Everest pioneer blasts climbers who left dying man

[tabasco]

Sir Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander and the first climber to successfully summit Everest, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, slammed the climbers who left Sharp behind.

"If he'd been a Swiss or from Timbuktu or whatever that didn't matter," Hillary said in a television interview.

"He's a human being, and we would regard it as our duty to get him back to safety."

In another interview, Hillary said many climbers today are more concerned about scaling peaks than they are about human life.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060525/everest_death_060525/20060525?hub=TopStories


Thank you, Sir Edmund, for representing decent human beings that climb mountains.

[benburch]

1. Horrific.

I think climbs to Everest ought to be banned. There is no further point in it, and the people doing it now have no ethics.

[seemunkee]

5. Just get rid of the guided trips

Pay to play is BS, make it so that you have to gain the experience and put your own expedition together. The ethics follows the money, the people who care about the mountains will clean things up.

As to no further point, you could say that about almost every mountain or rock in the world.

[leftofthedial]

2. but they made it to the top, didn't they?

that's all that matters to these egotists.

[LostinVA]

4. Oh no, you just don't understand or get it

Per some Duers.... anyone who can't sit with a man as he dies is inhumane. No matter what. I'm with Sir Edmund on this one -- and I believe I stand in good company.

Remember the sailors who lost their Olympic medal to help a boat in major trouble during some bad seas? I wish I could remember the nations involved... that is true sportsmanship. Didn't that also happen in a World Cup?

I've known ultrarunners who have run under their pace for 50 miles or more, just to stay with someone in major trouble.

Just throwing out "people don't get it" doesn't cut it. Real adventurers know it's the experience that matters.

[SidDithers]

3. Did this really need it's own thread?...

couldn't you have added this to the thread already going in GD about this topic. You know, the one you've already posted in?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1278203

Sid