Thursday, May 25, 2006

AOL News - Sir Edmund Hillary Rips Climbers Who Left Dying Man

AOL News - Sir Edmund Hillary Rips Climbers Who Left Dying Man: "A member of the party tried to give Sharp oxygen, and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit, he said.

More than 40 climbers are thought to have seen him as he lay dying, and almost all continued to the summit without offering assistance.

Several parties reported seeing Sharp in varying states of health and working on his oxygen equipment on the day of his death.
Inglis, who was due to arrive back in New Zealand on Thursday, said Sharp had no oxygen when he was found. He said there was virtually no hope that Sharp could have been carried to safety from his position about 1,000 feet short of the 29,035-foot summit, inside the low-oxygen 'death zone' of the mountain straddling the Nepal-China border.
His own party was able to render only limited assistance and had to put the safety of its own members first, Inglis said Wednesday.
'I walked past David but only because there were far more experienced and effective people than myself to help him,' Inglis said. 'It was a phenomenally extreme environment; it was an incredibly cold day.'
The temperature was minus 100 at 7 a.m. on the summit, he said.
Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 became the first mountaineers to reach Everest's summit. Hillary said in an interview published Wednesday in a New Zealand newspaper that some climbers today did not care about the welfa"

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