Edmund Hillary passes away

There's a whole bunch of coverage in the Hindu on this, that prompted several thoughts. The first is the sheer volume of coverage -- big front page headlines (including the very nice photo above), editorial and op-ed, whole last page and 1 inside story. I may be just ignorant about Sir Hillary's achievements but whoa ! It reminds me a funny little secret of journalism -- it seems the New York Times and other large newspapers maintain ready obituaries for prominent older people, otherwise when the person dies they have to scramble around and put one together in just one days time.

One of the articles talked about a recent instance when a climber on Mt. Everest who was having health problems was ignored by other people intent on reaching the top, and the person died. Hillary called it 'horrifying' that climbers could leave a dying man on the upper slopes. I felt it is a reflection of our times. Lots of people spend a lot of money and take a real risk to try to climb Mt. Everest. After all that training and spending all the money, you get your shot at the top, and then you have the dilemma of giving it all up to take care of another climber. Hey, nobody forced the other person to do it, he took the risk just like you did !

What would you do ?