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NEED TO KNOW
- In 2006, an Australian climber was left behind on Mt. Everest after being pronounced dead
- But he was very much alive, and eventually rescued by other climbers who encountered him
- Speaking to PEOPLE shortly after the rescue, climber Dan Mazur said he found Lincoln Hall gloveless, hatless and with his insulated suit zipped open
Recent weeks have shown an uptick in interest on social media about the dangers of hiking Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, with TikTok users taking to the platform to share information about the “death zone,” where climbers often vanish never to be seen again.
Lincoln Hall was nearly one of those climbers in 2006, left for dead on the mountain after his fellow climbers attempted to revive him for hours, ultimately stripping his body of necessary equipment and leaving him exposed on a narrow ridge, 28,000 feet up Everest.
The morning after, on May 26, 50-year-old Hall’s family was notified that he had died.
But Hall was very much alive, when another climber — then 45-year-old Dan Mazur — ascending the mountain with a Sherpa guide and two other climbers encountered Hall.
Hall, an Australian climber, was gloveless, hatless and with his insulated suit zipped open.
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Speaking to PEOPLE at the time, Mazur recounted: “We came upon him suddenly. He was just sitting there on the brow of a ridge, with a cliff on one side that had a drop of about 8,000 feet. He’s got his arms out of his down suit, wearing just a thin fleece top. He’s got no hat, no gloves and no goggles. There’s no oxygen. He’s got no equipment and he was just sitting there gaping.”
“He was ‘dead,’ so the people he was with apparently took all his stuff,” Mazur continued. “He’d had three Sherpas, and I heard they were like poking fingers in his eyes and he wasn’t moving. They figured he was dead. Maybe he was almost dead. A couple of people later told me they did everything they could. Anyway, he said, ‘You must be surprised to see me here.’ I said, ‘Yeah, buddy, I’m really surprised to see you.’ “
While Mazur added that encountering Hall meant a very big change of plans, he said he and his guides “didn’t have a second’s hesitation about stopping. How could you just walk past someone like that?”
“He’s sitting up, holding his hands up, talking to us. If you walk past someone like that, you’re going to hell, dude, you’re going to hell!” Mazur said
Mazur first attempted to get Hall to zip up his coat and put on his gloves and his hat, but he kept taking them off.
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“His fingers looked like candles. Frozen down to halfway. All waxy, yellow. It’s like minus 20 or minus 30. But there was no wind. I’m like, ‘Hold out your hand, dude. Is this your glove? Let’s get that glove on, man. Okay, where’s your hat? Let’s put your hat on. Zip up your coat.’ He was like a 3-year-old,” Mazur said.
Hal’s harness was then clipped on to one of the sherpa’s snow stakes, with the oxygen deprivation to his brain causing him to hallucinate.
“He seemed to think he was on a boat,” Mazur recalled. “He kept saying things like, ‘Strange boat ride we are on here, huh?’ and ‘Wow, you guys are on this boat ride too?’ “
The unlikely rescuers gave Hall Snickers bars, water, and some oxygen from a spare tank we had when he began to get noticeably more lucid and mobile.
As Hall had a logo on his jacket, the others were able to identify his base camp, which they contacted to notify that he was still alive.
Mazur and the others never made it to the top, due to the rescue. As he told PEOPLE: “The four hours we had lost made it risky to go on. Storms come in the afternoon, and we had used a good deal of oxygen just sitting there. But I’m humbled, very humbled, by the whole thing. I feel respect for the mountain and for the situation. Sometimes you feel about an inch big. Just tiny. Like you are just a little pea.”
Hall, meanwhile, made a full recovery, and was ultimately treated by doctors for frost bite and brain swelling caused by altitude sickness.
