Las Vegas (KSNV) — A 14-year-old boy remains in a coma at Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, more than a week after falling 120 feet while hiking near Mount Whitney in California. The boy, identified as Zane Wach, was hiking with his father, Ryan Wach, when he fell.
“I heard steps to my right, and he was walking off the ledge,” said Wach, recalling the moments before the accident. Wach explained that his son began showing signs of altitude sickness during their 19-hour trek. “He had believed that we had finished the hike multiple times already in his mind, like he was not present any longer,” Wach said.
Dr. Puja Vithalani, a family medicine physician with Kaiser Permanente, noted that altitude sickness can affect even experienced hikers above 8,000 feet. “You can definitely get confused, you can maybe be speaking and not make as much sense, your speech can be a little bit affected,” Vithalani said. Wach and his son were around the 10,000-foot mark when the incident occurred…