Everest obsession claims British climber

KATMANDU, Nepal — Sipping black tea on a glacial beach of jagged gray rocks nearly four miles above sea level, the lanky Briton had the air of a jilted lover who didn’t want to concede it was over.

Twice before, David Sharp had stood on this gravel plain in Mount Everest’s shadow. The 34-year-old engineer had made it well into the “Death Zone” above 26,000 feet before weather, frostbite and lack of oxygen had forced him to turn around.

Already, the quest had cost Mr. Sharp parts of two toes.

Warmed by a propane heater in a mess tent at a camp below Everest’s forbidding North Face, the bespectacled Briton was telling camp neighbor Dave Watson that his courtship of the mountain was drawing to a close.

Mr. Sharp was preparing to begin a new career as a teacher in the fall, and he said it was time to move on.

“If I don’t do it this time, I’m not coming back,” he said.

But he didn’t believe he’d need to come back. He was sure this third assault would succeed.

“I would give up more toes — or even fingers to get on top,” he told Mr. Watson.

In the summit-at-all-cost world of Mount Everest, both men knew the price can be much higher.

‘Goddess of the sky’

The Nepalese call it Sagarmatha, “goddess of the sky.” To Tibetans, it is Qomolungma, “goddess, mother of the world.” The British named it Everest, after the head of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.

The world’s tallest mountain has claimed more than 200 lives. Many, like British schoolteacher George Leigh Mallory, who famously said that he climbed Everest “because it’s there,” remain on the mountain.

It wasn’t until 1953, 29 years after Mr. Mallory died on his third expedition to Everest, that New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit more than 29,000 feet up.

Mr. Sharp’s passion for climbing blossomed after he entered Nottingham University to pursue an engineering degree, and joined the university’s mountaineering club.

Before long, he had bagged his first major peak, the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps. Higher mountains followed: Mount Elbrus, Europe’s tallest; Africa’s Kilimanjaro; Pakistan’s Gasherbrum.

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