Lincoln Hall's Everest Death-Zone Survival
In May 2006, Australian climber Lincoln Hall was left for dead near the summit of Mount Everest in the death zone after collapsing with altitude sickness, only to be found the next morning sitting up, half undressed, telling his astonished rescuers, “I imagine you are surprised to see me here.” His Sherpa guides had spent hours trying to move him down before nightfall, but when he stopped responding and their oxygen ran low, they were ordered to leave him on the mountain and reported him dead.
Hall then endured a night alone without shelter, oxygen, food, or water in subzero temperatures and high winds, perched just feet from a sheer drop. At first light, climber Dan Mazur and his team abandoned their own summit bid to give him oxygen, medicine, and hot drinks, helped Sherpas guide him through an 11-hour descent to camp, and he survived with frostbite and brain swelling. He is widely regarded as the only person to have lived through a night without shelter in Everest’s death zone.