Lincoln Hall – Lost up Everest

Lincoln Hall was a keen climber who had many years of mountaineering experience, so when he decided to try and climb Everest in 2006, he seemed like the kind of person who could make it to the top.

At an elevation of 8,848 meters, this mountain is the tallest on earth and has claimed hundreds of lives over the years of hopeful adventurers wanting to make it to the top. Hall and his group managed to make it to the summit on the 25th of May, 2006 without experiencing any major problems.

Shortly after starting to come back down, Hall experienced intense altitude sickness, which caused him to become confused and hallucinate. Hall frequently wandered off from the rest of the group and the Sherpa guides escorting them and became a severe burden on them all. At one point he walked away from the group who lost sight of him for long enough for him to become completely lost.

The guides looked for him for hours, but due to the rest of the group and their oxygen supplies, the guides had no choice but to leave him there and escort the others back down to safety. The expedition leader gave the order to abandon their search for him, and shortly after making it back down the mountain released a statement to his friends and family announcing his death.

Early the next morning another group attempting to reach the summit ran into a partially frozen, but still very much alive Hall who was walking slowly down the mountain. One of the group who found him, Myles Osborne describes the scene as follows:

“Sitting to our left, about two feet from a 10,000-foot drop, was a man. Not dead, not sleeping, but sitting cross-legged, in the process of changing his shirt. He had his down suit unzipped to the waist, his arms out of the sleeves, and was wearing no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses, no oxygen mask, regulator, ice axe, oxygen, no sleeping bag, no mattress, no food nor water bottle. ‘I imagine you’re surprised to see me here’, he said. Now, this was a moment of total disbelief to us all. Here was a gentleman, apparently lucid, who had spent the night without oxygen at 8600m, without proper equipment and barely clothed. And ALIVE.”

Osbourne and the rest of the group abandoned their attempt to make the summit to stay with Hall until rescue arrived. 12 Guides were immediately dispatched and Osbourne stayed with Hall until they got to them. He was then taken to a nearby base camp where he was treated by a Russian doctor.

The next day Hall arrived at the mountain’s advanced base camp before being taken to a hospital, where he was found to be in reasonably good shape considering he should have died on the mountain. In the end, the only lasting effects were the loss of the tips of all his fingers and one of his toes, which is very lucky as the chances of surviving on Everest alone at night without a tent or proper clothing is pretty much nothing.