‘He was in an altered mental state, and I don’t know what caused it’
By Sam Mauhay-Moore, National Parks Reporter
June 25, 2025 (SFGate.com)
Zane Wach, 14, from Santa Clarita, Calif.Courtesy of Ryan Wach
A 14-year-old boy from Santa Clarita has not yet regained consciousness after falling off a steep slope while hiking on Mount Whitney earlier this month.
Ryan Wach and his son Zane summited the mountain on June 10 via the Mountaineer’s Route, a shorter but more technically advanced trail compared to the popular Mount Whitney Trail. Zane and his father, an experienced hiker and mountaineer, had summited mountains before, but this was Zane’s first time on Mount Whitney. The pair planned to complete the trek in a single pass — an impressive feat, but one Ryan Wach wasn’t worried about, as his son regularly competes in distance running, swimming and triathlons and had plenty of prior hiking experience.
“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.”
When Zane began exhibiting symptoms of altitude sickness, his father decided to take the easier route back to the trailhead. By then, the pair had already gotten the hardest parts of their route — scrambling and climbing over granite cliffs and loose rock to reach Whitney’s summit — out of the way, and just needed to hike several miles down the Mount Whitney Trail back to where their car was parked.
“He started to experience some hallucinations,” Wach said. “He knew he was hallucinating. He said he saw things like snowmen and Kermit the Frog.”
Wach said Zane started feeling “considerably better” once they reached Mount Whitney’s Trail Camp, which is about 6 miles from the trailhead at Whitney Portal. Then, about an hour later, Zane began losing touch with reality again.
“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.”
Zane Wach, 14, was transported to Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas after falling over 100 feet on Mount Whitney earlier this month.Courtesy of Ryan Wach
Shortly after, the pair needed to stop along the trail because Zane believed they had “already finished the hike multiple times over,” Wach said.
“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 this point, a separate group of hikers contacted search and rescue teams due to Zane’s condition. According to Wach, Zane began making strange, erratic movements toward a ledge that dropped off into a steep granite slope. When Wach grabbed his son, Zane said he was going to the car, which was in the direction of the ledge but several thousand feet down the trail. Wach later grabbed Zane again near the same spot, and when he asked what he was doing, Zane told his father that he was getting dinner.
“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.”
Wach ran down the slope to where Zane landed, which he estimates to be about 120 feet from where he fell. One of the nearby hikers, an EMT named Ariana, immediately began coordinating rescue efforts, Wach said. Wach waited there with Zane for about six hours until Inyo County Search & Rescue teams arrived and flew Zane via helicopter to Southern Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine. From there, he was flown to Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, the closest hospital with a pediatric trauma center.
File – Mount Whitney near Lone Pine, Calif.David McNew/Getty Images
Zane remains in a medically induced coma at Sunrise Children’s Hospital. Besides the trauma to his head, his injuries from the fall were relatively minor: He broke an ankle, a finger and part of his pelvis, Wach said, adding that doctors have expressed that it is “fairly miraculous” he wasn’t injured further.
Shortly after the accident, a family friend created a GoFundMe for Zane’s recovery costs. It has raised close to $18,000.
Wach said that despite the long road ahead of them, he’s hoping for a full recovery.
“It’s going to be a survival story in the end, but right now we’re still in the middle of it,” Wach said.
June 25, 2025
NATIONAL PARKS REPORTER
Sam Mauhay-Moore is a National Parks reporter for SFGATE. He grew up in Long Beach and studied journalism and ethnic studies at San Francisco State. When he’s not home in Oakland, he’s truck camping in the mountains somewhere. You can email him at sam.moore@sfgate.com.