Left for dead on mount Everest, a life-changing story of the man who beat Everest

 Mount Everest, the highest mountain peak in the world, is every amateur and professional climber’s dream and end goal. A quest that ends up taking so many lives and body parts. As is commonly said, good things don’t come easy. 

This story is the perfect proof on the difficult hits life throws, the story of a climber who had his life completely stirred in another direction during his way to the top of Everest. 

 Every other professional climber who was once an amateur did have this one mountain peak on the bucket list. However, the beauty of nature can easily turn into a beast that takes the lives of hundreds of climbers every year. One wrong move is enough to cost you your life.  

Lincoln Hall was a natural-born climber. When he was 15-years-old, he fell in love with climbing, it became a passion and a fuel for life, not just a casual hobby.  

Licoln was studying zoology at the Australian National University, despite his busy study schedule, he didn’t leave his passion, rock-climbing wasn’t just something he did for fun, it was a sport he was doing to fuel himself. He enrolled in a mountaineering club, so he could be friends with people who shared the same interests as him. Being a  member of the club, he got the chance to travel the world, scaling mountain peaks in New Zealand, the Andes, and Antarctica.

Lincoln was living the best moments of his life in college. Surrounded by the same type of people and traveling the world gave his life a new meaning. He was doing all he could to understand the depths of rock-climbing so that one day he would make his dream come true and climb the highest peak in the world. Climbing Mount Everest was his dream and he almost achieved it when he met the most dreadful fate. A fate no one’s seen coming.

Lincoln was working really hard pushing all the limits to understand the core of mountain climbing. Even after graduating from college, he kept his focus on mountain-climbing. He was lucky enough to be a part of the first team in Australia who scaled Mount Everest in 1984.

Unfortunately for Lincoln, he couldn’t proceed further with the team and stopped before he could reach the summit with the rest of his team. He stopped climbing only a few hundred yards away, while the remainder of his team kept going. According to Lincoln, a climber should always know where to draw the line and for him, it was crystal clear. He knew that he simply couldn't carry on.

Even though Lincoln failed to reach the summit of Everest, he spent several years of his life continuing his rock-climbing journey, reaching many other peaks in the world. He even wrote books about his adventures, one of the most popular ones was “White Limbo,” in which he wrote about the experience where he came close to the top of Mount Everest. 

In the back of his mind, reaching the top of  Everest was always there. Twenty-two years after his failed attempt at reaching the top, he decided to give it another try, only this time, he was better equipped with determination. Unfortunately for him, things don’t always happen the way we want them to. Something unexpected happened to him that day..

This time Lincoln was part of a team that was also trying to climb Everest for the very first time. It was his second time but he could feel the same excitement he did in his first time. Among the team members, there was a young 15-year-old climber who reminded him of himself when he was the same age. The young boy wasn’t able to reach the top of the mountain and had to stop midway, Lincoln knew that it was just a start for him and that the boy will have another shot later on in his life. Lincoln, determined this time, did reach the top for the first time. An achievement that didn’t come without cost, as he would later find out.

At last, Lincoln’s dream of reaching the top of the mountain was fulfilled. After waiting  22 long years, he was finally able to achieve that one dream every climber wishes for. He stayed on top for 20 minutes, savoring  his accomplishment, before he decided it was time to head down again. 

Lincoln was living his dream, a dream he waited too long for, but it was now time to descend. On his way down, he began sensing altitude sickness, commonly known as cerebral edema. In this condition, your brain starts swelling, causing you hallucinations and dizziness. 

 Lincoln started losing control over his mind. His condition was so severe that he even tried to climb up the mountain again. The Sherpas who accompanied Lincoln on his journey had to drag him down to calm him down as it was getting really hard to get him down. After hours of struggle, Lincoln collapsed and there was no way he could move forward.

The Sherpas were exhausted from climbing and trying to calm Lincoln down, they had to notify the concerned authorities and wait for their instructions. The Sherpas were told to save themselves and leave Lincoln behind because his chances of survival seemed to be very low. 

 The Sherpas thought of  covering the body with rocks to give him a decent burial but there were none to be seen. They eventually left the body as it is on Everest in one of the most extreme weathers. After reaching the base camp Lincoln’s death was made official. His family was informed as well, leaving them in the most devastated states. But this is not where the story ends, when the team went back to bring his body down, something was waiting for them.

The next day a team was formed and was asked to locate Lincoln's body. The team started their investigation from the last spot the Sherpas left him. When they finally reached it, they were taken aback by the sight.They saw a man sitting on one of the rocks, changing his shirt. Lincoln was alive.

One of the climbers from the team recalled the experience saying, “He had his down suit unzipped to the waist, his arms out of the sleeves, was wearing no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses, had no oxygen mask, regulator, ice axe, oxygen, no sleeping bag, no mattress, no food nor water bottle.” 

The fact that Lincoln was alive was a pure miracle. There was no way a man could survive the extreme atmosphere of Everest. But Lincoln did, he survived the night without oxygen at an altitude of 28,000 feet, barely clothed.

 

The rescue team brought Lincoln back to the base camp where he was kept under medical observation. Lincoln was suffering from cerebral edema, frostbite, and several injuries. 

Even though Lincoln managed to recover from the damage he suffered from that height, he did lose eight finger tips to frostbite. Fortunately, he was able to recover from the cerebral edema.

Every professional hiker  must wear two layers of shoes, an inner hard layer, and outer layer mainly for insulation and picks for the heavy snow. They are great for protection but if left for long unwanted hours could cause you some serious damage that can lead to losing a toe.

When asked on how he managed to survive, Lincoln said that it was all because of his training he has been receiving all his life. Despite the fact that he was able to survive the incident,  his life didn’t get any easier, on the contrary, it only got harder. 

After the incident, he was happy and thankful to God and authored several books on mountaineering, including “White Limbo”  (1985) which was about his first expedition and then wrote, “The Loneliest Mountain” (1989), which had all the details about his trips. It was just a beginning and soon Lincoln was seen on TV.

Everyone who has read about Lincoln’s life story was left in awe. A documentary about his experience was prepared by an Emmy-Nominated director; he became a celebrity and his life witnessed radical changes. His career took off and there seemed to be no stop. But good times don’t last for long…

He wrote two more books, this time telling the world about the near-death experience with Everest. Dead Lucky: Life after death on Mount Everest (2007) and Alive In The Death Zone: Mount Everest Survival (2008) .

In 2011, he was  interviewed again on a famous American TV show, I Shouldn’t Be Alive. His story was again in the news and people were amazed to see his recovery and the way his life was going. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. He got a call which informed that he was suffering from Mesothelioma. On March 20th, 2012, he passed away in Sydney, Australia at the age of 56.

 Lincoln shared a very beautiful message about death, “In Tibetan Buddhism, death is interpreted as consciousness leaving your body in separate stages over a period of time. It’s different if you’re run over by a truck, but if you’re just dying, say, on Everest, there are stages of death. I ticked the first two of those eight stages, and for some reason that process reversed. So I think saying I died is probably more accurate than saying I didn’t.”