Mount Everest revisited

There are people - including Sir Edmund Hilary, the first to scale Everest - who are giving Mark Inglis flack for not abandoning his summiting of the 29,000+ mountain in order to save another climber who, oxygen starved and near death, shivered 500 ft. below the top.

Inglis is the double-amputee who managed the summit on May 15. He and his party were among about 40 climbers who passed by the stricken climber, who had already made the peak and collapsed shortly after beginning his descent. At least Inglis and his companions stopped to see what aid could be rendered. It was determined that there was little they could do, other than try to provide an oxygen canister and a radio call for assistance (which itself as an empty gesture, as no rescue party could hope to climb or chopper to that height in time, if at all).

Hilary, who is possibly past his prime if you get our drift, said that the double-amputee should have put his own exploits on hold and brought the stricken man, David Sharp, to safety at Base Camp 4, some 3,000 ft. below. Perhaps he does not remember as well as he once did, for on a day of 100 degrees below zero farenheit, with the jet stream draining the life from every man and woman on the mountain, with treacherous ice fields and rope climbs to navigate, it is difficult enough to get yourself to a safer (or rather, less deadly) altitude.

That's why 190 men and women have died in the attempt to climb - and get back down - Everest. That's a little more than 10% of those who have made the peak (about 1,500). Similar ratios would get NASCAR banned.

As Jon Krakauer wrote in his book, "Into Thin Air," a personal observation of the May 1996 Everest climbing disaster, climbers were told frequently that, on a good day, it wasn't that difficult to climb the mountain. But the descent is harder than the climb up. Everyone who continues to the summit, after several weeks of preparation, knows fully well the risks they take. Yet so many, when they get into trouble, do not turn back in time, if at all. Why?

Mountaineers explain that any peak above 26,000 ft. is a kill zone, an enemy of human life. Without bottled oxygen it is difficult and rare to make the summit, which explains why it took so long for someone (Hilary and Tenzig) to make the summit (they used bottled O2). But even with oxygen it is not a day at the beach, as Krakauer said. Low-pressure does funny things to the human body and the human mind. There is little clear thinking.

Clear thinking is in short supply even at lower altitudes designed for human habitation. Under the effects of hypoxia it is rarer still. Perhaps the real issue is not whether climbers abandon their humanity in their zeal to conquer Everest, but whether with so many having been to the top, anyone else need go at all.

Do not tell that to the climbers. Kraukauer wrote, in his forward,

"There were many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act - a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument."

So lighten up, critics. Before you criticize Mark Inglis and his climbing compatriots, you might want to, er, scale a mile or so of a tall mountain in his boots. Or do a virtual summit of Everest by reading Krakauer's fine book. Then we'll talk.