Dan Mazur SummitClimb Mount Everest Rescue of Lincoln Hall 1 — Transcript

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1. 0:00film crew but was unable to acclimate
2. 0:03he remained at advanced base camp to
3. 0:05support the team
4. 0:06his video diary records what happens
5. 0:09next
6. 0:11with information from the sherpas
7. 0:12lincoln is
8. 0:14best described as as crazy
9. 0:18as altitude crazy i've just heard that
10. 0:21the surfers are trying to literally kick
11. 0:22him to move but he's just
12. 0:26gone man the sherpers have no choice but
13. 0:31to try and manhandle
14. 0:32lincoln down to safety in the
15. 0:35communications tent
16. 0:36lincoln's teammate richard harris tries
17. 0:39to make him
18. 0:42focus
19. 0:54arrives to help with lincoln's rescue
20. 0:57i'd have
21. 0:58some moments of lucidity yes
22. 1:02what are you doing here he said
23. 1:05thomas thomas has died and that was just
24. 1:09uh this huge shock just seems so
25. 1:12inconceivable
26. 1:14since he seemed to have been going so
27. 1:15well and that's
28. 1:17then i shut down again
29. 1:24cerebral edema is toying with lincoln's
30. 1:27mind
31. 1:34i thought i was in queensland a really
32. 1:36severe case of wishful thinking
33. 1:38you know i actually felt quite safe and
34. 1:40quite happy just to be there
35. 1:45and then i heard an australian voice in
36. 1:48speaking english
37. 2:05i suddenly took the instruction to
38. 2:07continue absilling
39. 2:09in his delusional state lincoln has to
40. 2:12abseil down the treacherous second step
41. 2:15all the sherpas can do is watch
42. 2:20helplessly
43. 2:23in australia lincoln hall's wife barbara
44. 2:26waits anxiously for news from everest
45. 2:31[Music]
46. 2:34then comes the worrying news that
47. 2:36lincoln is still near the summit
48. 2:38i immediately felt really sick and
49. 2:42full of dread because he would have been
50. 2:45up near the summit
51. 2:46for probably six or seven hours
52. 2:49and i couldn't imagine what difficulty
53. 2:53he was having
54. 2:54at 28 000 feet lincoln's difficulty
55. 2:58is the second step this footage shows
56. 3:00the 150 foot vertical rock
57. 3:02face in his disoriented state it's
58. 3:05proving extremely dangerous
59. 3:07my mind was saying absurd my body
60. 3:09couldn't handle it i whizzed down the
61. 3:11ropes
62. 3:11pretty well out of control
63. 3:16what happened was i swung across and
64. 3:18slammed into pember
65. 3:21to try and stop the uh me hurting him so
66. 3:25much i sort of
67. 3:26uh thought well i'll use my uh the
68. 3:28spring of my my leg to slow down the
69. 3:30impact but unfortunately i had these
70. 3:32spiky things called crampons on the end
71. 3:34of my boots
72. 3:35which are really sharp i mean the design
73. 3:37so your feet don't slip on ice well they
74. 3:39certainly didn't slip on pember's thigh
75. 3:44either
76. 3:47[Music]
77. 3:50at the time i hadn't realized i'd i'd
78. 3:52hit him with the crampons and that i'd
79. 3:53actually wounded his leg quite badly
80. 3:55and we're like two spiders hanging
81. 3:59beneath this cliff on our abseil raps
82. 4:07pamba is badly hurt but he and the other
83. 4:10three sherpas
84. 4:11simply refuse to give up on lincoln
85. 4:14people say that the sherpas
86. 4:15should have left me when i was being
87. 4:18really difficult
88. 4:19but the chefs just don't think like that
89. 4:22what they were engaged in doing was
90. 4:24getting me down the mountain and that's
91. 4:25what they were going to do
92. 4:27the sherpas really struggled to get me
93. 4:29as far as they could
94. 4:31but eventually they had to stop
95. 4:33[Music]
96. 4:36in an extraordinary feat of endurance
97. 4:39the sherpas have dragged lincoln as far
98. 4:41as they can
99. 4:42but at twenty eight thousand feet they
100. 4:44are still in the death zone
101. 4:46running out of oxygen here means almost
102. 4:49certain death
103. 4:51when lecture doji dawa and pemba finally
104. 4:54got me to the point
105. 4:55where i spent the night they could do
106. 4:58nothing else
107. 4:58we had a 19-hour day there and it wasn't
108. 5:0219 hours a descent
109. 5:03i mean it was 19 hours of struggle and
110. 5:06so it was an extraordinary hard thing
111. 5:07for them physically
