Afew days before Christmas last year, David Sharp sent an e-mail to a climbing friend in Katmandu, saying: “I’m (stupidly) contemplating a final (final) attempt on Everest.” The friend, the New Zealander Jamie McGuinness, had been on Everest with Sharp when he failed in an attempt in 2003. Sharp had failed again in 2004, vowing not to return. Yet McGuinness was not surprised that Sharp was intent on a third try: “David knew he could do it, but he still had to prove it.” Another climbing friend, Richard Dougan, says that where Everest was concerned, “David had stars in his eyes.”
For Sharp to consider a third attempt says much about both the lure of the world’s highest peak and a streak of stubbornness in Sharp himself, particularly as frostbite had cost him several toes in 2003. In May, Sharp, 34, paid a far higher price. He almost certainly reached the summit. But during his descent he died of cold, exhaustion and lack of oxygen in the scant shelter of a rock alcove on the crest of the mountain’s northeast ridge.
There have been numerous deaths on Everest – almost 200 at the last count – but this was a spectacularly public one. Some 40 climbers, bidding to reach the summit via the north side of Everest that day, all passed Sharp during their ascent and descent, stepping within a few feet of his prostrate but still sentient body. It was a desolate place to die, ravaged by wind and cold, overlooking the slopes of Everest’s monumental northwest flank. The manner of his death was equally disturbing. Climbers describe how his hands and arms were deformed by frostbite; how, when he was hauled to his feet, he was unable to stand; and how he was finally left to die alone.
Sharp’s death led to anguished debate in the climbing world and the international press. Mountaineers of the stature of Sir Edmund Hillary have weighed in, complaining of the “horrifying” attitudes it revealed. The 40 or so climbers involved stand accused of putting their own summit ambitions ahead of saving Sharp’s life. Such is the draw of Everest that the climbers involved are drawn from nations across the world, including Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Turkey and the US. Interviews with many of them, however, present a more complex picture than the accusations allow.
From one interested party, meanwhile, there has been only pained silence. That is David’s family – his parents, both in their sixties, and his younger brother, Paul – who have recoiled from the media furore as they contend with their grief. From the accounts of friends, David emerges as a personable young man, close to his parents. He relished new challenges and, crucially, he was a loner who backed his own judgments.
There are contradictions too: a trained scientist renowned for his analytical thinking who, despite himself, was lured back time and again to Everest. So is this a parable of climbers passing by on the other side? What do the climbers have to say for themselves? To those questions may be added a third: was Sharp so blinded by the stars in his eyes that he took a risk too far?
David Sharp was born in Harpenden, where his father worked as an analyst at a chemical company; his mother had been a laboratory assistant. His father’s work took him to the northeast of England, where Sharp attended Guisborough’s Lawrence Jackson school and Prior Pursglove sixth-form college. His physics tutor, Steve Honeysett, remembers him as one of the brightest half-dozen students he taught: “He was an individualist even at that age. He was a quick, clear thinker with a penetrating mind.” At Nottingham University in 1993, Sharp got a first in mechanical engineering. He also took up climbing. As a lean six-footer, his physique gave him the ideal combination of light weight and a long reach. He honed his climbing skills in the Lake District and roamed the fells near his home.
Sharp’s fellow climbers liked to joke that he was a rocket scientist. It was close to the truth: he found a job in the defence industry, specialising in target systems. He also extended his climbing activities. In 2001 he joined a small commercial expedition to Gasherbrum II, at 8,035 metres the 13th highest Himalayan peak. Henry Todd, who led the expedition, remembers a “shy, retiring” man who was “socially not particularly adept – very much a loner”. The expedition was hit by bad weather and turned back at around 7,700 metres. Todd was left uneasy about Sharp’s climbing ability. Although determined, Todd says, “He wasn’t a tremendously safe climber and he wasn’t good at decisions.”
Sharp returned to the Himalayas in 2002, this time to attempt Cho Oyu, an 8,201-metre peak near Everest. He joined a commercial group, Project Himalaya, led by Jamie McGuinness, a New Zealand climber and guide, who remembers him as “very skinny and lean – but generally strong at altitude”. A team from Northern Ireland was also attempting the peak. In contrast to Todd, they found Sharp “likable, friendly and intelligent”, says Richard Dougan. Dougan, who spoke at Sharp’s memorial ceremony in Guisborough in July, adds: “He loved a challenge. He was climbing mountains to find his true direction and goal.” Dougan agrees that Sharp came across as a loner. Although he was companionable, with a liking for sharing travellers’ tales, most people found him “the type of person who would always take one step back – you couldn’t get to know him”.
Sharp reached the summit of Cho Oyu with McGuinness. But for Dougan and the Irish team there was a bitter outcome: one of their climbers died after falling into a crevasse. Dougan had been planning to attempt Everest with the colleague who died, and invited Sharp to take his place. Sharp readily accepted.
And so Sharp arrived at Everest in April 2003. The team, which was attempting the summit from the north, spent much of its time waiting for the arrival of the “weather window” in late May that gives climbers their best chance of success. Sharp and Dougan were the fittest pair and were accorded the summit bid. There was an unsettling prelude: soon after reaching the crest of the northeast ridge, they passed a location that has become one of Everest’s most notorious memorials. In 1996 an Indian man struggling to descend through a storm died in a rock alcove beside the climbers’ trail. His body, identified by his green boots, has remained there ever since. “You could see every detail,” Dougan recalls (the body is one of dozens littering Everest since it is not feasible to bring them down).
Dougan remembers the exhilaration of pushing out along the shattered rock of the northeast ridge. Sharp “looked strong and alert – he seemed at ease”. But it was bitterly cold and Sharp had incipient frostbite on his cheeks and nose. He was also having trouble with his oxygen apparatus. Midway between the two key landmarks of the First Step and the Second Step, Sharp decided to turn back. Selflessly, he urged Dougan to press on alone, but he too gave up shortly afterwards. When Sharp removed his boots that night, he was dismayed to see signs of frostbite. He eventually lost one big toe and half a smaller toe. “He never moaned about it – he just got on with it,” Dougan says.
During waiting spells on the expedition, Sharp had talked about the direction of his life, telling Dougan he intended to become a teacher. Dougan, who works at an adventure centre in Northern Ireland, had told Sharp about “the rewards of working with children. Possibly that had rubbed off on him”.
