Woman climber found abandoned on Mt Everest

In a year when nearly 500 people are said to have summited the Mt Everest, the darker side of the expeditions has also begun to surface, with six deaths and now the news of a woman climber being abandoned on the way to the summit.

A non-Nepali woman climber, whose name and nationality have yet not been disclosed, was found abandoned on the Everest Balcony, a platform at a height of 8,400 m.

The news was reported by mountaineering website Mounteverest.net after three climbers were alerted about the woman and went up to rescue her.

American climbers Michael Haugen and Casey Aaron Grom, who had summited Mt Everest Monday as part of the 2007 IMG Everest Expedition, were told of the woman's plight soon after they had descended from the peak.

Aided by IMG guide Mark Tucker, the climbers brought the woman down to one of the lower altitude camps where she was being treated by doctors of another team, Caudwell Xtreme Everest.

"It was a life or death situation," Haugen told Mounteverest.net. "Our nine-hour Mt Everest climb day turned into 24 hours of climbing with the rescue being a gruelling descent with a patient to camp III."

The website also reported the rescue of an Italian climber who was said to have had remained lying on the snow for two days at 8,300 m.

Another mountaineering website, Everestnews.com, says a third climber, Italian Pierangelo Maurizio, might be lost on the Everest.

The reports revive the memory of 2006 when the world was shocked by the death of an abandoned climber and the miraculous rescue of a second left on top as dead.

Veteran Australian climber Lincoln Hall, who summited Mt Everest on May 25, 2006, was afflicted with altitude sickness while coming down. His team members gave him up for dead and left him at about 8,700 m, known as the Death Zone because of the freezing temperature and scarcity of oxygen.

A second expedition team found him the next day and helped him down to safety, winning acclaim for climber Dan Mazur and his team who gave up their summit attempt for the rescue operation.

The miracle of Hall's survival, however, was eclipsed by the death, 10 days earlier, of British climber David Sharp. Sharp, who was climbing alone, was seen floundering by dozens of climbers from different countries but none of them stopped by to try save him.

The incident created widespread condemnation with Everest legend Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to have had summited the peak in 1953, flaying the commercialisation of mountaineering.

(IANS)

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