Monday, June 5, 2006
Everest Fatality and Lucky Escape Prompt Ethics Debate
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The death last month of an English climber ignored by 40 other mountaineers near the summit of Everest and the miraculous escape of an Australian left for dead have exposed the dark side of the sport.
 A passenger looks from an aircraft window towards Mount Everest on a flight over the Himalayas
© AFP/File Deshakalyan ChowdhuryDavid Sharp, 34, was suffering severe high altitude sickness but was still alive in a shallow snow cave just below the 8,848 metre (29,021 feet) summit when fellow climbers passed him on the way up on May 15, 2006.
He still showed signs of life when they descended. Only one or two people tried to assist the Englishman, who was believed to be too near death to rescue.
Last week, two Sherpas left Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall on an outcrop just below the summit, convinced that he was dead and that they could do nothing more to help.
"He was motionless, he appeared to not have any breath, appeared to be totally inert, but obviously deep down he wasn't," Simon Balderstone, Hall's spokesman, told journalists Tuesday.
 Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall leaves The Nepal International Clinic in Kathmandu
© AFP/File Devendra M. SinghWhen climbers returned to the site the next day, Hall had not only survived the night in the open just below the roof of the world, but after tea and oxygen was able to walk off the world's highest mountain.
The most famous mountaineer of them all, Sir Edmund Hillary, lambasted the climbers who left David Sharp to die.
"It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," Hillary told the New Zealand Press Association.
But mountaineering has changed vastly since Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the summit in 1953.
Since their feat, nearly 3,000 people have scaled Everest but routes to the top are littered with the frozen corpses of more than 200 who have been killed trying.
At that altitude, death is never far away. Hall had been climbing for decades, but that still didn't prevent him succumbing to severe high altitude sickness.
 Aerial view of Mount Everest
© AFP/File Kazuhiro NogiA faulty oxygen valve, a tiny slip or a myriad of other factors can result in even experienced climbers being added to the growing list of lives claimed by the mountain.
Once the domain of professionals with bags of experience, today anyone with a decent enough fitness level, two months to spare and at least 17,000 dollars can take on the mountain.
Elizabeth Hawley, who has been chronicling Himalayan expeditions for more than four decades, says there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to responding to fellow climbers in distress.
Cultural differences, personal relationships, the effect of thin air on the brain and body, incorrect medical diagnosis and the sheer will of people to fulfill a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could all be factors in preventing people from offering assistance, says Hawley.
"Many of the climbers up there these days are not true mountaineers. A lot of the people trying to summit would not know how to rescue anybody and they also probably know that they will have only one chance in their life to summit," she says.
People's desire to get to the top can overwhelm everything else, including helping out those in distress, said a senior Nepalese mountaineering official.
 Sir Edmund Hillary
© AFP/File Kazuhiro Nogi"Most climbers are very focused on getting to the summit, and when it comes to Everest, this allure is even stronger. They don't want anything to interfere with the chance of achieving what is an astonishing feat that they have put lots of effort into," said the official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
In some cases, a rescue attempt would result not in saving a life but in fact put the lives of rescuers at risk.
The Sherpas who reluctantly left Hall were told to leave him because they would almost certainly have died had they stayed with him.
"When I have talked to climbers who left the dying climbers without any assistance they said that trying to help someone in need at that altitude would be suicidal. It's like digging your own grave, and this is quite understandable," the mountaineering official said.
Tina Sjogren, who has been on Everest four times and has skiied to both the North and South poles, thinks the huge sums of money involved in the Everest business have tainted the mountain, considered holy by many Tibetans and Nepalese.
"Everest is just a miniature of the world. Some people help and some people don't. On Everest the situation spikes due to the fact that money is involved. Commercial leaders take efforts to hush things up in order not to lose business," said Sjogren, one of the founders of explorersweb.com, a site devoted to the most adventurous of adventure sports.
The expectations of clients paying between 17,000 and 60,000 dollars each also plays a part, she said.
"Clients expect to have things organized for them, not to have to help other climbers. People are told not to worry by their guides, and so they leave everything in their hands," she said.
Hillary has repeatedly called for limits on the number of expeditions to Everest, to try to tackle problems of overcrowding and environmental degradation.
But in an age where people are having more adventurous holidays than previous generations ever dreamed of, there will never be a shortage of people willing to take on the risks and challenges of trying to reach the top of the world, no matter what the cost -- financial or human.
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