it's not the responsibility of everyone else up there to take care of screwballs who want to go solo. Your primary responsibility is the safety of your party...not to care for people you find along the way.

Anyone would agree that "Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain" but that's a pretty simplistic interpretation of this situation.

The REAL question is, should the other climbers value David Sharp's like more than he valued it? I mean, he chose to climb solo which has many moral and ethical implications.

even if he DID go solo, thats still no excuse for leaving him there. maybe he didnt count on help, but that doesn mean he didnt deserve it.

There are so many factors involved in a situation like this. There is no way for any of us to determine what we would do unless we were there....

Do some more research. They did all that was possible to help Sharp. Hillary didn't have all the facts when reporters tracked him down and he's long railed against the commercialization and took that opportunity again. Overall, climbers acted very commendably regarding this situation.

But the stealing of supplies from high camps (when lives weren't at risk) is despicable.

The knee jerk reactions from the hopelessly uninformed are typical. But wrong. Sharp could not have been saved. Period. Dawa did everything possible the day before to get him moving the day before. When they got there the next morning, after a -40 night at 8500 meters, Sharp was frozen, non-responisve, and the only sign of life was eye flutter. Oxygen and TLC did nothing for him. Carrying him down is absolutely out of the question. No body has ever survived from that high who couldn't walk or crawl. Ever.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3678372a10,00.html

Congrats to Mark Inglis and all the others. They did the right thing.

Climbers dispute claim of desertion
D. D. McNicoll
26may06

THE climbers accused of leaving a stricken Englishman to die just below the summit of Mount Everest spent more than 90 minutes in a futile effort to revive him, putting their own safety at risk in the process, an Australian who reached the summit that day said last night.

Businessman Bob Killip, 52, from Kangaroo Valley in NSW, said British climber David Sharp was frozen from his knees and elbows down and had stripped off his jacket and gloves when they found him.
Mr Killip said that because Mr Sharp had climbed without Sherpa support, no one at the final camp on the mountain was aware he had failed to return on May 14.

"We climbed past him on the way up at about 2am on May 15 but we thought it was the body of a Polish climber who has been frozen there for years.

"We didn't know there was a climber missing."

Mr Killip said that later, as his group was headed back down from the summit, one of the climbers noticed signs of life.

"A bloke called Max, from Lebanon, saw he was alive and immediately started trying to give him oxygen," Mr Killip said.

"He wouldn't respond. He was frozen from the knees and elbows down and his jacket and gloves were off.

"Max spent 90 minutes with him but he eventually realised there was nothing we could do. He was devastated and he didn't want to leave him.

"Our Sherpas also gave him oxygen. They don't like death - and if they could have got him down, they would have.

"We were walking on ridges no wider than a row of bricks and if you slipped, you wouldn't stop for 3000 metres.

"To get someone down - even if it was your wife or your brother - would have been impossible."

Mr Killip, who was making his second attempt at scaling the world's highest mountain, said his expedition was already helping down two of its own climbers.

He said Mr Sharp, who was making his third attempt to climb Everest, had purchased infrastructure to take him to the base camp but had no one looking after him from then on.

"To blemish the reputations of 30 climbers by saying they didn't help is terrible," Mr Killip said, "We did everything we could."

Mr Killip's party included New Zealand double amputee Mark Inglis, the first man so handicapped to reach the summit.

Mr Sharp, 34, an engineer, had climbed alone, after leaving England on March 27 to travel to Everest's base camp. He had only two oxygen bottles, rather than the five carried by most climbers, and no Sherpa support.

Edmund Hillary, who was first to conquer Mount Everest 53 years ago, on Wednesday said the incident raised questions about the ethics of modern mountaineers. Sir Edmund said his expedition would never have left someone to die while they "plugged on towards the summit".

"I've got the utmost respect for Ed Hillary but someone has given him the wrong steer on this," Mr Killip said, "We wouldn't have abandoned one of our own party."

Mr Inglis arrived back in Christchurch yesterday to face criticism over the decision to leave Mr Sharp. Speaking to the media from a wheelchair, Mr Inglis said Mr Sharp did not have oxygen or proper gloves and that, at 8500m, it was extremely difficult to keep himself alive, let alone help anyone else.

It's sad that humans really are that selfish, Everest will be there for centuries to come, David Sharp won't because of other's greed.

The knee jerk reactions from the hopelessly uninformed are typical. But wrong. Sharp could not have been saved. Period. Dawa did everything possible the day before to get him moving. When they got there the next morning, after a -40 night at 8500 meters, Sharp was frozen, non-responisve, and the only sign of life was eye flutter. Oxygen and TLC did nothing for him. Carrying him down is absolutely out of the question. No body has ever survived from that high who couldn't walk or crawl. Ever.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3678372a10,00.html

Congrats to Mark Inglis and all the others. They did the right thing.

Does this extend to the dude soloing the crag I'm on ?

This is a good example of how people so easily misplace the blame. David Sharp won't be there because of his own greed--his own greed not only to reach the summit, but to reach it solo. 99% of what happened was the result of his own choices. The other climbers really played a small role in his fate.

My only point was that Sharp shouldn't go up there expecting assistance when his is climbing "solo" and that Sharp -- not the opther climbers--bears the responsibility of the outcome.