As the short summiting season on Mount Everest draws to a close, the man who deserves the highest praise is one who did not make it to the roof of the world. Just a few hundred feet short of the top, the British mountaineer David O’Brien encountered a Polish climber lying in the snow. Abandoned by his colleagues, the Pole was not far off becoming the eleventh person to die on Everest this year.
Mr O’Brien and his team faced a choice: continue with their own attempt on the summit, tantalisingly close, or abandon it and save another man’s life. Mr O’Brien did the right thing, guiding the stricken man down to safety. He survived, recovered, and apparently later failed to recognise and thus thank his rescuer, an omission this newspaper is happy to correct. Mr O’Brien is a credit to climbers everywhere.
Some people on Everest, however, are anything but. Very high altitude degrades mental and physical ability. Unfortunately, the thin air seems also to suffocate the moral capacity of some among the dangerously large numbers queueing impatiently for their crack at the summit. To climb past a frozen corpse, long beyond help, is merely macabre. To climb past a fellow human being whom you could prevent becoming a corpse is immoral.
Having paid a small fortune to be there, accustomed to getting their own way, heedless of the risk to themselves and their sherpa guides, some would-be summiteers leave their conscience back at Base Camp like so much unnecessary kit. These people should realise that there is no honour in an achievement, however glamorous, secured by climbing over — literally, in some cases — the bodies of the dying.
Everest will still be there next year.