Family of climber was told he died on Mount Everest before sherpas found him stripped down and alive
Topics: News, World News, Health
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Handout
Topics: News, World News, Health
A Mount Everest climber was found alive after his family was informed that he had died while taking on the brutal climb.
Lincoln Hall had been attempting to scale the world's tallest mountain back in 2006 when, like many climbers, he got into difficulty.
Scaling Mount Everest is no easy task, and the mountain's slopes are littered with the corpses of people who tragically did not survive their attempt.
Lincoln's companions had tried to revive him for several hours on the mountain, but had ultimately thought that he had died and pressed on.
Advert
Meanwhile, Lincoln, 50, was left behind on the mountainside on an exposed ridge, with apparently nothing more that could be done to save his life.
The following day, Lincoln's family were informed that he had tragically died during his attempt on Everest.
But when another group of climbers, including 45-year-old Dan Mazur, encountered him on the mountain, they made a shocking discovery.
Sadly, corpses are such a frequent occurrence on Everest that some have even become unofficial markers on the ascent. However, when Mazur and his companions, including a sherpa guide and two other climbers, found Lincoln, he was still alive.
Mazur recalled the moment that they encountered Lincoln.
"We came upon him suddenly," Mazur told PEOPLE at the time. "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."
But in a more alarming development, they noticed that a lot of his equipment was missing.
"He's got his arms out of his down suit, wearing just a thin fleece top," said Mazur. "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."
Mazur explained that his companions had taken his equipment as they had believed he had died so no longer had any use for it.
"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," said Mazur.
"Maybe he was almost dead. A couple of people later told me they did everything they could."
Lincoln was sitting up and talking to the group as they passed, and they stopped to help him.
He was suffering from severe frostbite, and he appeared to be hallucinating and believed himself to be on a boat.
When doctors examined him, they found that he had frostbite as well as brain swelling from altitude sickness.
But fortunately ,after the intervention of the group who happened upon him, Lincoln was able to recover from his ordeal.