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".

Who are the real heroes?

Just read a post on the rescue of Lincoln Hall, which I would recommend as an antidote to all the doom and gloom. http://www.everestnews.com/Summitclimb2005/lincolnhalleverest05302006.htm Four climbers from Summitclimb, Dan Mazur, Myles Osborne, Andrew Brash and Jangbu Sherpa (UK, US, Canadian and Nepali) abandoned their summit attempt to assist Lincoln Hall. Another member of the party, Phil Crampton, had abandoned his climb earlier, too frostbitten after hauling another climber off the Second Step a week before. I originally presumed that Hall had been assisted because he was part of a big expedition or because he was well-known. Apparently not, it was just common humanity, as these climbers didn't know Hall from a bar of soap.

Lincoln Hall had cerebral edema, frostbite and was obviously in the final stages of hypothermia and near death when rescued. The Summitclimb team stayed with Lincoln Hall for four hours until some sherpas (unnamed) valiantly assisted him back to the North Col.

I can't sum it up any better than Myles Osborne who concluded: "We went over to visit this man of mystery we had found at 8600 meters, in his expedition's medical tent. We reintroduced ourselves and sat there talking about his family and wife. During the conversation, I could not help but wonder, 'How in ANY way is a summit more important than saving a life?' And the answer is that it isn't. But in this skewed world up here, sometimes you can be fooled into thinking that it might be. But I know that trying to sleep at night knowing that I summited Everest and left a guy to die isn't something I ever want to do. The summit's always there after all."

Who cares?

Yes, climbers probably should be helpful to each other.
It must be the best feeling to have a sherpa lug all your gear up a hill, to see the views including all the rubbish and air canisters left behind by other pilgrims. Even to be able to add just one more piece of rubbish or air canister would really be a dream come true.
I'll exercise a prejudice here and suggest it would appeal to the 4wd brigade with its mindlessness.
It is funny though, I read that a sherpa has been busted for stripping nude for a few minutes at the top...so its OK to leave someone for dead, but not to flash. What if the guy WAS dead and had a fancy pear of mountaineering pants on, what kind of trouble would the naughty sherpa get into if he was tempted to salvage said pants?

Yes All-Seeing one. Much better to spend our holidays at a resort in Bali, knowing that the local population isn't being exploited while we laze on our banana lounges. Or better yet, why not stay at home and wait till Tracey Grimshaw does the Lincoln Hall interview. Then we can watch it on our sweatshop-produced flatscreen TVs, secure in the knowledge that our lifestyle isn't damaging the world, unlike those selfish climbers.

I just think that when you make a decision to climb a mountain like that, then you know of the risks, and you know of the effort and even money that others have invested to achieve their, often once in a lifetime, dream and passion.

If you fail on your way up, why should others be obliged to give up their dream just because you failed with yours. YOu take the risk, you deal with the consequences.

When you take such chances and persue the extreme, then you really cant expect so much.

there are beautiful things in life - like cameraderie or - as it is called in the beatiful country of Oz 'mateship'.

In my home country there is something of a cameraderie of the mountains; this spirit of moutain lodges, the tradition of greeting everyone on the path was to me at least as important as getting to another peak...

It's sad that some people feel the need to kill humnity in themselves, to prove that they are 'superhumans' or 'responsible self-reliant beings'...

Just sad...

I believe that when people choose to take high risks of this nature they cannot 'expect' others to be 'obligated' to make sacrifices for them.

We can only hope, but if they dont, I dont believe that people have a right to pass judgment, sure it is disapointing, but these are extenuating circumstances and that has to be taken into account and consideration.

People make thier choices and they are entitled to that. Nobody knows what would have happened if the situation was reversed.

'Ethical yuk factor' doesn't begin to describe how disturbed I feel when I think of 40 climbers passing that poor man. To say he was beyond help is a cop-out - Lincoln Hall was so far gone he was even reported dead and was then rescued.

The commercialilization of mountaineering has clearly eroded human decency in many people. I sometimes wonder how many of these trophy climbers would want to scale Everest if one of the conditions of their climb was that no-one would ever know of their achievement.

I have always believed that the journey is more important than the destination.

A man died alone on his path, passed by many others more focussed on the destination. I guess that they don't stop and smell the flowers on their life's journey either.

Rest in Peace David Sharp.

Its easy to sit back in comfy environs and denigrate the basic human spirit which got us to this place, from which we admonish, judge and ridicule in all our coiffed comfort.

Those narcissistic explorers and adventurers that spent 6mths on a leaky boat to get out here way back when... wot a bunch of ego stroking, space wasting twits for having the temerity to express the an essence of human existence (striving) to set the ground work that created what we now take for granted.

People who look crazy for doing things like climbing everest are society's prime movers. The rest of us are pretenders, second-handers, spectators.