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Expedition denies any responsibility for Sharp's death

A Mount Everest expedition leader criticized for directing his climbers past a dying British mountaineer said he did not know anyone was in trouble during his team's ascent.

Russell Brice said on Saturday that he only knew David Sharp was in distress when his team contacted him by radio at his camp during their descent, when they were exhausted and low on oxygen, and Sharp's extremities had frozen.

In an e-mailed statement to AP, Brice contradicted comments by other climbers in his group, who said Brice knew about Sharp on their way up -- when they were stronger and better supplied -- and told them that nothing could be done.

New Zealand double-amputee Mark Inglis, who was on the expedition, has been harshly criticized after acknowledging he was one of more than 40 climbers reported to have seen Sharp as he lay dying and who, like almost all the others, continued to the summit of the world's highest mountain without helping.

Sharp, 34, of Guisborough, died in a snow cave 300m from the peak, apparently from oxygen deprivation suffered during his solo descent.

"At no stage during the ascent did I know that there was a man in trouble," Brice wrote. "There were never any radio conversations concerning the sighting of David Sharp between my team members and myself during the ascent."

The circumstances of Sharp's death have prompted a debate over the ethics of climbing Everest, and brought stinging rebukes from Sir Edmund Hillary -- the first person to reach Everest's summit, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Hillary said it was "horrifying" that climbers could leave a dying man and proceed toward the summit instead.

He said he would have abandoned his own pioneering climb in 1953 to save another life.

Brice, the head of a Himalayan Experience expedition, was at a camp lower down the mountain while the group, including Inglis, made the climb.

Inglis told Television New Zealand last month that members of his party found Sharp close to death, tried to give him oxygen and sent out a radio distress call before continuing to the summit. Inglis said that when they radioed Brice at base camp, he had advised them to carry on with the summit bid without attempting a rescue.
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