Miracle on Mount Everest

Not far from Sydney, Australia, Lincoln Hall’s wife Barbara had just received the cruelest news—that her husband was dead and was just another icy corpse littering Everest’s death zone.

And on Everest itself, even as climbing guide Dan Mazur and his team began to videotape their own ascent, they learned of the tragedy above.

Dan Mazur: We heard that there was several people who had died and that we would be encountering their bodies.

Matt Lauer, NBC News:  I’m trying to think emotionally what that must be like to be pushing for the summit, crucial moment in your own climb.  And you come around a corner and see a corpse.

Mazur: It’s a horrible thing.

Mazur might have expected to find Lincoln Hall’s body at any moment. He had been climbing since midnight with two clients and a Sherpa, aiming to summit Everest mid-morning.  Now, at 7:30 a.m., the summit was just two hours away.

Binod Joshi / AP American mountain guide Daniel Mazur, from Olympia, Washington, talks to the Associated Press in Katmandu, Nepal, Thursday, June 8, 2006.

Mazur: We were in the clear and we all felt good. We felt so lucky.  I mean the summit was just above us and we knew we were going there.

But before they went any further, a flash of color caught Dan’s eye.

Mazur: And I saw in the distance a little bit of yellow fabric on the ridge top and I thought, “Oh—oh what is that?  A tent or something?  And then I got a little closer and I could see that it was a person.

High on the knife-edge ridge, there was a man. Just sitting there.

Mazur: You know then I just had this sort of feeling of shock like here we go.

And as Dan approached, the scene that unfolded before him was just plain weird.

Mazur: He had his jacket—unzipped and his arms were out of the sleeves of the jacket. And so you could see his chest bare. And he looked very distressed. And then he saw me almost as if I think he thought I was part of maybe a dream that he was having. 

Lauer: Did you think anyone could be up there in those conditions and still be alive?

Mazur: I have never seen anything like that before. The thing that struck me was that how he was holding his hands up and he had no gloves on. You could see like his fingers had frozen and they were sort of a waxy yellow.  And then below that it looked like normal skin and he was holding up his hands like this and sort of looking around.  I was blown away.

Unbelievably the stranger spoke to him.

Mazur: He said, “I imagine you’re surprised to see me here.”  Because I probably had a look on my face of you know total shock with my jaw down you know.  I said “Can you tell me your name?”  And then he was almost sort of pleased and surprised sounding and he said, “Yeah!  Yes!  I know my name!”  And then he said, “My name is Lincoln Hall.”

Lincoln Hall? Could it really be that the same man who’d been declared dead more than 12 hours ago was alive? Dan Mazur snapped some pictures even as he began to help Hall.

Mazur: And I said, “Let’s get your gloves on.  Let’s get your hat on.  Let’s get your coat on.  Let’s get some oxygen on you.” 

Dan quickly understood Lincoln had been there all night long. It was a miracle Hall was alive—but Dan knew he didn’t have much time left.

Mazur: We gave him a lotta water.  We gave him some—candy bars, some Snickers bars and we started trying to get him to put his gloves on. I said, “Okay hold out your hand Lincoln.” And I put his glove on.  Put his other glove on.” Okay, we found his hat.  “Put your hat on.” 

But despite the biting minus 20 degree temperature, Hall resisted Dan’s efforts like an unruly child.

Mazur: And then he started taking’ his gloves off.  He started taking his hat off and unzipping his coat. And I was saying, “No. You know. 'It’s really cold out here.  Why don’t you keep those gloves on.  It looks like your hands are frozen.  Why don’t you keep your hat on.'”  Because he was also shivering really badly.

Mazur realized Hall was hallucinating.

Mazur: He thought he was on a boat ride.  He kept saying what you know, “I’m surprised you guys are on this boat ride with me.” 

And they were surprised that Lincoln was trying to get out of his imaginary boat.  In reality, he was perched on a high ridge and in danger of falling to his death.

Mazur: You gotta remember he’s on a platform like this with 8,000 feet on this side and 6,000 feet on this side. And he’s kind of like leaning back and he has his arms hanging down. The top of this 8,000-foot cliff  -- and you know he was very unstable.

Just then two more climbers making their push for the summit approached. Dan hailed them. What followed was one of those moments on Everest that defines who you are and what you believe.

Mazur: He kind of looked away.  And, he said, “I don’t speak English.”  And, he kept going.  Okay, doesn’t speak English.  I don’t know.  And, his partner came along.  And I said, “Good morning.”  And, he said, “Hi.” And, he kept going.

Dan discovered later that both climbers did speak English. It was reminiscent of what had happened to the British climber, David Sharp who had been left to die on Everest 10 days before.  Lucky for Lincoln Hall, Dan Mazur was there.

Dan and the two climbers he was guiding tied the unsteady Hall into their own climbing rope for safety.  They radioed to hall’s team at base camp—but no one there was expecting news about Hall.

Mazur: Finally they got someone who would talk on the radio and the first thing he said to me on the radio was—“You mean he’s still alive?”  And I said, “Yeah.  He’s alive.  He’s talking. He’s moving around and he needs a rescue and we need to have you guys come up here right away.”

Hall’s expedition sent a large rescue party.  But Mazur knew it would take hours to arrive.  Hours in which his own summit bid might slip away.  The top of Everest was just a thousand feet above.  Mazur turned to his clients, Andrew Brash and Myles Osborne.

Mazur: We’re just right there.  Should we go off to the summit now and leave Lincoln here?  and Myles  said, “I can’t leave him here.”

At that moment, three men’s dream of reaching the summit died so that Lincoln Hall could live.  They stayed for four hours, watching over him until the rescue team arrived. It took Hall eleven hours to  stumble two miles to safety at a camp lower on the mountain.

Lincoln Hall had been left for dead just below the summit of Everest, but because of the choice three climbers made he lived to tell the tale.

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