I read this interesting article from Reader’s Digest and wanted to share it with everyone.

All of us know about Mount Everest. I used to dream about conquering Mount Everest but after few trips to Europe and China during winter time, I surrendered to the cold weather. No way I would ever defeat the cold, let alone the temperature in Mount Everest which can be as low as 23 degrees Celsius below zero. After reading this article, I finally realized that cold is only one of the challenges, basically, I don’t have any capability to climb Mount Everest at all :p

I’ll just summarize what I have read.

Image source from Earth Information

It was 23 degrees Celsius below zero near the top of Everest. Exhausted Danial Mazur sensed that success was near – we’re definitely going to submit today, the climbing guide told himself. He and his companions were less than three hours away from the spectacular 8846 metres summit.

It was 7:30 a.m. when Mazur rested at a narrow ledge called Mushroom Rock and offered encouragement to his SummitClimb teamamtes, Andrew Brash from Canada, Myles Osborne of England and their Sherpa guide, Jongbu.

As the men looked out on the snow-covered peaks below them, Mazur suddenly saw a flash of bright yellow on his left. Was it a tent? No way, he thought, squinting to take a closer look. No climber would camp out at this altitude. Mazur was shocked seeing a man sitting cross-legged on the edge of a jagged cliff! 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 8530 metres. Hall looked up at Mazur, “I imagine you are surprised to see me here,” he said.

(This is the shocking part)

HALL HAD BEEN ALONE on the montain since 7:30 the night before. Fllowing an arduous climb up the north ridge, he and his teammates had reached the summit at nine that morning. After celebrating the glorious view on the peak of Mount Everest, they started on their descent, hoping to reach camp before dangerous afternoon storms rolled in.

But Hall was overcome by a deep fatigue. He turned to one of the Sherpas he was climbing with. “I need to lie down, I need to sleep,” he told him.

With 25 years of experience, Hall was a seasoned mountaineer. He has climbed Everesr once before, in 1984, but failed to summit. Now he was suffering from cerebral edema, a severe form of altitute sickness. The condition causes the brain to swell and leads to a stumbling, hallucinations and, eventually, death.

In fact this area is known as the “death zone”. It’s incredibly steep and icy. Because of the high altitute, if a climber is going to get sick, it usually happens here.

Hall was extremely weak that 2 of the Sherpas had to lower him down between them, wasting precious daylight, while the rest of the group kept going. After 9 hours, Hall went limp. He appeared to be dead, and the Sherpas were ordered by their leader to leave him on the mountain.

They gathered his backpack, food, water and extra oxygen and returned to the high camp, leaving him alone on the mountain.

Continue reading here: Left for Dead – Mount Everest (Part 2)