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How it is done -- Mountaineering division - Take Two

First there was David Sharp who died on the slopes of Mount Everest while 40 other climbers walked past without rendering assistance. Next, there was Bellingham resident Stanislav N. Zinkov who summited Mount McKinley and rescued two New Zealanders on his way down. Now, meet Daniel Mazur, a professional mountain guide from Olympia, WA. From Yahoo News/AP:

Man gives up Everest climb for rescue
Just days after a British climber was left to die near Mount Everest's summit, an American guide abandoned his second bid to stand on top of the world so he could rescue a mountaineer mistakenly given up for dead.

Not only did Daniel Mazur not scale the world's highest peak from the northern side, he also failed to get his two paying clients to the top.

"It was very disappointing for me to miss my chance at the summit, but even more that I could not get my job done," Mazur, of Olympia, Wash., told The Associated Press upon returning to Nepal's capital, Katmandu, on Thursday.

Mazur, his two clients and a Sherpa guide were just two hours from the 29,035-foot peak on the morning of May 26 when they came across 50-year-old Lincoln Hall, who was left a day earlier when his own guides believed he was dead.

"I was shocked to see a guy without gloves, hat, oxygen bottles or sleeping bag at sunrise at 28,200 feet height, just sitting up there," said Mazur, who scaled Everest once before, from the southern side, in 1991.

Mazur said Hall's first words to him were: "I imagine you are surprised to see me here."

Emphasis mine -- that has to rank right up there with Dr. Livingstone, I presume. Heh... And Mazur's comment:

"Oh yeah, it was worth it," he said. "You can always go back to the summit but you only have one life to live. If we had left the man to die, that would have always been on my mind ... How could you live with yourself?"

Posted by DaveH at June 8, 2006 4:57 PM