A 14-year-old California boy walked off a 120-foot cliff in front of his horrified father — telling him he saw "snowmen and Kermit the frog" while hallucinating from altitude sickness.
Zane Wach is currently in a medically induced coma after falling from a cliff on Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada mountain range on June 10.
The accident left him with serious injuries, including trauma to the head and fractures to his ankle, finger, and pelvis, according to a report from SFGate.
Everything happened as Zane and his father were descending the mountain. At first, his dad, Ryan Wach, didn’t think anything was wrong. He fully believed Zane could handle the hike just fine.
"He's in better shape than I am," Wach told the outlet. He explained that Zane had already gained some hiking experience and was very active for his age.
The teen regularly participated in long-distance running, swimming, and triathlons.
"The idea was that this would be kind of like his introduction to mountaineering."
As the two made their way up the mountain, Ryan started noticing that Zane was beginning to show signs of altitude sickness.
The symptoms weren’t severe at first, but they were enough to raise concern.
Even though his son seemed to be struggling, Ryan said they had already completed the most difficult sections of the hike.
To be safe, he chose a less challenging trail for the remaining seven-mile walk back to their car.
While they continued along the trail, Ryan said his son began to "experience some hallucinations."
"He knew he was hallucinating," Wach said. "He said he saw things like snowmen and Kermit the Frog."
Despite what was happening, Ryan kept a close watch on Zane as they hiked. At first, he even thought his son seemed to be doing "considerably better."
But about an hour later, things took another turn. Zane's behavior changed again, and he began to question what was real and what wasn’t—losing touch with "reality."
"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."
As they moved farther along the trail, Zane told his father they had "already finished the hike multiple times over." which added to Ryan’s concern and made him even more cautious moving forward.
"It was completely bizarre," Wach recalled.
"He told me he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or not, and he would shake his head in disbelief, like, 'This is not real.' Like he was in the movie 'Inception' or something."
Seeing how confused Zane had become, some hikers nearby took it seriously and called in a search and rescue team.
They knew it was important to get him off the mountain before things got worse.
Not long after that, Ryan said the situation worsened. Zane's condition started to rapidly decline and it became harder to manage.
"He was worse than before," Wach told the Independent. "He almost seemed like he was sleepwalking. He started dragging his feet and stopped in his tracks," Ryan said. "He didn't want to go on."
According to Ryan, his son began moving unpredictably. At one point, he headed toward a ledge along the trail that dropped steeply into rocky terrain.
Thankfully, Ryan was able to grab him in time and prevent a fall, for the moment.
The teenager insisted to his father that he was going to the car, even though they were still thousands of feet above it on the mountain trail.
Then, he tried again to head toward the slope, but Ryan stopped him. This time, Zane said he was just trying to get "dinner."
All of this left Ryan emotionally drained. While struggling to keep Zane safe, he found himself tearing up and briefly let go of his son.
"I had to wipe away tears. I was holding my hands to my eyes, and he walked off again," Wach told SFGate.
"This time, I didn't hear it until he was about at the edge, and when I went to reach for him, he was 10 feet away from me. I couldn't get him, and he walked off the edge."
Zane tumbled approximately 120 feet down the steep slope before finally hitting the ground below.
As soon as he saw what had happened, Ryan rushed down the slope to get to his son.
Luckily, a hiker nearby who happened to be a trained EMT saw everything and jumped in to assist with the rescue.
Zane remained on the mountainside for nearly six hours while Inyo County Search & Rescue crews worked to bring him to safety.
He was first flown to Southern Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine. From there, he was transferred to the nearest pediatric trauma unit—Sunrise Children's Hospital in Las Vegas—for specialized care.
Despite the terrifying fall, doctors at Sunrise Children’s Hospital said it was "fairly miraculous" that Zane didn’t suffer even worse injuries, according to what his father shared.
A GoFundMe campaign was launched to help with his growing medical costs. In an update, Ryan shared that Zane is "improving" and even opened his eyes briefly on Wednesday, although he "still has a long way to go."
Medical experts explain that hallucinations can be a dangerous sign of altitude sickness. Specifically, they’re linked to a condition called high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), where the brain swells due to a lack of oxygen.
Thankfully, HACE is rare and only affects fewer than 1% of people who reach altitudes between 13,000 and 18,000 feet.