'close to death and couldn't be helped'

[callmemadam]

A lot of news coverage this week on this dreadful story. I have just heard it yet again on the radio, as Everest hero Sir Edmund Hillary has joined the debate. Here is the BBC version. Couldn't do anything? How about staying with him until he died? Look what people did in terrible conditions after the London bombings. The man's attitiude seems inhuman to me and I don't think he has anything to be proud of in having 'climbed' the mountain, along with the forty other great achievers who apparently stomped over the body on their way to glory.

Comments

[dozydormouse.livejournal.com]

It appalled me too. How could anyone walk past someone who was dying and not at least try to help. Who wants to bit the mountain if you can't manage a little common humanity. I do not know how the people that walked past sleep at night. What a thing to live with.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Glad someone agrees with me! If you saw someone walk in front of a bus you wouldn't stand there giving him a lecture on how it was his own silly fault.

[gghost.livejournal.com]

I agree with you completely.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I asked the son (who has done Everest) about this and he agreed with
"The trouble is that at 8,500m (27,887ft) it is extremely difficult to keep yourself alive, let alone keep anyone else alive" (quoted in your account).
He hopes that he would have stayed - but fears that,if staying threatened his own survival, he probably wouldnt have done it.
He adds that everyone who starts up there knows the risks and he wouldnt want anyone else to jeopardise their safety for him.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

the forty other great achievers who apparently stomped over the body on their way to glory.

Son adds that it's more stomping their way to survival - there are times when, and places where, the most dangerous thing you can do is stop.
He'd want to know more about the conditions and whether it was possible to bivvy.