Aussie Everest climber comes back from the `dead’: [1 All-round Country Edition]
John Stapleton, D.D. McNicoll, Additional reporting: Tracy Ong, James Madden. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 27 May 2006: 1.
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Abstract
Just days after fellow Australian climber Bob Killip was among a party criticised by Everest’s first conqueror, Edmund Hillary, for leaving an injured climber on the mountain, Hall was abandoned by two sherpas after becoming disoriented and falling to the ground during his descent from the world’s highest mountain summit.
“This morning (US climber) Dan Mazur on a summit push discovered the still alive Lincoln Hall at the second step and gave him hot tea and oxygen and he was able to use the radio to call his expedition,” Mazur’s expedition director, Duncan Chessell, said.
Earlier this week British climber David Sharp was left to die on the mountain when Killip’s team — which included Kiwi double amputee Mark Inglis — did not have the capacity or resources to carry him out. “When we discovered David on the way down, we did everything we could to get him up on his feet but his legs were frozen from the knees down and his arms frozen from the elbows down,” Killip toldThe Australian yesterday.
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A DRAMATIC rescue operation was under way last night for veteran Australian climber Lincoln Hall, who was left for dead after finally conquering Mount Everest.
Just days after fellow Australian climber Bob Killip was among a party criticised by Everest’s first conqueror, Edmund Hillary, for leaving an injured climber on the mountain, Hall was abandoned by two sherpas after becoming disoriented and falling to the ground during his descent from the world’s highest mountain summit.
Initial reports from Hall’s team leader, Russian Alexander Abramov, said the sherpas had managed to lower the Australian from 8700m to 8600m over nine hours, “but at 19.20 (Thursday) he was pronounced dead”.
“The probable reason: brain cerebral edema, pulmonary edema (an acute form of altitude sickness),” the website EverestNews.com yesterday reported Abramov as saying.
Abramov then ordered the sherpas, who were beginning to suffer from snow blindness, to go down the mountain, leaving Hall where he was.
Friends had started to mourn the 50-year-old’s death yesterday, but in the early evening a report on the website MountEverest.net said “Lincoln Hall is still alive”.
“This morning (US climber) Dan Mazur on a summit push discovered the still alive Lincoln Hall at the second step and gave him hot tea and oxygen and he was able to use the radio to call his expedition,” Mazur’s expedition director, Duncan Chessell, said.
Abramov was reported to be sending a dozen sherpas with oxygen and a stretcher to rescue Hall, and a Russian team were said to be bringing him down slowly. “With every step down, he gains strength and a chance to live.”
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But Mr Chessell told The Weekend Australian last night that Hall, married to Barbara Scanlan and with two teenage sons, Dylan and Dorje, was still in grave danger given his circumstances.
“It’s premature to write a story (that) he’s dead and premature to write a story he’s been saved,” he said.
Mr Chessell said people had survived after being left for dead on the world’s highest peak, most notably amateur American climber Beck Weathers in 1996.
Another climber had seen Weathers buried up to his waist in snow at 8200m and assumed he was dead.
He woke up the next morning and despite horrendous frostbite and temporary blindness, walked off the mountain.
But Glen Nash, who worked alongside Hall at the Australian School of Mountaineering in Katoomba west of Sydney, said while his friend of 25 years was “a fighter, I’ve been to Everest twice and I know that if you’re missing overnight, they just write you off”.
“Surviving a night on the mountain is basically unheard of. If they do get him down, then he has come back from the dead,” Mr Nash said.
Earlier this week British climber David Sharp was left to die on the mountain when Killip’s team — which included Kiwi double amputee Mark Inglis — did not have the capacity or resources to carry him out. “When we discovered David on the way down, we did everything we could to get him up on his feet but his legs were frozen from the knees down and his arms frozen from the elbows down,” Killip toldThe Australian yesterday.
“That’s why David was totally unretrievable. He had been in those conditions for 24 hours and was frozen. If you can’t get to your feet, you can’t get down.”
For Hall, his Everest climb began as a chance for redemption.
He had been close once before, in 1984 as part of the first all- Australian team to make the climb. While some in the group reachedthe summit, frostbite caused him to fall just a few hundred metres short.
In his book on the expedition, White Limbo, he wrote of his bitter disappointment that he would never see the summit panorama. But he said no view was worth the price.
This time, however, he would not be denied.
The rest of his Australian group, including cinematographer Michael Dillon, veteran climber Richard Harris and his 15-year-old son Christopher — who was attempting to become the youngest person to scale the world’s highest peak — had turned around days earlier, with Christopher suffering severe respiratory problems.
But Hall pressed on up the north side of the mountain from Tibet, accompanied by two Sherpas. Elated calls from his portable radio to friends on Thursday morning at 9am confirmed he joined the elite in his craft to have stood at the top of the world.
There have already been 14 deaths on Everest this year, with sight-impaired German Thomas Weber passing away on Thursday just 50m from the top, in Hall’s sight as he reached the peak.
Weber’s heroic struggle to reach the summit despite his disabilities had inspired people around the world.
Just before Hall made the final tilt for the top, Weber completely lost his sight in the difficult conditions and was forced to abandon his attempt.
Shortly after noon, as Hall lay hallucinating on the snow, Weber collapsed. “I have died,” he said, before losing consciousness.
Close friend and Australian Himalayan Foundation chairman Simon Balderstone was devastated by the news, and last night said reports Hall were still alive remain unconfirmed.
“He was getting slower and slower as he headed down. He was becoming irrational. He could go no further. Two sherpas stayed with him and he died there,” Balderstone said yesterday.
“We think he went into a coma and died.
“What he did, he reminds us all to follow our dreams and take the calculated risk. His was a noble endeavour he conducted with great integrity.
“He had this ongoing dream, this inspiration, to climb the mountain. He had taken this opportunity and made it.”
The first Australian to climb Mount Everest Tim Macartney-Snape, who had been one of those Hall had watched reach the summit in 1984, described Hall as a “very passionate climber”.
“He was a very accomplished climber, with a terrific sense of humour,” Mr Macartney-Snape said.
“He was a good person to be on an expedition with, he was very tough but could see the funny side of things.
“That is what you want in an expedition partner.”