If it is both dying, or you saving yourself and sacrificing your friend, then the latter choice would seem to be the correct one. But nobody would know for sure until faced with the situation. What you imagine you might do in an emergency, and what happens, are often worlds apart.

There is no hypothetical morality...

I never see the point of these (what are sometimes called "desert island examples") except as a kind of puzzle exercise. They certainly have nothing much to do with philosophy.

I recently had my memory refreshed on the subject of the episode of the Whaling ship Essex. The crew members faced a similar situation and did what was necessary to survive.
I have to agree with Kenneth though, these kind of questions seem to benefit nothing.

It is because morals are not a question about what a person would do in a given situation, but what they do in every situation, which should be to do justice...Ethics is never what a person thinks, but is who they are, their character, and while I may agree that one never knows what they may do in a given situation, the ethical person avoids those situations where ethics are challenged because life is there on a perilous edge, and so, immoral... It is not to avoid risk that people are moral, but it is moral to avoid risk when the life of the community is not at stake... To risk ones life is to act as an individual, without concern for the well being of others, or ones responsibility to them, and that is immoral... Do children who climb mountains not have parents??? And do parents who climb mountains not have children???... We sell our lives dear to be there for the hard work that is required of relationships, to full fill our natural obligations, which is our honor...

I think the point of these exercises is that some people will argue that option A is the only moral one, for some reason.

Perhaps because it is (the only right one)? After all, that might be true. Or can you just rule that out? How for example would you come down on Kant's famous case: a potential murderer is seeking your friend to do him in. The murderer asks you, where he is? Should you lie and mislead the potential murderer, or should you follow Kant's advice and be truthful (though the heaven's fall)? I bet you anything you believe that the only right thing to do is to lie. Am I right?

Again: hypothetical situations teach no one morals...It is because we live in the real world, and because morals are who we are rather than what we think... Only when we are in the situation can we say what we will do, and from being theire it is our actions that mark us as moral... Certainly one can judge that those who risk life unnecssarily are immoral, if not fools; but this is an opinion that can only be rendered from a safe place... Bird shet and fools fall from the sky... I risked my life, falling was always possible, but I found I could not even do my job for charity... The need to support my family made every risk insignificant... To do the job for free was unthinkable...What I did was moral, and those who risk life to no good end are immoral...So make the choice; but it is without meaning...The key to a moral life is a moral man, or woman, as the case may be...