A beloved teenager and competitive swimmer at the Hart High School in Santa Clarita was surrounded by messages from love and support on the wall of his hospital room in Las Vegas Sunday.
“It has touched our hearts like that. I can’t wait to tell Zane all these things,” said Ryan Wach.
Ryan Wach will be a lot to tell his son, Zane, about their journey to Mount Whitney
“I have been mountain climbing for the past six or seven years. And this was really our first trip together that I would introduce him some sort of the next level of a real mountain mirror,” said Ryan.
Together the father-son Duo reached the highest peak in the adjacent United States, no problem.
“He actually did phenomenal,” said Wach.
In hour 19 during their origins, however, Zane began to behave erratic.
“He said,” You know, porridge, I hallucine you that you see all those little snow things down, stains down, snow fields? They look like snowmen. Or the green lakes there? It looks like Kermit the frog and his friends, “said Wach, who was insecure about what to do as his son hallucinating.
The two were 9,000 feet and Zane’s condition went from bad to worse.
Dr. Shyam Rao in the St.Mary’s Medical Center in Long Beach says that Zane probably developed height of heights.
“In the first instance, it is very common when patients, especially for people who cross 8000 feet, sometimes start to develop headaches, dizziness. And for some people it can be confused,” said Rao.
“I started screaming from just despair and fear and not to know what was going to happen or whatever, he just seemed so unstable and unpredictable,” Wach said. “I started wiping the tears out of my eyes. Take a second, I think, I don’t know what to do. And he just walked over the edge as if he were walking to the car and I just screamed. I was sure he had died. I didn’t know how he could survive.”
Inyo County Search and Rescue and the CHP Apple Valley Air Unit launched to Mount Whitney to find the seriously injured teenager, who fell 120 feet on solid granite.
“My job was to hold him and keep it warm,” said Wach.
There, on the ground, a father held his son while the hours passed by.
“It got dark and then it got pitch black and then it got cold. We were about six hours before searching and salvation came,” said Wach.
The helicopter went over Zane to the nearest pediatric trauma center. That was on 10 June, and Zane has been there since then, surrounded by Well’s wishes and the echoes from 300 miles away.
“I miss him very much and we all love you so much,” said Abby, a friend of Zane.
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