The Ethics Of Conquest

You've saved up for awhile to travel to a distant land, in the hopes of standing on the top of the world. And you are not going to let anything stand in your way.

Especially something as inconvenient as the body of a solo climber, one David Sharp, 34, who was left to die on Mount Everest as some 40 (that's FORTY) other climbers passed him on their own attempts to reach the 29,035-foot peak.

This has revived a debate over the ethics of high altitude climbing, particularly in what is called the death zone, where conditions, temperatures and the lack of oxygen combine to mean that rescuers may forfeit their own lives in trying to save a sick or incapacitated climber.

Mark Inglis, who earlier this month became the first double amputee to reach the summit, was one of the climbers who passed the dying Sharp. Mr. Inglis said he radioed for help but a fellow mountaineer told him

Look, mate, you can't do anything. You know, he's been there X number of hours, been there without oxygen, you know, he's effectively dead.

This attitude provoked a response from none other than Sir Edmund Hillary, who, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, made the first conquest of Everest in 1953.

Sir Edmund said:

People have completely lost sight of what is important. In our expedition, there was never any likelihood whatsoever if one member of the party was incapacitated that we would just leave him to die.

I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top; it was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say good morning and pass on by.

He also told the New Zealand Herald that he was horrified by the callous attitude of today's climbers.
They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.

By the way, I read about this tragedy in the New York Times, under the headline:

'Dead' Climber's Survival Impugns Mount Everest Ethics

So, Faithful Readers, you have your vocabulary word for the month: impugn - I am not sure if I have ever seen that word used before ...