding together to help a team of experienced, exhausted sherpa carry a grown man down from near the summit sounds fine in print, but would be a nightmare up high. Innocent people would likely die in the bargain.
Ed described the narrow passage between the Hillary Step and the South Summit as “a knife-edged route.” Even on fixed ropes, he said, there’s no margin for error. Taking dead weight down Everest would be impossible, he said. It would slow people who have little to no margin of error in their oxygen tanks. And once their O2 is gone, more people would be incapacitated.
There’s a final issue: Attempting a superhuman rescue of a foolhardly climber would create a dangerous precedent, as other foolhardy climbers would follow in his wake and thus expose more innocents to his dangerous risk taking.
I should note that Ed emphasized how small that female French climber was and the world-class abilities of the climbers who encountered her–just as she collapsed. Incredible timing, he said.
By the way, she had been rescued similarly on K2, at lower altutude, by Rob Hall and Ed and others, I believe.
She later died on another peak. In her tent.
At least the United States, shelter, food and medical are provided to the indigent so presumably the person could get themself help. There are authorities who can get the person to a place where they can get help. They are not stranded out in the wilderness.