Everest team forced to leave sick British climber to die
Ever since I read Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” and saw David Breashears’ IMAX film EVEREST (saw him speak, got a signed copy of his awesome book) I’ve been hooked. To the ultimate success and the ultimate sacrifice that is Everest.
This is the sacrifice story.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, the British climber Peter Kinloch was on the roof of the world, in bright sunlight, taking photographs of the Himalayas below, “elated, cheery and bubbly”.
But Mount Everest is now his grave, because only minutes later, he suddenly went blind and had to be abandoned to die from the cold.
As the team descended, Mr Kinloch’s guides noticed that he seemed to lose co-ordination. He would slip and stumble, then resume walking normally. After an hour, he made a surprising request to the team leader, David O’Brien, to be shown how to get down the ladders. At first he said he was having difficulty seeing, then he admitted that he could not see anything.
It took four hours for Mr O’Brien and a sherpa to help the stricken climber down to Mushroom Rock, barely 1,000ft below the summit. Two more sherpas arrived and for the next eight hours they all struggled to bring Mr Kinloch,28, down the mountain, administering drugs and oxygen. But they were now dangerously close to needing rescue themselves, and had to abandon him and struggled back into camp at 5.30am, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.
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