Left Everest climber still alive

[Janice]

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- An Australian mountaineer left for dead near the summit of Mt. Everest has been found alive after spending a night out on the world's highest mountain, but remains severely ill with frostbite and altitude sickness.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... index.html

[HurricaneHunter914]

What kind of screwed up person(s) left their member for dead?!

[Aquawind]

When your up that high it's called the death zone. Your body is dying at that point. Many people make bad judgement calls because they are not functioning normally. Clearly some of those that walked by didn't give it their best shot and decided to move forward. Many bodies are never even moved because it would be to dangerous. It's happened before. Some people are to hungry for the top and evidently this was the case. There have been other heroic cases of people left for dead before and ending up making it down. Unfortunately you can't just hoist them over your shoulders at that height your just working on what your next step will be. They can use oxygen and andrenalin to give people the phsyical boost for the mind to actually move. Another deadly year this year.

http://www.everestnews.com/Default.htm

[Gorky]

From what I've read regarding this story, his was only with 2 Sherpas when he got intotrouble and had become delusional and wouldn't make any attempt to descend due to the madness caused by lack of oxygen. When he went unconscious, the tour organiser ordered the Sherpas to abandon him and save their own lives over the radio. It's not like the other story where 40 people in well organised groups passed him on the way up, early in the day whilst they still had plenty of supplies. night was falling and the Sherpas stayed with him so long that they needed rescuing as darkness fell. The main issue here is probably the fact that he was declared dead in a press conference that night which must have been terrible for his wife, but its not like you can take your gloves off to take a pulse in those conditions so it could be understandable I guess. From some sources, he apparently was able to walk into base camp, and his main injuries are severely frostbittern fingers. Sounds like a lucky escape....

[tropicana]

An inspiration and pure will-power in the fight for survival.

A great story.

-justin-

[gtalum]

What kind of screwed up person(s) left their member for dead?!

That high up, it happens a lot. When you go into the death zone, you go knowing that your fellow climbers may not be able to carry you down if soemthing happens. It's easy to judge from a safe place.

[alicia-w]

this sort of thing is nothing new when it comes to climbers on those mountains.