In reply to gildor:
I agree that there seems to be a lot of keyboard-moralising going on, with rather simplistic comparisons as though the situation was clear cut.
> 1). Even on small mountains close to sea-level, rescuing someone who is incapacitated is very difficult - ask anyone who has any experience of mountain rescue. One person probably couldn't do it by themself even from the top of Snowdon.
I can think (offhand) of 3 occasions when I have been involved with getting people out of trouble on mountains, never higher than 5500m. On one occasion it was no higher than Coire an t-Sneachda, where a guide slipped on some path ice, landed badly, and immediately could no longer walk. It needed 8 people all the time to carry him when a stretcher finally arrived, with 2 in front to spot the way, and replacements at intervals no longer than 10 minutes. Near enough 20 people to carry him all told, and that was only for an hour and a half walk-out, on flat(ish) ground. A small Alpine or Himalayan party has no possibility of carrying someone, especially on serious ground.
On another occasion I and my partner were about 150 vertical m below the summit of Mont Blanc, in seriously deteriorating conditions, blown snow, , unclear traces, semi-blizzard and a biting wind. A weird figure appeared out of the mist, no ice-axe, crampons droppimg off bendy boots and an old-style rigid-frame scout pack on his back. "Where is the way" he demanded, this subsequently turned out to be the only words he could say in English, with very little more in French or German, that and "Czeckoslovakia". He was quite clearly a disaster in the process of happening, and stared at us like a lost sheep, crag-fast over a big drop.
I had a brief shouted conversation with my partner, including the words "do you want to do something, remember he can kill us very easily", response "well if we don't he's dead". So we tied him on with a Parisian baudrier, my large partner went behind to stop slides and I went in front to find the way. The last thing I said to my partner before we started was "he is GOING to fall - you must stop him!". He did, twice in the time it took us to get down to the Vallot hut (so no-one should imagine that ice-axe breaking is useless in the Alps!), by which time we had had enough - we told him to go into the hut and get warm. As he approached the hut, he slipped and disapeared from sight, evidently having fallen to unguessed depths. Nervously we looked over the edge and found he had stopped not far below, then we acosted a party of 5 descending Germans and asked (well ordered really - they were Germans after all!) them to take him with them.
If the Germans hadn't been there, or had refused, what would we have done - to be honest I don't know. It had been quite frightening enough getting him down that far with just he 2 of us. My partner later remarked that descending there was comparatively safe (though quite dangerous enough for me), if we had found someone in such serious trouble and so incompetent half-way up, say, the Coutourier coloir, what if anything would we have done? Were he could really endanger us.
> How many of the people who have expressed their "disgust" have any experience of high altitude mountaineering and have any first-hand knowledge of what is possible and what is just not possible?
The idea that there is a distinct line between helping someone else and endangering yourself is nonsense. Even as an experienced Alpinist, it can be incredibly easy and quick to go from proceeding steadily in control to a cascade of catastrophic events.
> She is an 18 year old amateur, not a team of experienced professional high-altitude mountain guides.
Which does of course raise the question of what an 18 year old with no experience is doing there.
> rescuing an incapacitated person from the upper reaches of Everest is usually just not possible.
The third occasion that springs to mind was in the Tien Shan, where we were in 2 pairs. One pair, that I was in, had reached the bottom of a dangerous ice-slope and were wondering what on earth had happened to the other. To cut a long story short, one of them had been hit by a stone and his knee cut open to the bone, which is not really what you want to see on a 50 degree ice-slope at 5500m in the middle of Central Asia, with evening drawing in and bad weather heading your way fast from China.
We took all the weight off him, bound his leg rigid, dosed him up with the strongest painkillers we had, gave him 2 ski poles and told him at all costs to keep moving, no matter how slowly.
There was no way on this earth that the 3 of us could have carried him if he was unable move on his own, and he was quite aware that he had to keep going, or he would die.
So I don't see that there are easy answers or straightfoward conclusions, especially in the crowded and anoxic conditions on the voie normalle of Everest.