I fully agree with you. Still, I think you've been far too soft on Everest bashers. Is the desire to 'conquer' Everest really anything more than an extreme narcissism? Where's the point? Where's the humility? Don't they have any other interests?

People who take needless risks merely to bolster their over-devloped egos are on their own. They are not "heroes", they are idiots.

Striving to do amazing things like climbing a huge mountain or diving to great ocean depths is one major part of what makes humans extraordinary - we should never try to discourage human desire from climbing, exploring and reaching for planets to explore and a world to understand.

That it seems tattooed on our hearts to put another's life before our own is also part of that amazing human spirit that enables us to go further, reach higher and know more. Donne said no man is an island, we know we are social animals and we just cannot do this Life all alone without help, and worse, without hope. The man was dying, could no one stop and save him from at the very least a lonely death? Could no one have sat and just held his hand?

It's easy for people to ascribe human properties non-human entities, such as pets or even inanimate objects. We've all, at one time or another, loved something less than human: be it a cat, a dog, or a mountaineer.

It is important not to get too carried away and forget about the important things, like sane people; who don't pour away a sizeable fortune and risk lives to "explore" something that has been explored hundreds of times already; just so they can guffaw about their artificual faux-heroism to anyone unfortunate enough to listen.

The real tragedy is that people still buy it.

The issue leaves me with mixed feelings. It is easy to sit back at no cost to ourselves and our dreams and be disturbed by someone being left to die alone, much harder to make the level of sacrifice any climber who missed the summit because they stopped to help would have made. I gather it costs between $50,000 and $75,000US for a party of 7 for a permit to try for the summit depending on the route. Add to that the years of preparation and massive expense anybody near the summit of Everest has undertaken to get there. It's not something that most can come back and try again tomorrow.

Would the author be willing to provide an indemnity for the next climber who stops an ascent on the summit to help another climber against the financial consequences of that choice? I'm not willing to do so and I find it difficult to sit in judgement of those on the peak who made their choices. Should the fact of being there at the wrong time leave a person to wear the consequences alone?

Is their choice really any different to the choices any of us make when we persue personal goals or recreational interests which use resources which could be used to save the life of a starving person somewhere else in the world? All of us are aware that human beings die everyday who could live if more money or time were given in aid.
How few of us give everything beyond our most basic survival needs to prevent that? I cannot claim that I do.

The fellow who told the story about the wounded samaritin as he asked "Who is your neighbour?" also said "Let he is without sin cast the first stone".

R0bert

It seems to me that simply condemning climbers as narcissistic egomaniacs avoids confronting the issue. According to Harry Giss, an experienced mountaineer, after "yet another tragic season on the mountain, I am left with a sad outlook on many within our mountaineering community. I am left asking myself, what is really more dangerous, the mountain or our fellow human beings climbing it?" For the full article see http://www.everestnews.com/2006expeditions/tosummit05312006.htm Sir Edmund Hillary is right to be shocked at the callousness of the peak-baggers who stepped around David Sharp, but in Hillary's climb he was one of a TEAM. According to Sir John Hunt's account of the 1953 climb "the ascent of Everest, perhaps more than any other human venture, demanded a very high degree of selfless co-operation."

2006 has been an appalling season on Everest. Between 11 and 15 people have died and public attention has been focussed on the commercialisation of the climbing. Paradoxically, the commercial climbing has lead to a fall in death rates, from 1 to every 3 summits, to more like 1 to 30. Climbers like David Sharp, who pay the minimum fees and climb unsupported, face the greatest risks. Sharp climbed solo, meaning he didn't even have a climbing partner looking out for him, making his ascent even more perilous.

Human activity doesn't get much more goal-oriented than mountain-climbing, but surely no summit photo is worth the death of someone else? One can only hope some good will come of this - such as a mountain climbing behaviour code similar to the international maritime code - but the truth is that in the "death zone" (above 8,000 metres), you're on your own. I think I'll retreat to the comfort of my armchair and reread Hunt's "Ascent of Everest", Herzog's "Annapurna" or Krakauer's "Into Thin Air".