Thursday, October 22, 2015

The Haunting story of David Sharp

I have always had a fascination with all thing macabre or horrifying. The creepier and stranger the tale, the more interesting I find it.
Today I stumbled across a documentary on Mount Everest and the fact that over 200 people have died atop the mountain and many, due to the extremely high cost of removing them from the mountain, end up remaining there frozen in time. The bodies lie there in the snow as climbers step over them. Apparently, some of the bodies are pushed off of ledges and cliffs so they will be out of view.
David Sharp was a British climber that froze to death on the mountain in 2006. The documentary I saw actually had him in it.  The group doing the documentary passed him while he was huddled in a cave, they thought he was already dead at first but noticed movement and breath vapor. They encouraged him to keep moving and went on their way. 30-40 people passed him dying in the cave and kept going.
I have never even thought about climbing  a mountain. Heck, I have only seen snow once. But I am so haunted by the fact that this poor man froze to death all alone in the span of a day. Granted, at that altitude hypoxia and frostbite are so common, one has to keep moving or die. But I cannot imagine walking past a barely alive human being and continue to move on.
I just imagine what that poor man was thinking sitting in that cave knowing he would probably freeze to death alone in the dark. The thought horrifies me.
Apparently his frozen body remained there for a year before he was moved. A grim reminder to other climbers that it could happen to them, too.

No comments: