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Lincoln Hall Signs at Barnes & Noble on his Dead Lucky Tour

Fri, 05/16/2008

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Here are some stats about Lincoln Hall:

He is Australian

He attempted to climb Everest with no Oxygen in 1984 but turned back before reaching the summit.

In 2006, at the age of 50, Lincoln was given another chance to reach the summit. This time, he made it.

Later that day, Lincoln was left for dead on Mount Everest, with no oxygen or shelter.

Lincoln Hall was one of 12 climbers to be officially pronounced dead on Everest in 2006, and remains the only person to be declared dead so high on Everest and live to tell the tale.

Dead Lucky is his eighth book.

You would expect a man who "died," spent a night alone in Mount Everest's "Death Zone" and lived to tell the tale to be quite serious about his experience. After all, he went through one of the most harrowing ordeals imaginable and as a constant reminder is missing several fingers due to frostbite (a serious handicap for a writer.)

And Lincoln Hall does speak seriously about those famous events of 2006. But he also has a sense of humor about them.

Last night I escorted Lincoln to the first bookstore event of his month-long, 11-city US tour. He began his talk by describing the debilitating physical affects of the thin air at 28,000 feet, where climbers enjoy only 30% of the oxygen that we have here at sea level and where cerebral edema (fluid build-up in the brain) can attack and send you into a death spiral of erratic and even combative behavior, hallucinations and extreme fatigue. Cerebral edema is what almost sent Lincoln to his death. "My wife says the only reason the fluid build-up didn't kill me," he said "is that I have so much empty space in my head." That got a chuckle from the crowd and prepared them for a night of Lincoln's quirky humor. That same wit is what convinced his wife that she was indeed speaking with her husband when he called to tell her that he was actually alive after his rescue. "I hope you haven't started looking for another husband," he famously said. Even though his voice was unrecognizable due to a frozen vocal chord, in that one joke, she knew it was him.

Everest is a topic of seemingly endless fascination, so we had to cut the question and answer session off so that Lincoln could move on to the book signing portion of the evening. I asked my fiancé to take some photos for me. I am playing the role of bodyguard while Lincoln signs copies of Dead Lucky.

This weekend we're off to the West Coast. If this event was any indication, this should be a fun tour!

--Shanta Small, Tarcher Publicist

View more information on Dead Lucky.