"Don't Let Me Die" Francys Arsentiev · The Sleeping Beauty of Everest

Four hours from the summit of Everest, Cathy O'Dowd came across a stricken climber. She faced a brutal choice: to risk her own life in a doomed rescue - or to push on to the top. Here she explains why she left the barely breathing body-----------In Cathy's words:

I stared at the body, blinking in disbelief. We were in the shadow of the First Step, so the light was dull. The body lay about 10 metres from where I stood and was angled away from me. It jerked - a horrible movement, like a puppet being pulled savagely by its strings.

We had been on a well-organised and, so far, successful trail towards the summit of Everest, worrying only about ourselves. Now a stranger lay across our path, moaning. Lhakpa shouted down at me and waved me to move on, to follow him up onto the Step. I looked back at the raggedly jerking figure.

Each team or solo climber did, or should, arrive at the mountain self-sufficient. Anyone who turned up assuming they could borrow food, clothing or tentage would receive short shrift. Similarly, you could not climb yourself to a standstill then expect other teams to risk their lives to save you.

Saving someone was not straightforward. There was no emergency number to call, no mountain rescue to whom the problem could be handed over. We would not be able to walk away, feeling we had done our civic duty and that "the experts" were now in charge. Anyone who becomes immobile on a mountain as large and remote as Everest is probably going to die. On this side of the mountain, we would have to get the victim all the way back to base camp before we could contemplate trying to find a helicopter. If they had to be carried, that would require a number of teams, dozens of people, and at least three days climbing.

Whoever it was on the rocks in front of me was so badly incapacitated that they had spent the night out on the mountain rather than crawl down. Life lay in keeping moving, as that generated body heat and, with every metre of descent, moved you into thicker air. I suspected we had virtually no chance of saving this climber.

We stood to throw away an entire expedition: the money, the time, the thousands of vertical feet of physical and mental effort. We had sponsors who expected us to go for the summit. We had personal ambitions that pointed in the same direction. We were only 240 vertical metres from the top, only four or five hours in climbing time. We were so close to fulfilling everything we had set out to do.

Should we throw it all away for some rescue attempt that was doomed? The body was lying in a ghastly inverted V. It looked as if the climber's spine might be broken. If they couldn't walk they were probably condemned. Why waste time, stand around getting cold and demoralised, when the attempt was futile? Why not just turn away and climb on? This all ran through my head in the space of a few seconds. But all the debates, the issues, the logical analysis were useless. I simply could not do it. I could not put the summit of a mountain ahead of a human life. I would not want to live with myself if I could. However hopeless this person's situation might be, I had to try. I walked back to Ian, who was standing with Jangbu, watching Lhakpa climbing the First Step.

"That body's alive. I'm going to have a look." It took him a moment to understand what I was talking about. "We can't just leave," I insisted.

He nodded and I stepped down from the trail and walked across the loose shale towards the body. I thought it might be one of the Russian team. The person was lying with their harness clipped to a line of fixed rope, stomach uppermost, head and legs dangling down on either side. I knelt down cautiously next to the body and saw it was a woman.

"Don't leave me," she said. Her skin was milky white, and totally smooth. It was a sign of severe frostbite and it made her look like a porcelain doll. Her eyes stared up at me, unfocusing, pupils huge dark voids. "Don't leave me," she murmured again.

I felt sick. With her long, dark hair, she looked like me. For a shocked second, I felt as if I was glimpsing a possible future for myself. The fact that she was conscious both encouraged and appalled me. It might be possible to save her - or we might yet have to leave her.

"I need to fetch the rest of my team," I said to her. "We have several people here. We will try and help you. I will come back, I promise."

"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked.
Continue reading at: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/feb/15/features11.g2

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