An experienced hiker who competes in distance running, swimming, and triathlons, Zane Wach was nearly felled by altitude sickness while hiking with his father Ryan Wach on California’s Mount Whitney in June 2025.

“He started to experience some hallucinations,” Ryan explained to the SFGATE about the 14-year-old. “He knew he was hallucinating. He said he saw things like snowmen and Kermit the Frog.”

Ryan managed to stop his son from walking off the cliff multiple times as they made their way back down the trail. “He was in an altered mental state, and I don’t know what caused it. We still don’t know,” the father noted. “My best guess is a combination of exhaustion, sleep deprivation, probably some dehydration, and lasting effects from the altitude sickness. But he essentially started to doubt reality.”

On a third attempt, Ryan was too far away to catch Zane, watching as his son fell roughly 120 feet off the cliff. After waiting six hours for an Inyo County Search & Rescue helicopter to arrive and fly Zane to Southern Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine, he was stabilized and transferred to a pediatric trauma center in Las Vegas. Placed into a medically induced coma, he eventually began breathing on his own.

“It’s going to be a survival story in the end,” Ryan said of his son, who suffered head trauma along with a broken finger, ankle, and fractured pelvis, “but right now we’re still in the middle of it.”