Everest leader denies knowing dying climber was in trouble
A Mount Everest expedition leader criticised for leading his team past a dying British climber said today that he did not know during his team’s ascent that anyone was in trouble near the peak.
In a detailed statement Russell Brice contradicted comments made earlier by other climbers in his group, who said Brice knew about the incapacitated climber, David Sharp, and told them there was nothing that could be done for him.
New Zealand double amputee Mark Inglis, who was climbing with Brice, has been harshly criticised after admitting he was one of more than 40 climbers reported to have seen Sharp as he lay dying and who, like almost all the others, continued to the summit of the world’s highest mountain without offering assistance.
Sharp, 34, of Guisborough, Teesside, died in a snow cave 1,000 feet from the mountain’s peak, apparently from oxygen deprivation suffered during his solo descent from the summit.
“At no stage during the ascent did I know that there was a man in trouble,” Brice said.
“There were never any radio conversations concerning the sighting of David Sharp between my team members and myself during the ascent,” he said.
The circumstances of Sharp’s death have prompted a debate over the ethics of high-altitude climbing, and triggered stinging rebukes from original Everest conqueror Edmund Hillary, who said it was “horrifying” that climbers could leave a dying man and proceed toward the summit instead.
Hillary said he would have abandoned his own pioneering climb in 1953 to save another life.
Brice, the head of a Himalayan Experience expedition, was at a base camp lower down the mountain while the group, including Inglis, made the climb.
Inglis told Television New Zealand last month that his party had found Sharp close to death, tried to give him oxygen and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit. Inglis said that when they radioed Brice at base camp he had advised them to carry on with the summit bid without attempting a rescue.
But Brice said today he only learned about Sharp and his condition after his team were descending from the 29,035ft summit, which they had reached between 6.15am and 7.03am on May 15.
“It was not until 9.30 (am) that I first became aware of the existence of David Sharp (although I did not know his name at that stage) when one of the climbers called me to say that there was a big man about to die,” Brice wrote in a note titled Reflections on Everest 2006.
“I established that David was still alive but unconscious and that his arms were frozen to the elbow and his legs were frozen to the knee, and that he had frostbite to the nose,” he said.
“If I had known there was a problem on the way up … most certainly I would have investigated the chance of a rescue,” he said.
Going up, the team had fresh climbers and sherpa guides, and ample oxygen compared with exhausted people and very little oxygen on the descent.
Brice also wrote that about two hours after he became aware of Sharp, two sherpas and a Turkish climber had tried to aid the failing Briton.
“The fact that (one sherpa) Phurba did not ask for assistance confirmed to me that it was not possible to rescue David,” he said.
Brice said he and Phurba had been involved together in ”many self rescues and the rescue of others over the years, so I know that if there was a chance to help he would willingly do so and would have immediately called me to start the logistics that would be required”.
“His silence was ominous,” Brice said.
He also said he had contacted Sharp’s parents to tell them of their son’s death the day after the climb.
“I told them that we had seen David the day before, and that we had left him even though he was still alive, but in an unrecoverable state, and that he was confirmed dead that morning (May 16),” Brice said. “This was a very hard call to make but something that I felt had to be done.”
