A horrified father is speaking out after watching his 14-year-old son walk off a cliff. The teen started hallucinating during a hike on Mount Whitney and fell off a slope.
Ryan Wach and his son Zane decided to hike the mountain in early June. The father and son had summited mountains before this one. They planned to complete the summit in a single pass. "He's in better shape than I am," Wach told SFGATE. "The idea was that this would be kind of like his introduction to mountaineering."
Unfortunately, the father noticed his son start exhibiting altitude sickness. By that time, they had already reached the summit. They just needed to hike back down the mountain. "He started to experience some hallucinations," Wach said. "He knew he was hallucinating - he said he saw things like snowmen and Kermit the Frog."
The father became concerned as his son flitted in and out of hallucinations. "He was in an altered mental state, and I don't know what caused it. We still don't know," Wach said. "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."
Father Watches 14-Year-Old Walk Off cliff
Those symptoms became more worrisome with Zane acting erratically.
"It was completely bizarre," he said. "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."
At one point, the teen made movement to a cliff that dropped off from the trail. He told his father that he was going to the car and to grab dinner. At the time, his father grabbed him away from the ledge. But the teen ended up going back to the same spot.
"I was kind of losing my mind, in a way, because I was so scared and frustrated," Wach said. "I had to wipe away tears - I was holding my hands to my eyes, and he walked off again. 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."
The father quickly found where Zane fell, more than 120 feet below. Rescue took him to the hospital where he's remained in the hospital.
"It's going to be a survival story in the end, but right now we're still in the middle of it," Wach said.
