British climber abandons Everest peak to save fellow climber

Dream Wanderlust | May 29 , 2016

A British ex-serviceman abandoned his Mount Everest climb some 500m from the summit to save a fellow mountaineer. Leslie Binns, who served in the British army for 13 years, turned around to save Indian climber Sunita Hazra in the early hours of 21st May. He was about 12 hours from the summit of the world’s highest mountain when he came across someone sliding down the fixed climbing line ahead of him.
Binns told the BBC he could hear the woman’s screams and managed to halt her fall: “I helped her upright and looked at her oxygen regulator – it was registering empty.” It was then that the former soldier, who now works as a security contractor in Iraq’s oilfields, decided to abandon his bid to reach the summit.
“I climbed down to her and called my sherpa. I told him we were not going up and we would give Sunita my spare oxygen bottle and take her down,” Binns said
“I gave Sunita my sleeping bag in my tent. We then tried our best to get her warm by patting and rubbing her. She was suffering from hypothermia and her right hand was badly frostbitten,” he told the BBC.
“I am immensely proud that I helped Sunita. I just wish I could have done more,” he said.
Hazra, 32, who lives near Kolkata, left hospital on Wednesday after being treated for frostbite. Her brother, Kingshuk Chatterjee, told the BBC Binns was the reason Hazra was still alive: “He is a very brave man.”
Binns added: “I wish Sunita and her family all the best and hope she makes a full recovery.”

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