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Feat first isn't the ideal attitude for climbers : Comments
By Margaret Somerville, published 2/6/2006Helping out fellow mountaineers must take precedence over any determination to reach the top.
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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."