Assumptions are the mother of all f... ups

I'm trying to limit posts on Everest but after seeing Mark Inglis' face screaming out at me from the cover of the latest North and South magazine and having bought it, my temperature has risen a little and hence the need to use this keyboard for a little therapy.

Firstly, bear with me - as the article is not available online, here is a passage that has some new information surrounding the morning of May 15:

"After two hours of steady climbing, they passed a small half-metre wide rocky ledge, with a sheer drop of 2000 metres on one side. On the other, an overhang hid the entrance to a tiny cave where the notorious Green Boots' body lay half buried by seasons of snow.

Inglis had been warned about Green Boots and glanced as he went past, detecting what he thought was another body. Behind Inglis, Whetu could see Green Boots had an unexpected companion, lying on his side, curled up presumably to preserve any body heat. Whetu assumed the man, whom he later learned was David Sharp, had bivied (bivouaced) overnight after summiting too late the previous day.

Whetu wasn't overly alarmed - he'd bivied himself after getting caught by the dark on other high-altitude climbs. As he passed, he took off his oxygen mask and called to Sharp to get going, suggesting he could descend in the light from the headlamps of the 40 summit hopefuls on the way up. There was no response.

Whetu was aware he was holding people up - there was insistent tugging on the rope from the team member behind - and he needed another suck of oxygen. Assuming Sharp would get going soon, he put his oxygen mask back on and carried on up. Pausing at the Mushroom Rock terrain to rehydrate, the group discussed what they'd seen and some team members were surprised - they hadn't even noticed Sharp.

They radioed their "sighting" back to base, where expedition leader Russell Brice and team doctor Terry O'Connor advised the team to carry on. Brice agreed that three of the Sherpas should revisit Sharp on the way down.

Brice, ever mindful of the predations of frostbite, was worried about safety. Team members had paid him a lot of money to get them home safely and he didn't want to jeopardise them or his reputation.
...
Once the group summited, Brice radioed them to get down as fast as possible. Brice's respected Sirdar (chief Sherpa) Phurba Tashi was directed to stop with two other Sherpas to see if they could assist Sharp. The trio rustled up a spare oxygen bottle, mask and regulator and tried to give the Englishman oxygen and get him on his feet, but couldn't rouse or move him.
...
Whetu acknowledges, with hindsight, that he made the wrong assumption. He knows now Sharp needed help, on the way up but, in a snap judgement on the coldest morning he's ever known, his mind befuddled and disoriented from oxygen deprivation, he guessed wrong."

North and South magazine, July 2006

Firstly, halle-fuckin-lujah. For the first time, someone has put their hand up and admitted that they may have (with the wonderful benefit of hindsight) just might have made some wrong decisions on their way up the mountain. Mark Whetu, an experienced climber who has previously performed a rescue on Everest, puts his hand up and says yep, we may have got it wrong. Give him a medal, although why he thought a guy who had bivied on the mountain on "the coldest morning he's ever known" didn't need help is beyond me, but hey, let's accept clear and rational thinking at 8,000m+ is not easy.

Secondly, just where does Russell Brice get off trying to convince us that the first he'd heard about David Sharp was on the way down (see previous blog entry) when there is so much contradictory evidence that shows he was radioed by his team members on the way up? If the North and South article is to be believed, together with other references, Mr Brice still has a fair amount of explaining to do - not only why he told his climbers to carry on (oh yeah, that's right, some of them had paid a lot of money and he (Brice) had his reputation to worry about, according to the article), but why he now insists he knew nothing (Sgt Shultz's style from Hogan's Heroes) about Sharp until climbers contacted him on the way down.

I'll save my comments about Inglis for another day - I have no criticism of him and his actions on the mountain and I still feel some sympathy for what he has endured in the media, but this is tempered somewhat by some of his comments and actions since. Put it this way, I wouldn't pay money to go and listen to him when he commences his motivational speaking tour.