Again Into Thin Air

A little while ago I reviewed Into Thin Air and was shocked to see the way people would let others die and literaly walk over the bodies of climbers dead in previous expeditions. Some more have died this year including David Sharp last week and some reports say that as many as FORTY other climbers walked passed, leaving him for dead and kept climbing.

About 40 people passed him that day, and no one else helped him apart from our expedition. Our Sherpas (guides) gave him oxygen. He wasn’t a member of our expedition, he was a member of another, far less professional one.

Note that one of the guys quoted in the article I linked was climbing on two prostetic legs. Impressive but also note the ending;

Mr. Inglis, recovering in his Katmandu hotel yesterday, revealed blackened and swollen finger tips, which may be removed soon… He also suffered injuries to the stumps of his amputated legs caused by the repeated impacts of climbing on prosthetic limbs. His legs were removed below the knee because of frostbite on an expedition in 1982. (emphasis mine)

Those people are nutters.

Then this week, another climber, Lincoln Hall, was again left for dead by various people until a team including Canadian Andrew Brash did the decent thing and suspended their climb to give him a hand. I’m shocked (again) at the fact that this seems surprising. The guy was dying, they let go of climbing a rock and helped him.

On Saturday, Hall was able to walk into the advanced base camp, 6,400 metres above sea level. He was being treated for frostbite and cerebral edema — swelling to the brain caused by altitude sickness. (emphasis mine again)

He walked down. He was left for dead, his family was told he was dead but others helped him and he walked down. Bit of a range of results there don’t you think? From “dead” to walking down. There’s some messed up stuff going on up on that mountain.

One Comment

mclin June 10, 2006

I NEVER KNEW. Very interesting, as people appear to have become “goal driven” to the extreems.

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