By Paula Tracy
The Union Leader (Manchester NH)
Copyright 2006 Union Leader Corp.
When the word crackled through the radio at Camp 3 that British hiker David Sharp was dead on the north side of Mount Everest, Londonderry firefighter and paramedic Jim Gagne was on the south side, recovering from a high altitude cough and dysentery he suffered after exhausting himself helping in five rescues at lower elevations.
Those rescues, which included a man who fell and suffered a head injury and another in which a climber was found walking aimlessly with frozen limbs, were at just under 24,000 feet where there is about half the normal oxygen levels.
“I was so exhausted,” said the 42-year-old Ashland resident Friday. “Objects being moved, such as a 200-pound body hauled over rocks seem far heavier than that at that elevation,” he said.
As news began to spread across the world that dozens of climbers had left Sharp for dead in their desperate, individual quests to get to the summit of the world and down safely, Gagne said he began to think about what could be done to prevent such a tragedy in the future.
The answer, he said, came to him from his own experience a few days later on May 24, when he reached the 29,035-foot summit with a sherpa he hired for the day.
Most climbers hire a sherpa for the whole trip at a cost of about $6,000. He didn’t have money for that, but believed with the deteriorated condition he was in, the most important amount he spent was $500 to hire Pemba Dorjoe for one day to help him to the summit.
If Sharp hired a sherpa for one day, Gagne said, he believes he could still be alive.
“You need someone telling you, ‘Go down,’ and he didn’t have that. He was all alone,” Gagne said.
About the time Sharp was found, Gagne had developed Khumbu cough and dysentery, sapping his body of much of its energy.
“I was just whipped,” he said.
Even after recovering, he said knew if he were to make it to the summit, he needed someone with him at all times to monitor his health and be able to reason for him if brain swelling set in.
“Every peak I have been on, I always seem to run into people who need assistance,” he said.
As a paramedic for more than a decade, Gagne said he has the ethic and feels the moral responsibility to help those who need it. He carries an extensive medical kit. But even he is unsure what he would do if he had encountered Sharp in such a state at such a high altitude.
“It has been driven into me (to help). It is an automatic response for me,” he said. “But it is easy for me to understand what happened.
“One of the unwritten rules at higher camp is (that) for you to be rescued is probably not going to happen,” he said.
Asked if he will go back to Mount Everest, Gagne said, “I have no need to.”
He is still working to pay for the experience through motivational speaking events and slide show presentations across the region. He said he is finally back to his normal level of health, five months after beginning his quest.
“There are many lessons that can be learned....But it is a poor decision to go alone on summit day,” he said.