Leaving the dying for dead on Mt Everest

Missing from the record books: the unsung feats of everyday life - Opinion

Richard Glover's Saturday column about this incident was amusing, but only because the poor guy left for dead is in fact alive. Richard had spoken to Sir Edmund Hillary about it on his radio show:

He [Hillary] is particularly uneasy about the attitude of "get to the top at any cost" - itself a reflection of the big fees being paid to guides. Inglis's achievement - reaching the top with his artificial legs - may be remarkable, but it's been soured by his admission that he walked past a dying mountaineer on his way up.

For Hillary, that shows a value system that's all wrong: people "just want to get to the top [and] don't give a damn for anybody else in distress".

Inglis has defended his own actions - pointing out that his party at least paused to help the dying man. About 40 other mountaineers simply walked past.

Forty! Suddenly Everest seems like the Pitt Street of the Himalayas. Forget climbing it; I want the Starbucks concession. Indeed, Hillary told me there are often 60 people at the summit. You'd be more secluded in the Cross City Tunnel.

Hope he (the near dead guy) gets a good media deal to tell his story.

UPDATE: here's another odd thing that may, or may not, have happened on Mt Everest recently. (Why a sherpa would get naked there is not explained at all.)

UPDATE 2: OK, maybe I don't always pay close attention. When I first posted, I did not realise that two climbers had been left for dead in the last week, but the first (British one) actually did die.