A 14-year-old boy from Santa Clarita has not yet regained consciousness after falling off a steep slope while hiking on Mount Whitney earlier this month.
Calif. teen lost touch with reality, walked off Mt. Whitney, dad says
Ryan Wach and his son Zane summited the mountain on June 10 via the Mountaineer s Route, a shorter but more technically advanced trail compared to the popular Mount Whitney Trail. Zane and his father, an experienced hiker and mountaineer, had summited mountains before, but this was Zane s first time on Mount Whitney. The pair planned to complete the trek in a single pass an impressive feat, but one Ryan Wach wasn t worried about, as his son regularly competes in distance running, swimming and triathlons and had plenty of prior hiking experience.
He s in better shape than I am, Wach told SFGATE. The idea was that this would be kind of like his introduction to mountaineering.
When Zane began exhibiting symptoms of altitude sickness, his father decided to take the easier route back to the trailhead. By then, the pair had already gotten the hardest parts of their route scrambling and climbing over granite cliffs and loose rock to reach Whitney s summit out of the way, and just needed to hike several miles down the Mount Whitney Trail back to where their car was parked.
He started to experience some hallucinations, Wach said. He knew he was hallucinating. He said he saw things like snowmen and Kermit the Frog.
via www.sfgate.com
Mike Ramsey and I climbed the Mountaineer’s Route in (if I remember correctly) November 2002. We took two days getting up, however, to give ourselves more time to acclimatize. I still felt pretty sick. It was a beautiful, exciting hike altogether. I wish Zane a speedy recovery.