Our Common Humanity

"We toasted to the honour and the courage of the rescue team, realizing that the other climbers had put their humanity aside and their egos forward." German climber Gerfried Goschi

People determined and intent beyond all other concerns, to mount an energetic and dedicated effort to push themselves beyond endurance to ascend a mountain peak for the thrill of achievement and the acclaim and celebrity-status that accompanies such a feat, sometimes leave their humanity behind. The struggle to achieve that goal and the toll it takes on the human psyche may override all other concerns.

Including the understanding that no man is an island.

Just recently, there was a dreadful capsizing of an old passenger vessel on the Volga River in Russia, resulting in the deaths of over a hundred people. Children had been securely locked into a play room. People discovered as the ship listed in its final agonies that they could not escape, as doors were locked.

Some saved themselves, exiting portholes and managing to stay afloat for hours. And they noted that two passenger ships passed them with no effort made to rescue anyone in the water. And that passengers on the passing ships took photographs of the disaster on their cellphones, presumably as mementos of the occasion.

There have been occasions, when mountaineers have climbed Mount Everest, that some, so focused on their quest for final ascent, have passed unheedingly by another person who had fallen ill. Passed by without acknowledging their personal responsibility to aid and assist, for it would deflect them from their purpose, when time and the vagaries of weather speak the essence for success.

And it happened again. A Japanese climbing group with a porter who had become ill decided to leave the man to fend for himself. They were climbing the K5 peak in Pakistan's Karakoram Himalayas, when a Pakistani porter had fallen ill to altitude sickness which can become rapidly fatal if the ill person is not cared for, and brought down to a lower level on the mountain and given medical care.

Just as well for the abandoned porter that people with conscience intact were nearby, people who were similarly aspiring to ascend to the peak of K5. Louis Rousseau and his team responded to an urgent call for help. Mr. Rousseau, an experienced Quebec-based mountaineer sought assistance from other climbers and between them they managed to rescue the abandoned porter.

They used a rescue sled and emergency oxygen tanks and managed to stabilize the man with first aid, and began lowering him down to base camp, knowing that medical help would meet them there. It is no mean feat to ascend a mountain which is the eleventh highest in the world. It takes great skill, immense strength and endurance and determination.

To perform the task in reverse hampered with a man suffering from pulmonary edema, carefully lowering him in a life-saving descent, is all the more difficult. There are some who ascribe the lack of care and concern for others to the transitory nature of current expeditions who helicopter in, rather than as was done in the past, establish a close relationship over time between climbers and porters achieving the various camp levels.

We live in a hurried world where people expect instant results and immediate rewards, with no time wasted on niceties let alone consideration for the welfare of others. It's a world of 'you're on your own, and tough it out'. And while most climbers would shudder at the very prospect of turning away from someone in need; for they themselves could be that person in need; there are those who utterly lack concern for others' welfare.

It is, as the editorial director of Gripped, Canada's climber magazine said: "When there's somebody who's ill or needs help, you offer it. It's basic human decency."