So what happened on the way UP guys?

I've spent most of my adult life analysing information. And, thanks to a stint as an Internal Auditor in a life insurance company, sometimes I have the ability to smell bullshit at 40 paces. And I guess why I have followed the media coverage of David Sharp's death on Everest so closely is the bullshit-ometer started ringing pretty quickly. I have on my computer hard drive every scrap of information I have been able to find on this, from the initial 2 TV interviews by Inglis (and subsequent radio interviews), to copious articles at Explorersweb and other MSM coverage.

Now the following comes with a health warning: I may be completely barking up the wrong tree; this is full of supposition and assumption; but I back my own ability to analyse information and read between the lines, and you can judge for yourself the merits or otherwise of this post. But if I was a betting man (HA!), I'll suggest I've got some, maybe most, of it right, and possibly some of it wrong.

The first important point to be made clear is, on May 15, climbers on both the way UP and on the way DOWN saw Sharp. Not all of them, some of them. Read this more than once, 'cause it's critical - IMO much of the information published surrounding Sharp's condition and the assistance provided to him occurred on the way DOWN. Now here's the thing - all that is, to put it mildly, FUCKING IRRELEVANT. The story that needs to be clarified is what happened on the way UP?

So let's review the available information. The climbers ascending Everest on May 15 were mainly in two teams, a Turkish expedition and Himex Team 2 - there may have been a few independents as well.

Publihed on the Explorersweb site on June 5 was an account attributed to the Turkish expedition. The relevant bits from this are:

1. The Turkish climbers started out at 10 pm on the 14th
2. The Turkish write that their first two climbers passed David on the night of May 14th. They thought that David was a climber who had only stopped to rest. According to them, David was sitting up and they urged him to go on, but David responded "in a restrained way." (confirmed sighting No.1)
3. The Turkish climbers figure that David might have fallen asleep shortly after because when the rest of the team reached him about 15 minutes later, David was motionless. These climbers in turn thought that David was a dead climber, such as "green boots" who lay close by.

Now let's turn our attention to the larger Himex team. Reports suggest they left around 11 p.m. (i.e after, the Turks), and the first client charging up the mountain was Max Chaya (Lebanon) and I have seen the comment, but cannot verify it, that he did not see Sharp. There is no reason to doubt this. Another client, Bob Killup, states on his website he did not see Sharp on the way up. Again, there is no reason to doubt this.

Let's pick up the North and South article (with the associated health warnings about media accuracy):

4. 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.

I won't repeat the rest of the excerpt - it's in the June 15 blog entry. But that is confirmed sighting No.2.

What happened thereafter is where confusion and conflict meet.

5. According to North and South, after pausing at Mushroom Rock, "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."
6. According to Mark Inglis in his interviews on TVNZ's Close-Up programme, "it was sometime after midnight as we were climbing past, some of our Sherpas – as I’ve said very experienced people – checked him out and y’know, I guess their opinion. We climbed on."

Yet expedition leader Russell Brice, in his statement on his Himex website, states:

7. Sherpa Phurbi Tashi my Sidar called me at 01.41 to say that he was at Green Boots, but there was no mention that David Sharp was also at this location.
8. The next conversation was with Woodard (sic, Mark Woodward - a mountain guide) at 01.50 when the main group were on top of the first step (I don't know Everest, but I'm making the assumption this is the same timing as 5. above)
9. At no stage during the ascent did I know there was a man in trouble. There were never any radio conversations concerning the sighting of David Sharp between my team members and myself during the ascent.

Now, there may be an innocent explanation for this apparent contradiction. In fact, Mark Woodward was reported in the NZ Herald on 8 June as saying "He said he radioed expedition base camp, but did not think expedition manager Russell Grice - also a New Zealander - had received the message." Giving the climbers a large helping of the benefit of the doubt, there may have been communication issues, although it doesn't completely explain all of the reported comments (in particular 5. above).

So there you have it - two confirmed sightings on the way up, and someone made the call to carry on. But who? Grice, who now denies any knowledge of David Sharp's condition on the ascent? Or the climbers themselves, who perhaps mistakenly assumed Sharp did not need any help and by the time they reflected on that further up the mountain thought they couldn't go back down to double-check?

There is one scenario that I certainly do not buy into. And that is (Himex) climbers and their Sherpas stopped on the ascent and made a proper assessment of Sharp's condition and decided it was too late to do anything. That is where the bullshit-ometer continues to ring.

Not for one moment do I think the climbers have such a complete disregard for human life that they would walk past Sharp without concern for his condition. I believe the most probable course of events has some of the climbers noticing Sharp and genuinely believing he was not in need of assistance, and then realising sometime later on actually, he did need help.

And, until Whetu's reported comments in North and South, they weren't really wanting to admit that. And who can blame them? After the initial furore after Inglis' interview, who would want to stick their hand up and say "oops, might have made a wee mistake there"?

The thing is, with contradiction and confusion still swirling, they need to, or if this isn't the case, explain what actually happened. The alternative is to continue to let speculation run rampant and have their motivations and ethics called into question. One thing they do need to do is stop co-mingling the information on what happened on the way UP with what happened on the way DOWN, as that is doing themselves a disservice, and that, more than anything, does throw into question their credibility. I'll expand on that at a later date.