UKC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34372556

After reading this I can't help to feel he needs to go again. Just try again his lost so much but has got so close

In reply to Ban1:

Quite easily really, if you have ever felt what it can be like at high altitude, like trying to wade through thigh deep treacle, normally with a cough so wracking that it feels like you are being gassed in WW 1, while the steps you make every 5 minutes seem to go nowhere at all in deep snow.

In most high altitude mountaineering you start with a fixed amount of determination, which steadily diminishes as life gets more and more horrible, and your body starts to fall apart. If you are lucky, you start with enough to get you to the summit and back more or less in one piece, if not, you end up like this chap. The good thing is that he has got back successfully, even if not all in one piece.

In reply to Ban1:

The mountain will be there tomorrow, he obviously wants to be too. Backing off seems pretty sensible to me.

In reply to Simon4:
So you know what it's like to be gassed in WW1 do you?

Although seeing as you put your age at 99 I suppose you could have been in the trenches as a baby.

In reply to chris gooder:
Of course, who hasn't been subject to a mustard gas attack once or twice?

I am also very familiar with what it is like to wade thigh deep in treacle, indeed I do it most weekends. But the claim that pictures exist, with or without David Cameron and "babe" is completely libelous. Or, as the poet puts it :

"Though hast committed ... "

"Fornication - but that was in another country, and, besides the pig was dead"

Have you ever heard of a "metaphor", possibly a slightly contorted one?

In reply to Simon4:

A mate of mine was unlucky enough to be involved in an industrial accident involving chlorine and lucky enough to survive and make a full recovery.

His description of the experience sounded a bit better than mountaineering to me - lots of rest and hot meals provided, although I reckon the oxygen was cheating.