Left to die on Mount Everest

[TehBorken]

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[/td]                [td align="left" valign="top" width="470"][span class="MainStoryHead"]Left to die on Mount Everest[/span]
                               
[span class="deckText"]Report that dozens of climbers passed stricken British mountaineer on way to the summit shocks first man to reach top[/span]

[span class="HeadByLine"]                                  By                                   STEVE MCMORRAN                                                                    
                                                              Associated Press
5/25/2006[/span]                                [/td]                            [/tr]                            [tr]                               [td colspan="2"][img]vny!://www.buffalonews.com/images/space.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" width="470"][/td][/tr][tr]                               [td width="2"][img]vny!://www.buffalonews.com/images/space.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="2"][/td]                               [td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top" width="499"]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              [table align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" width="250"]             [tbody][tr]                                        [td class="hide"][a href="jvascript:showPicture('vny!://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2006/05/25/actualsize/0525inglis.jpg')" onmouseover="window.status='Click to view larger picture';return true" onmouseout="welcome(); return true"][img]vny!://www.buffalonews.com/images/zoom_in.gif" alt="" border="0" height="20" width="20"][/a]  [span class="EnlargeLine"]Click to view larger picture[/span][/td]                                     [/tr][tr]                                        [td][img]vny!://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2006/05/25/0525inglis.jpg" height="264" width="250"][/td]                                     [/tr]                                     [tr]                                        [td][span class="captionText"]Associated Press
 New Zealander Mark Inglis, the first double amputee to reach the summit, said his party stopped and found Sharp close to death.[/span][/td][/tr]             [/tbody][/table]                                                                                                                                         [span class="storyText"]WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Mount Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary said Wednesday he was shocked that dozens of climbers left a British mountaineer to die during their own attempts on the world's tallest peak. David Sharp, 34, died while descending from the summit during a solo climb last week, apparently of oxygen deficiency.  More than 40 climbers are thought to have seen him as he lay dying, and almost all continued to the summit without offering assistance. [/p] "Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain," Hillary was quoted as saying in an interview with New Zealand Press Association. [/p] New Zealander Mark Inglis, who became the first double amputee to reach the mountain's summit on prosthetic legs, told Television New Zealand that his party stopped during its May 15 summit push and found Sharp close to death. [/p] A member of the party tried to give Sharp oxygen and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit, he said. [/p] Several parties reported seeing Sharp in varying states of health and working on his oxygen equipment on the day of his death. [/p] Inglis said Sharp had no oxygen when he was found. He said there was virtually no hope that Sharp could have been carried to safety from his position about 1,000 feet short of the 29,035-foot summit, inside the low-oxygen "death zone" of the mountain straddling the Nepal-China border. [/p] His own party was able to render only limited assistance and had to put the safety of its own members first, Inglis said Wednesday. [/p] "I walked past David but only because there were far more experienced and effective people than myself to help him," Inglis said. "It was a phenomenally extreme environment; it was an incredibly cold day." [/p]     The temperature was minus  100 at 7 a.m. on the summit, he  said. [/p] Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 became the first mountaineers to reach Everest's summit. Hillary said in an interview published Wednesday in a New Zealand newspaper that some climbers today did not care about the welfare of others. [/p] "There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die, and I don't regard this as a correct philosophy," he told the Otago Daily Times. [/p] "The whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top," he told the newspaper. [/p]     Hillary told New Zealand  Press Association he would have  abandoned his own pioneering  climb to save another's life. [/p] He said that his expedition, "would never for a moment have left one of the members or a group of members just lie there and die while they plugged on towards the summit." [/p]     More than 1,500 climbers have  reached the summit of Mount Everest in the last 53 years and some  190 have died trying. [/p][/span][/td][/tr][/tbody][/table]  

[kitten]

I wonder if any of them ever stopped to think that it could be their turn next.  What ugly humans they were!

[P.C.]

It's a pretty sad day when a sport is believed to be that important.  Personally, I don't get it.  The whole 'extreme sport' thing leaves me mystified.  I think many of these people have the same disregard for their OWN lives, rendering their judgement of  'life or death' over winning, kind of distorted.

[Lise]

Couldn't agree with you guys more. I just read in the newspaper yesterday about David Sharp's ordeal. Some ppl just pass him without even lending a hand. At the most, they could have signaled for help.

  To those who can't handle the extreme sport, DON'T. If you're unprepared for the elements, just don't do it. Stupidity like this will cost you your life.

[Sportsdude]

Oh its Darwinism up there.  Saw a documentary out Everest and when you get to the last base camp and happend to die they just put you in a bag and put you next to all the other people who have died.  There's got to be atleast 10 bodies up there.  The problem is, is that its too high for a helicopter rescue and climbers that reach that point have absolutely no engergy or strength to do anything with the bodies.