EVEREST GUIDES wish the bad stories would go away. Ditto for the naysaying about commercialism. No one calls it a problem when people pay guides to climb Mount McKinley, they point out, so why all the fuss about Everest? Local people earn much-needed cash from the climbing scene. The overall fatality rate on the mountain has improved in the past ten years, they add. In 1996, there were 15 deaths and 98 summits. So far this year, there were 11 deaths and an estimated 400 summits.

Guides now have a better understanding than they did in 1996 of how much gear, oxygen, and Sherpa support and how many fixed ropes people need (lots more). They pool data from high-tech weather forecasts, keep all manner of equipment to treat and evacuate injured climbers, and spend huge amounts of time fine-tuning summit strategies.

The real problem, guides and expedition leaders say, is climbers who underestimate the challenge and unscrupulous outfitters who take them on. All the guides I spoke to said they'd screened and turned down inexperienced clients, only to see them show up on another company's permit. Match weak climbers with the tougher side of the mountain, guides say, and you've got a recipe for big trouble. Independents have every right to try for the summit, they add, but they need to be realistic. If they're climbing solo and need a rescue, they can't count on assistance from mountaineering strangers, most of whom aren't skilled or strong enough to help even if they want to.

But never mind the nuances—when tragedy strikes, the media looks for easy targets, details be damned. More than 40 people were on the upper reaches of Everest the day David Sharp died, but the only two to face widespread condemnation were Mark Inglis and Himex leader Russell Brice, who wasn't even there. Factor in the base-camp gossip that filters into Web sites and headlines and, as one British outfitter told me, "it's the media that's the Everest circus."

Shortly before leaving Kathmandu, I met with Brice to ask him about all this. It was a sweltering afternoon, and we sat in the garden of a backstreet restaurant and ordered pizza. Brice has been guiding on Everest's north side for 13 years; he's put 270 people on the summits of 8,000-meter peaks. Tuk Bahadur Thapa Magar, one of his Sherpas, succumbed to pulmonary edema low on Everest this spring, but he's never lost a client. Brice has been involved in 15 rescues, taken charge of fixing rope on the north side, and repeatedly offered oxygen, tents, and supplies to climbers in trouble.

Nevertheless, Brice's reputation had taken a public lashing over the Sharp affair, and he seemed crushed by it. He said he had no knowledge of Sharp's existence until his climbers were descending. Pulling out a thick file crammed with the season's details, he ran a finger down the list of radio calls received and sent that night, all meticulously logged, and confirmed that he first heard of Sharp's plight at 9:30 a.m.—some eight hours after Inglis's team reportedly first passed the dying Briton. By that point his clients were heading down with big problems of their own. He did tell his team to keep moving, because he believed Sharp was beyond recovery. "A man who can't walk," he said, "is very different from a man who can, like Lincoln Hall."

Imagine yourself on the scene, trudging through the Death Zone—every step agonizing, your headlight casting a beam only a few feet ahead, and in the back of your mind the knowledge that, through the slim range of vision afforded by your hood and oxygen mask, you'll soon be gazing upon a corpse, Green Boots. Some climbers told me they kept their eyes averted. Even the highly respected Phurba Tashi, a ten-time Everest summiter, said he did not see Sharp during the climb up. Another Turkish climber, Eylem Mavis, said she did see Sharp and thought he was resting, since he made no signal of his distress.

"If I'd known about Sharp earlier," Brice said, "of course I'd have tried to help." Even so, he added, "the outcome might not have been any different."

I understood what he was getting at. Many of us don't act generously at sea level. We fail to call 911, we don't investigate the huddled form—asleep? dead?—on the steam grate. But we want adventurers on Everest to stand above us in every way. We think of the old days, the era of Mallory and Hillary, as full of common purpose and lofty goals, and disparage the profit-motivated present. Everest is worth millions; for the nations that regulate her, Chomolungma has become the Mother Goddess of Revenue.

Maybe the idealized Everest really is gone forever. But the morning I left Kathmandu, I saw something that made me think otherwise. I sat drinking coffee with Dan Mazur's client Andrew Brash, a teacher based in Calgary. Despite sinking all his spare cash into his shot at the summit, Brash didn't think twice about giving it up once he and his companions discovered Lincoln Hall alive after a long night in the Death Zone. "I never could have forgiven myself if I walked past a climber who was so clearly in need," he said. Still, he told me, "I did have a few summit pangs back at base camp."

No sooner had Brash spoken than Lincoln Hall himself appeared at our table. His frostbitten hands were bandaged, his voice was still hoarse, his speech hesitant from his ordeal. He'd come to see Brash in person.

"I want to say thank you for giving up your summit," Hall said.

"I appreciate you saying that," Brash replied. "It was our pleasure." And then he gave a wry smile: "Sort of."