the mountain, the great equalizer

[intertribal]

Russell Brice on sherpas and tourist-mountaineers:

The sherpas that are helping us, you see how immensely strong they are, but remember also they are mere mortals, and that they also have families, and that they have lives.  It's not their job to die alongside you because of your ambitions.  If I see that that's going to happen, I'm going to call the sherpas away.  I'll deal with that in court later.  And you'll die.  Because it's not their job to die for you.

Well, this sort of illuminates his seeming decision not to rescue David Sharp.  And considering how devoted this dude is to the sherpas he works with, it is an understandable attitude.  There are definitely some weird socioeconomic dynamics at work here. 

Also, I said it before, and I'll say it again: the sherpas are bad ass.  They've all summitted Everest like ten plus times (whereas an American mountaineer gets a lot of applause if he summits twice), and they're the ones that lay the safety ropes for the tourists (meaning they are not climbing with safety rope).  Insane!  I guess because they live at a high altitude and start climbing Everest when they're children, their bodies are really well-suited to mountain-climbing.  Still.