Re: Climbers leave man to die on Mount Everest (Moralityc)
mount everest is an interesting case. i watched some discovery series on a team trying to climb it, and when a weather window opens up it looks like a staircase of people trying to make the climb. they've paid a lot of money, have huge egos, have spent months or years training and will do almost anything to get to put 'everest summit' beside their names, and not much is going to stop them.
I'm not a mountaineer, but i've read a lot of mountaineering literature, and leaving people behind to die isn't unusual. in certain circumstances, there is just no way to get someone off of a mountain, and a major injury in some situations is the same as dying. however, when there is a chance of rescue, most in the community will do whatever it takes to get that person down, because climbers know that the next time it could very well be them who needs it.
odds are that we won't get an accurate account of what happened in this case, but it seems like people didn't want to pass up their chance, and justified it by convincing themselves that it was one of the cases where nothing could be done. if that's true or not, who knows. Everest has its own culture where guides will push pull or drag anybody with enough money to the top, and that likely contributed to what happened here.
as a climber i know well says, it takes a lot more courage to decide to stop a climb and turn around than it does to keep going.
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