A well-known Australian climber given up for dead near the summit of Mount Everest may still be alive and rescuers are trying to reach him, a colleague said on Friday.
Lincoln Hall (50) and one of Australia’s leading climbers, was reported by his Russian expedition leader earlier on Friday to have died on Thursday while descending from the summit of the world’s highest mountain.
Friends in Australia mourned Hall after Russian Alexander Abramov declared on Everest news websites that the climber had died of acute altitude sickness shortly after conquering the summit for the first time.
But that report was thrown into doubt on Friday when another Australian Everest summiteer, Duncan Chessell, said Hall had been found alive by another climber and a rescue operation was under way.
Chessell said he had been told by radio that Hall was being brought down the mountain by Russian-led team of sherpas.
“If he’s alive he’s high up and in serious danger,” Chessell told the Australian news agency AAP from his home in Adelaide.
Earlier on Friday, the leader of the expedition that included Hall, Alexander Abramov, said in a statement posted on the website www.mounteverest.net that Hall collapsed after losing coordination about 150m below the Everest summit and died as sherpas tried to help him down the mountain.
Abramov said another member of the same team, Thomas Weber from Germany, who was visually impaired, stopped 50m short of the summit after his sight failed and also died during the descent.
But according to Chessell, the sherpas trying to help Hall down the mountain ran out of oxygen and were ordered by their leader to leave him and save themselves.
Another climber, named as Dan Mazur, later found Hall still alive and gave him hot tea and oxygen.
“Alex Abramov immediately dispatched a team of 12 Sherpas to re-ascend with fresh oxygen and stretcher,” Chessell said.
Hall is one of Australia’s most well-known mountaineers and adventure authors. He was a member of the first Australian team to climb Mount Everest in 1984, but that bid stopped short of the summit.
He also served as a director of the Australian Himalayan Foundation and was the author of several books, including First Ascent and The Life of an Explorer, and numerous magazine articles.
His last assault on Everest was part of an expedition that included 15-year-old Sydney boy Christopher Harris, who was trying to become the youngest person to climb the mountain.
Harris turned back short of the summit because of respiratory problems. – AFP