Altitude Sickness

Hey, for the last time, if you're climbing Mount Everest and you get into trouble, could you do the other climbers the courtesy of dying off the trail? Just crawl over to the side so that you're out of the way. Thanks. We wrote about this a while back, and it's happened again: A man who reached the summit of Mount Everest enountered trouble on the way down, lost conciousness, and was left for dead by his Sherpa guides. Another climber did spot him and try to help, but when he asked for assistance from some passing Italian climbers, they claimed that they didn't speak English, and continued on up the mountain.

That didn't stop Dan Mazur, 45, a veteran guide from Olympia, Wash., from breaking with mountaineering etiquette and saving the guy; one of Australia's best-known climbers, Lincoln Hall.

We just all felt like we knew that's what we had to do. Here was this person sitting there, he's half-clothed, he's sort of talking, we're giving him our oxygen and food and water and he's started to come good. How could we leave a person like that?

Oh yeah; after Mazur got Hall back down the mountain, he eventually met up with the Italian climbers, and discovered that they had been faking. They did, in fact, speak English. We are so not rooting for Italy in the World Cup now.

Olympia Guide Helped Save Life Of Everest Climber Left For Dead [Seattle Times] Sport We Don't Understand No. 86: Mountaineering [Deadspin]