Customer Reviews

Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Over two years ago, Lincoln experienced the best and the worst of Mt Everest. He was reaching the summit when he got a severe case of altitude sickness. His group attempted to revive him, but when that failed he was left for dead, very close to the summit. As fate would have it, a group of climbers making their way up, saw him in desperate need of help and ultimately saved his life. He writes about his horrible ordeal in this amazing book.
His hands and feet were absolutely covered in frostbite. He has had some limbs and toes and fingers amputated, and various other surgeries as a result of his experience up there. He refers to May 26, 2006 as the day he died, and writes in here the pros and cons for climbing Everest. He puts his family on both lists; on the con - the fear of leaving his wife and kids without a husband or father and on the pro list, the idea to show them that he was willing to take a chance to live out his dream. He describes the bitter cold and all the thoughts running through his head. It's a book that takes you through different emotions - triumph, fear, relief and everything in between.
Whether you like mountain climbing or not, this book is a great read. It is moving and interesting and it's good to see a happy ending. I really enjoyed this and hope you will too.

I'm an avid reader and find especially interesting the personal accounts of extreme survival situations. I am in awe of strength of the human spirit and the will to survive. Lincoln Hall's ordeal is no exception. I do however take exception to how poorly this book is written. Now I know not all and actually most people that do have these experiences aren't authors and so some forgiveness is required. But this guy....hmmmm he professes to be a writer! Whoa, I struggled with much of the book, because it was/is so poorly written. He rambles and there are paragraphs of boring minutia, that not only don't reveal any insight into who he is, nothing of any real interest regarding the "story" is added. Yes he survived an event that most people would not have and thus obviously has a story to tell, but his editor should have reined him in and kept his rambling under control. I say don't waste your money and check it out from a library rather than buy it. Buy... Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, instead.

I got this book a year ago thru a friend from Australia when it first came out over there. I read it in one sitting and could not put it down. For those who have read Beck Weathers Left For Dead, Lincoln Hall goes even further into the fight for living after the physical part is gone. I have all of Lincoln Hall's books he has wrote, and along with Blood On The Lotus this is his best writing.If you are into the physical and mental demands of what climbing Everest is about, Lincoln really blows you away with his own mind trip that night as he lay there in a fantasy world of his own.Excellent read..

This is an excellent book- very well written and hard to put down. I have read many books on climbing and Everest, and this is one of, if not the best. His survival is incredible, and it's nice to read how histhoughts and love of his family kept him going (and played into whether he would attempt the climb at all) at a time when so many people only think of themselves. I highly recommend this book.

This is much more than just a story of a climb to Mt. Everest (which is a inspiring story on it's own!). This is a story about the strength of the human spirit. There is no scientific explanation for his survival. It is obvious the strength of his mind/spirit is what brought him down from that mountain. The story was written well and enjoyable to read. Although I enjoy the outdoors, I am not a mountain climber, and I found this book so inspiring!

Readers must wait 200 pages to get to the meat of this tale, the author's 'night out' atop Everest when he was left for dead. Seemingly every random thought and event that entered the writer's head before, during and after are recounted here, leaving the reader a bit antsy. Pages of 'hallucinations' weigh things down. Streamlining would have made for a better read. I wanted to know more about the frostbite because of the cover photo, but we never really see what happened afterward. No photo. Still, in the genre of deadly Everest literature, this one is worth wading through the dross to reach the shining nuggets.

If you like to read adventure memoirs and tales of mountaineering in particular, you may find yourself taken off course by Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall in "Dead Lucky." While lacking some of the dramatic style of "Touching the Void" or "Into Thin Air," Hall writes as a middle-aged man in a calmer, matter-of-fact, almost contemplative style.

More than twenty-years after his first attempt at Everest as a young world-class climber, in 2006 at the eleventh hour, Hall is lucky enough to get invited on a major Everest expedition in the role of photographer. Late in the year's climbing season and after four sudden and unexpected deaths, (two on an earlier expedition and two from his expedition which occur on the "A Team), Hall gets his shot at summiting the Big Guy.

Twenty-two years earlier Hall had to turn back just short of Everest's summit. Two decades and many climbs later, Everest's peak still calls out to him. Mountain fever or not, Hall is now old enough and experienced enough to recognize that the siren's call does not come without serious risk of injury or death.

