In 1934, a Nazi expedition got itself in trouble on Nanga Parbat. Still high on the mountain, the Germans put on their skis and left, abandoning both their Sherpas and an injured teammate. This barbaric callousness was redeemed by the Sherpas, who in the ‘30s were not yet the culture of legendary alpinists that they are today. They and the German made it back to basecamp alive. It’s an inspiring story.

Not so inspiring is the story of David Sharp, who in 2006 had his last words captured on film high on Mount Everest. The filmmakers lacked skis and spoke a different Germanic language, but they followed in the footsteps of their spiritual ancestors in mountaineering: they took their film and left.

If any of our readership is sufficiently TV-literate to be checking out the Discovery Channel’s new Mt. Everest show, which premiers tonight and which I will not link, you should read this resounding excoriation from MountEverest.net. I knew that many people walked past David Sharp, spoke with him and left him to die in the snow. I was unaware that some of his last words were filmed by this crew, a clip you will not see tonight, nor likely ever. The linked article is admittedly biased, and legitimate rebuttals could be made to some of its assertions. However, the main point definitely stands. This team had the material resources to get a film crew up there, but lacked the moral resources even to consider helping a human being get down. It can be done. It would even have made some remarkably inspirational television. Skip Discovery’s Everest conga-line circus: your soul would be better off watching South Park reruns. Or you could read Tigers of the Snow, learn about the Nazis’ inhuman callousness towards their sherpas and wonder why modern climbers can’t do any better.