Daniel Mazur had spent seven hours clambering up the mountain through ice and snow, and now in his exhaustion, he sensed that success was near. Although it was ten degrees below zero near the top of Everest, the soft morning light revealed clear blue skies for miles around. This is perfect — we’re definitely going to summit today, the climbing guide told himself, digging his crampons into the ice and taking a few more cautious steps. He and his companions were less than three hours away from the spectacular 29,035-foot summit.
It was 7:30 a.m. when Mazur climbed onto a narrow ledge called Mushroom Rock to rest and offer encouragement to his climbing teammates and their Sherpa guide. As the men looked out on the snow-covered peaks below, Mazur suddenly saw a flash of bright yellow to his left. Was it a tent? No way, he thought, squinting to take a closer look. No climber would camp out at this altitude. The yellow blur moved again, and Mazur’s jaw dropped in amazement.
Perched precariously on the edge of a jagged cliff was a man sitting cross-legged, trying to change his shirt. His thick snowsuit was unzipped to the waist and he had no hat, gloves or sunglasses. Without an oxygen mask, sleeping bag, food or water, there was no reason for Lincoln Hall to be alive at 28,000 feet, and he seemed to know it. Pulling his frostbitten hands out of his shirt, Hall looked up at Mazur.
“I imagine you are surprised to see me here,” he said.
Hall had been alone on the mountain since 7:30 the night before. Following an arduous climb up the north ridge, he and his teammates had reached the summit at nine that morning. After celebrating and posing for victory photos, they started their descent, hoping to reach camp before dangerous afternoon storms rolled in.
But at 28,000 feet, Hall’s feet had stopped moving and he was overcome by a deep fatigue. He turned to one of the Sherpa guides and told him, “I need to lie down — I need to sleep”. Although Hall didn’t have the presence of mind to realize it, he was suffering from cerebral edema, a severe form of altitude sickness. The condition causes the brain to swell and leads to a stumbling, intoxicated gait, hallucinations and, eventually, death.
Normally, the descent from this spot to advanced base camp takes about two hours. But Hall was weak and increasingly uncooperative as the edema overtook him. Two Sherpas had to lower him down between them, wasting precious daylight, while the rest of the group kept going. After nine hours, Hall went limp. He appeared to be dead, and the Sherpas were ordered by their leader to leave him on the mountain.
Checking one last time for signs of life, one of the men poked Hall in the eye. When there was no response, they gathered his backpack, food, water and extra oxygen and continued on the trail down to the high base camp. He would not be the first to die on Mount Everest that season. Ten days before, a climber from Great Britain, had become seriously ill from the high altitude and died beneath a nearby rock overhang. Forty other climbers, intent on reaching the summit, had passed by, refusing to help.
The team members quietly realized they had a choice to make. Should they phone in Lincoln Hall’s predicament to his group and continue on or should they stay with him until help arrived?
Mazur had reached the summit once before, in 1991. But the other team members had paid $20,000 each to make this expedition. It was the dream of a lifetime.
One of climbers who had never reached the stop spoke first. “We can’t leave this guy”, he said. They all agreed.
The men got Hall away from the cliff’s edge and helped him back into his snowsuit. Rummaging through their backpacks, they shared their oxygen, lemonade and Snickers bars. Hall was still incoherent and they had to tie him down with their climbing ropes to keep him away from the ledge. Mazur called down to the high base camp for more help.
For more than four hours, Mazur and his team waited, stomping their feet and pacing on the small snow-packed ledge to stay warm.
“We were all pretty quiet,” recalled one of team. “It was a disappointed silence. We knew we weren’t going to make the summit.”
At that point, no one knew if Hall was going to live. He shivered uncontrollably and his head jerked up and down. He was suffering from snow blindness, common at high altitude on such a bright, clear day. His fingers were so frozen they looked like pale yellow wax.
The team was relieved when two Italian climbers suddenly appeared on the ledge.
“Good morning!” said Mazur. “We’ve got a guy in trouble here! Can you help?” The men kept moving toward the summit. “Sorry, no speak English” was all they said. Mazur would spot them later at base camp, speaking English very well.
It was almost noon when a dozen Sherpas finally arrived to help take Hall down the mountain. With a guide on either side of him, he was able to walk down to high camp. Hall would need surgery to amputate the tips of six fingers, but he had survived.
“It’s such a personal challenge — once you’re up there, you feel as though you could do anything,” Mazur commented. “Sure, I wish I could have reached the summit again. But there’s no way we could have left Lincoln Hall on that ridge. If we’d done that, the odds are he wouldn’t be alive today. And I would have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
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