"Dead Lucky" is his tale of a successful climb exceeded by a near-death experience. After suffering extreme dehydration, debilitating fatigue, frostbite and cerebral edema, Hall is left for dead on the mountain by four Sherpa guides who had managed to bring him about 1,000 feet down from the summit, a process which took more than seven hours. Risking their own lives and no longer able to continue the rescue, the Sherpas leave Hall in order to save themselves.

Hall's night-on-the-mountain hallucinations occur in a state of physical and mental breakdown. These hallucinations showcase more than any logical analysis the broken-down state of his mind. To provide context, Hall brings the reader back into realm of real events by narrating in a parallel timeline the events that occurred elsewhere (including the announcement of his death) at basecamp and back at his Australia home, while he remained alive on the mountain.

Hall's return from the mountain is more eventful than his climb. When a different climbing team discovers Hall to still be alive, they provide enough water and oxygen to revive him. With radio communications, a new rescue effort is mounted. Two different Sherpas are sent up from below to bring him down. For me, Hall's trip down Everest is the most compelling part of the tale. The two Sherpas dispatched are thugs who clearly do not want to be sent out on a rescue mission. They deeply resent Hall and attempt to extort and blackmail him. They don't care whether Hall lives or dies. In the most dramatic act of the book, Hall is struck violently with his own ice-axe in a near-lethal blow delivered by the younger Sherpa, which the young Sherpa had earlier snatched from him.

"Dead Lucky" could not have been written by a young man. That's one of the reasons that I recommend this book. Lincoln Hall is a middle-aged man who gets a last chance at accomplishing his inner young- man's dream. He came as close to crossing over to the other side as anyone could. Most important, Hall knew what he needed to live for and he was lucky enough to be able to step back just short of death's door.

Lincoln Hall's climb on Everest was supposed to be in support of a young Australian's attempt to be the youngest ever climber to reach the summit. When he was forced back, Hall took the opportunity for one last go at reaching the summit himself.
In a year where a dozen climbers died on the mountain, Lincoln Hall was also left for dead just below the peak of Everest as night fell. And he had thought scaling Everest was going to be the real challenge!
In this account, Hall speaks in real terms of his battle with his mind and body to get through the night on Everest- something that no-one else had done. A revealing tale of the human body's ability to overcome adversity and to come back from the warm comforting reach of death, the strength of a family's love and the connection with the natural world. This book is truly an inspiration read.

After reading High Crimes, Dark Summit and watching Everest: Beyond the Limit, this was an obvious choice to finish the Everest 2006 season. I had heard about Lincoln Hall from other writers and reporters and wanted to hear first hand about his experience of spending the night on Everest. I liked the book and recommend it to anyone who is interested in the 2006 season on Everest.

Being a connoisseur of human folly, I'm a fascinated spectator of high altitude mountaineering stories.

And on a mountain that, by it's very nature, seems to attract an inordinate proportion of sociopaths & narcissists, I'm not really surprised when I realize some mountaineer I'm reading about is self-centered, emotionally immature, and/or lacking the normal social connections & human motivations most of us have.

And I'm afraid this guy is among them.

One review I read said, "Mr. Hall seemed almost detached from the story he was penning", and I sensed that from the get-go, and couldn't even force myself halfway through the book.
That reviewer also said, more or less, that she was disappointed that he failed to describe his fellow climbers in any way that would give you a sense of who they were & what it was like to be on a team with them.
And then, what's the point?

It's very disappointing, because by his interviews, and the fact that Andrew Brash calls him "friend", I'd assumed he had some measure of humility & gratitude about the importance of other people to him.
But I guess not. It's like he fails to really see & connect to other people completely.

The humanity you find in the books by Krakauer & Kodas seem to be completely missing in this book.

And as for the author's professed religion... Sadly, I've noticed that many western Buddhists I've come across seem to miss the forest for the trees. They're all hung up on the trappings of rituals and a facade, that they seem oblivious to their attachment to the most ridiculous desires that even most non-Buddhist materialistic people don't attach themselves to... And some actually seem to use their religion to justify what appears to be the exact opposite of right action.

And it's very ironic really - because it seems to me that the aspiration & commitment to climbing Mount Everest is by its very nature, the ultimate of what Buddhism teaches to stop... being attached to a highly impractical diversion, claiming to oneself that it will bring some kind of fulfillment of happiness, when in reality it seems to be the epitome of needless suffering.

But using religion to one's own purposes & for appearances, or being a religious hypocrite, is not something self-proclaimed Buddhists have a monopoly on, of course. Seems that every religion has its share.