Guy Cotter

that climber off the mountain so they get left behind the Sherpa comes back to the high camp and says my client's missing and that's all to do with the structure of how that expedition is set up as opposed to like we work with teams so that we've always got the strength of the team there if there's an incident you can deal with that

Similarly, when you've got a very small expedition like these guys were on, underfunded probably, there weren't enough Sherpas to do the job of bringing everybody off the mountain.

And that's why someone like Hilary Darwin got left behind.

Well, Camp 3 is 7-3, so I believe he was above Camp 3, coming down from Camp 4.

And because there are fixed ropes on the mountain, it's not like everybody's always moving together, roped up, so people can move up and down independently.

And he obviously got left behind.

He might have sat down.

He was obviously exhausted, had spent too much time at altitude, too much load to carry, et cetera, et cetera.

Got left behind and then I guess got, forgot and...

You know, my take on it is that he's not a young Sherpa.

I understood that he was actually working at Camp 2 as a cook.

And then they...

needed him to go up to bring some loads down or whatever, which will raise lots of questions over there because he would have probably only been insured as a cook at Camp 2 when you have staff at that elevation who go from being a cook to being a high-altitude climbing surfer, then there's a different level of insurance that has to be applied and paid for prior to them taking on the extra role.

So

Look, I really imagine that the company involved is going to be in a load of trouble.

There's a new government over in Nepal.

They're trying to do what they can to improve the reputation of Everest.

And, you know, this sort of story doesn't bode well for the new government and how they should be perceived.

But it's just one story of many.

If you're there on Everest, there's many, many stories like this involving climbers from the west, the east, as well as Nepalese that go on through the season that nobody hears about.