Two climbers in extremis high on Everest, one rescued the other passed and left for dead by a reported 42 mountaineers. The contrast between the two incidents has reignited a fierce ethical debate.
The rescue
of an abandoned Australian climber high on Everest has reignited the
fierce debate about the ethics of climbing the world's highest
mountain.
Lincoln Hall was helped down from an altitude of 8700 metres by a
team led by Canadian guide Dan Mazur, who abandoned his summit
attempt to help Lincoln who had been left for dead by his own team
the day before.
The whole episode sits uneasily with the case of Briton David
Sharp, who, in similar circumstances, was passed
by other climbers who reportedly continued past him on their way to
the summit. Sharp died on the mountain, despite - according to some
reports - being in a position where he could have been helped down by
Sherpas. Everestnews.com says that some 42 people passed Sharp.
In a morbid twist, Sharp was captured on video talking and saying:
"My name is David Sharp and I am with Asian Trekking".
The climbers who failed to respond to Sharp's plight have been
roundly condemned
by Sir Edmund Hillary who is quoted as saying:
"If you have someone who is in great need and you are still strong
and energetic then you have a duty really to give all you can to get
the man down and getting to the summit becomes secondary."
One of the climbers who passed Sharp on his way to the summit was
New Zealand double-amputee Mark Inglis whose team radioed their
leader Russell Brice at basecamp before deciding to carry on to the
summit after being told Sharp was 'effectively dead'.
The Rationale...
Of course it's easy to sit at sea level and criticise the actions
of climbers on a mountain thousands of miles away, but it's hard to
avoid the conclusion that the prevailing attitude that it's
impossible to rescue injured mountaineers high on Everest, is a very
convenient one for driven mountaineers intent on summiting.
It's also clear that in certain circumstances, climbers can and do
survive and can and have been rescued. Beck Wethers, Lincoln Hall and
OM member Conan Harrod are all proof of that.
So on the face of it, it should be a simple moral decision. Help
your fellow climbers regardless of the cost to your own ambitions.
What complicates it though, is that research shows that mountaineers
high on Everest are sometimes physiologically unable to think
properly. In tests they were unable to recall simple sequences of
numbers and letters or to spell properly, so is it reasonable to
expect them to make complex moral and medical decisions high on the
mountain?
One man who should know has no doubts, high altitude medicine
expert and expedition doctor Larry
Rigsby writing on Everestnews.com believes that climbers have
a duty to help those in extremis.
'Someone can be in extremis or appear moribund but are still
salvageable,' he says. 'I believe that it is our duty and
responsibility as mountaineers to assist our fallen climbers to the
best of our ability, even if this aborts our summit attempt.'
Perhaps the first step towards that is for Everest climbers to
stop trotting out the line that anyone injured at altitude is as good
as dead already and start viewing it as their duty to help those in
need.
More Everest news at www.everestnews.com
