Mountain Rescue

Setting up mountain rescue in the Himalya is a little like the chicken or the egg story. Do you set tip expensive rescue facilities to attract climbers, or allow the industry to grow and justify the infrastructure. The larger expeditions have been able to take care of their own rescue operations, but lighter and "commercial" mountaineering will make more demands on independent rescue and evacuation procedures. In Nepal, the role of the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) for the first two decades of its existence has primarily been limited to tackling acute mountain sickness (AMS), with public information and through seasonal health posts in Manang and the Khumbu.

Unlike in the Alps, where helicopters are able to hoist climbers off the mountain, the thin atmosphere above 6000m means that primary rescue will always have to be by fellow climbers and guides. Airborne rescue above base camp are mostly not possible.

In a dramatic rescue on 26 June this year, an Indian Army helicopter picked British climber Stephen Venables from Panch Chuli V (6349m) in the Kumaon Himalaya. Pushing the limits of the helicopter's abilities, the pilot balanced one skid on a glacier slope while fellow-climbers bundled Venables aboard. Probably the most dramatic 'self-rescue' in recent years was Doug Scott's, who with both legs broken, dragged, abseiled and jumared himself down from near the summit of Ogre (7285m) in the Karakoram, and finally crawled on all fours over three miles of glacier to base camp. "It was a severe lesson which I was lucky to survive and can not anxious to repeat," he said later.

It would be too much to expect the holiday climber to be as lucky as Venables or as tenacious as Scott, and the Himalaya will not attract the large numbers envisaged until better arrangements can be made for rescue. As the number of climbers increases, it is possible that the HRA could find it possible to maintain a helicopter dedicated to rescue. Developing special stretchers that can be balanced on the back of yaks, the availability of Gamow Bags for rental in Kathmandu shops, and training local guides on rescue and trauma treatment, are the other activities that would promote confidence of lay climbers.