I climbed for many years when I lived in Washington and other western areas, and I taught climbing with the Mountaineers. I was a member of Everett Mountain Rescue for a number of years and I worked for the Forest Service and the National Park Service during those years. Those agencies have a culture of rescuing park or forest visitors.

Those climbers on Everest can justify all they want that this fellow was beyond hope, if makes them feel better, but they are people I would never consider climbing with because they are driven by ego and the almighty dollar. I have been on climbs that stopped to rescue members of our own party, I have stopped climbs to rescue members of parties completely unknown to me. I have been on climbs when members elected to drop out and wait at a point where they know the party will come back by and they'll all go out together. I've been on parties where people went back down on their own because they knew they could (no crossing of glaciers or large snow fields, a clear route or path to follow, etc.) and the party proceeded without them. Often someone went with them. Of course it is disappointing, but it is the mature thing to do.

All of those decisions were made with the understanding that as individuals we are responsible for ourselves, but as a party, we are responsible for getting all of us back alive. And sometimes (more often than we were happy about) it meant getting other parties off of the mountain, people who weren't properly trained or prepared. Sometimes it was simple. "How do we get down from here?" might be answered with "follow our wands off the glacier," to actually stopping and turning back if someone was injured. It's the price you pay to climb with a good group, you act responsibly with safety as your first concern. The Mountaineers are well-known for this, and the large climbing club has experienced very few accidental deaths in its entire history. That's not to say there are no hotshots in the Mountaineers. I elected not to climb with certain groups because I knew all they were doing was racing up the mountain and back down again, not intent on enjoying the trip, just wanting the peak. But they were safe when they did it.

I could never go climb Everest or those other charismatic peaks, because it isn't really about Mountaineering. I would not be able to walk past an injured person, and I couldn't conceive of joining a party that had the attitude that they could bypass an injured individual or leave me behind if I was "past help."

The man who died made a bad choice in going to Everest to begin with. He didn't deserve to die for it.

SRS