Faustian bargain on Everest

Myles Osborne spent three years training, scrimping and saving to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He expected sacrifice, but not the one he ultimately made.

Within three hours of the summit, with ample strength and good weather, Osborne turned back.

Attaining the summit would have been a Faustian bargain –trading the summit for his humanity. Osborne, a new assistant professor of history, opted to save a life.

Just after daybreak on May 26, 2006, Osborne and his team reached 28,000 feet on the North Ridge of Everest. There was a man, about two feet from a 10,000-foot drop.

He sat cross-legged, his down suit unzipped to the waist, changing his shirt. The man wore no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses. He had no oxygen tank, no ice ax, no food, no water. The temperature overnight had dipped to 30 degrees below zero.

“I imagine you’re surprised to see me here,” the man said.

Indeed. “When I saw this guy, I honestly thought I was hallucinating,” Osborne said recently.

The man knew his name was Lincoln Hall. He did not know how he got there. In fact, the rescuers later learned, Hall did not even know where he was. He thought he was on a rocking boat, which he wanted to escape. Osborne and the others had to anchor Hall to the ridge to keep him from plunging off the eastern face of Everest.

There was “absolutely no other choice” than to try to save the delirious, deathly ill man, Osborne says. “I said straightaway, ‘We can’t leave him here.’” They didn’t.

Osborne’s team radioed down to “advanced base camp” to report that Hall was, in fact, alive. The Sherpas below had to be convinced of this, as they had given Hall up for dead (and had informed his wife of his death) the night before.

Osborne’s team waited four hours for the Sherpas to arrive. Together, they roped Hall up and began the laborious trek down. They could not carry Hall – not at that altitude or on such terrain – so the rescue depended on getting the dead man to walk.

Safely below the “death zone,” Hall began recovering his senses and health. Osborne visited a woozy Hall in the medical tent at advanced base camp, by which time Hall was still only marginally coherent.

In his book “Dead Lucky,” Hall recalls tracking Osborne and the others down a few days later in Kathmandu. There, he thanked Osborne for saving his life.

At the time of the rescue, Osborne was unaware of David Sharp, who had died under similar circumstances 10 days earlier. Sharp had apparently summited and collapsed on the descent. A Sherpa stopped to ask who he was. Sharp said, “I just want to sleep.”

About 40 climbers passed Sharp without stopping to offer – much less render – help. As others ascended and descended, Sharp died.

Sharp’s demise ignited an uproar.

Initially Osborne was disappointed by his forfeited quest. But after a night’s sleep, he snapped out of it.

Meeting Lincoln Hall’s grateful family (upon the publication of Hall’s book “Dead Lucky”) “just drives home the point that getting to the top of a big hill doesn’t matter,” Osborne observes.

Osborne, who just graduated from Harvard University and specializes in African history, does not plan a return to Everest. Eventually, he hopes to climb a lesser-known summit in Pakistan. Here in Colorado, smaller mountains also beckon.

In the short term, Osborne focuses on being a new member of the faculty who specializes in the history of sub-Saharan Africa, including the effects of British colonialism. The College of Arts and Sciences, where he now teaches, aims to convey “humane values and learning.” Those pinnacles of higher education are clearly within Myles Osborne’s reach.