112. 5:09we'd all run out of oxygen dehydrated
113. 5:12we were all close to death but lincoln
114. 5:15faces yet
115. 5:16another threat the bitter cold
116. 5:19[Music]
117. 5:20frostbite is the result of the body's
118. 5:22attempt to preserve its core
119. 5:24temperature blood vessels near the skin
120. 5:27begin to constrict
121. 5:28forcing blood to the essential organs
122. 5:30without warmth
123. 5:32the cells in the extremities begin to
124. 5:36freeze down at advanced base camp
125. 5:39kevin argello is realizing that time is
126. 5:42running out
127. 5:44this decision at some point has got to
128. 5:45be made to leave him
129. 5:47to die he'll be good could you your best
130. 5:49friend
131. 5:50no fly
132. 5:56[Applause]
133. 6:02ridge that only one person can walk by
134. 6:06you can't if he doesn't want to move
135. 6:08because he's just become completely
136. 6:09delirious
137. 6:10what can i do and at what point do you
138. 6:13decide
139. 6:14because otherwise you're going to have
140. 6:15you're going to have one dead
141. 6:17climber plus three dead sherpas
142. 6:20[Applause]
143. 6:31it's at this point that lincoln slips
144. 6:33into a coma
145. 6:34due to cerebral edema his brain is
146. 6:38shutting down
147. 6:40and his respiration becomes barely
148. 6:46perceptible
149. 6:48what i understand they were monitoring
150. 6:49my you know vital signs
151. 6:52my breathing was getting less and less
152. 6:54frequent and more and more shallow
153. 6:56they couldn't find a pulse one of them
154. 6:58poked me in the eye to which i didn't
155. 6:59respond at all
156. 7:03at 5 20 pm the sherpas declare him dead
157. 7:11the decision that has to be made to save
158. 7:16sherpas lives and that's to leave
159. 7:20lincoln
160. 7:20[Applause]
161. 7:23shelters have been working at over 8 000
162. 7:27metres now for
163. 7:28over 24 hours and although the sherpa
164. 7:31people are very strong
165. 7:33and very tough and very kind and loyal
166. 7:37there's only so much they can do before
167. 7:38their own lives being put at risk
168. 7:41the sherpas stay with lincoln for
169. 7:42another two hours
170. 7:44until finally expedition leader alex
171. 7:47abramov
172. 7:48orders them down they take lincoln's
173. 7:51belongings and he's left alone
174. 7:53without oxygen water or shelter
175. 7:58[Music]
176. 8:08nobody has ever been left for dead this
177. 8:10high
178. 8:11and survived
179. 8:13[Music]
180. 8:19i was meditating
181. 8:23by the fire and somehow i felt
182. 8:27lincoln's arms around me
183. 8:31and i didn't like the feeling of that at
184. 8:35all
185. 8:37my next step of course was to have the
186. 8:38phone uh barbara his wife
187. 8:41and that's we just knew what a tragedy
188. 8:43we were just a small part of his life
189. 8:45but to have to suddenly
190. 8:46make the phone call to say that um
191. 8:50you know he died to his fam to his
192. 8:52family that was that was terrible
193. 8:58another phone call came through from
194. 9:00base camp
195. 9:02and i just knew instantly that it was
196. 9:04the worst news possible
197. 9:06and i didn't want to to hear it and i
198. 9:09didn't want to continue
199. 9:10the conversation but i had to be told
200. 9:13mum called us out there
201. 9:15and it was it had been my good called
202. 9:18um and
203. 9:23um she sat us down on the couch and
204. 9:27said um boys
205. 9:31about 20 minutes ago your dad passed
206. 9:34away
207. 9:36well everything just seemed to get blank
208. 9:39and we just
209. 9:40sat there together in a huddle
210. 9:44holding hands and hugging and crying and
211. 9:50we didn't know what to do
212. 9:53[Music]
213. 10:01alone the highest person on earth
214. 10:05lincoln hall has been declared dead
215. 10:11but something unexpected happens that
216. 10:13night
217. 10:14the weather begins to change a blanket
218. 10:17of cloud covers lincoln
219. 10:19preventing the temperature from dropping
220. 10:21below minus
221. 10:2225 degrees i mean it's very hard to know
222. 10:25exactly what happened
223. 10:27i resurfaced somehow and i actually woke
224. 10:30up
225. 10:32and i realized where i was
226. 10:33[Music]
227. 10:37lincoln's luck begins to change whatever
228. 10:40way you look at it it was a very strange
229. 10:41set of circumstances