An experienced hiker competing in distance running, swimming and triathlons, Zann knows sales was almost felled by altitude sickness While he wandered with his father Ryan Wach on California’s Mount Whitney In June 2025.
“He began to experience some hallucinations,” Ryan explained to Sfgate by 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 teenager from leaving the cliff several times when they went back down on the trail. “He was in a changed 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 fatigue, sleep deprivation, probably some dehydration and lasting effects from altitude sickness. But he mainly began to doubt reality.”
And on a third attempt, Ryan was too far away to catch Zane and watched when his son fell about 120 meters from the cliff. After waiting six hours on an Inyo County Search & Rescue helicopter to get there and fly Zane to Södra Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine, he stabilized and transferred to a pediatric traum center in Las Vegas. He was placed in a medically induced coma and eventually began to breathe on his own.
“It will be a survival story in the end,” Ryan said of his teenager, who suffered the main trauma along with a broken finger, ankle and cracked pelvis, “but right now we are still in the middle of it.”
