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Climber left for dead in Everest tragedy returned 'like the walking dead'

One father and husband was left standing in the same position for ten hours and presumed dead. Despite surviving he watched parts of his body fall off including his big toe and a chunk of eyebrow

[Beck now has a nose that grew out of his forehead]

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Beck now has a nose that grew out of his forehead(Image: WireImage)

A 49-year-old father heard fellow climbers declare him dead after he miraculously survived the single deadliest storm on Everest.

Beck Weather, from Texas in the US, pledged to change his life and win back his wife, Peaches, after she orchestrated an unprecedented rescue effort to retrieve her dying husband from a treacherous mountain slope in 1996. Alongside expedition leader Rob Hall, Doug Hansen, Andy Harris, Mike Groom and journalist Jon Krakauer, Beck Beck began the climb in May, as per HowStuffWorks. However, Beck had undergone eye surgery 18 months earlier that spectacularly backfired, he went nearly blind and was left with no depth perception.

Knowing he was too weak to go on, he decided to wait for the rest of the party to return from the summit. However, he was left in the same spot for almost 10 hours. He would pay for these ten hours for the rest of his life, with parts of his body falling off in the months after his rescue. He wrote: "I remember silting in a chair when a big chunk of my right eyebrow, hair included, fell off in my hand. Later, as I was walking down the hall, my big toe fell off and went skittering away."

[Beck was caught in the deadliest storm on Everest]

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Beck was caught in the deadliest storm on Everest(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

However, Mike Groom and a separate group led by Scott Fischer found Beck. However, Mike led a splinter group who decided to try and find the High Camp - and they did. But they knew there was little chance of the rest of the group surviving. In a life-saving effort, a Russian, Anatoli Boukreev, decided to find the rest of the group. He found Beck and announced him dead - Stuart Hutchison and three Sherpas found him again the next day and corroborated this.

On his return to the camp he heard people marvelling over the fact there was a dead guy in Scott Fischers tent, as per D Magazine. Beck wrote in his memoir My Journey Home From Everest: Nearly everyone packed up to break camp at daybreak, and they did so very quietly. I didnt hear any of it. Besides myself, only Jon Krakauer. and Todd Burleson and Pete Athans. who were guiding the same expedition together, remained in camp.

['Everest' a major motion picture was made out of Beck's story ]

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'Everest' a major motion picture was made out of Beck's story (Image: WireImage)

Hello! I yelled. Anybody out there Krakauer. who was checking out each tent before he headed down the mountain stuck his head inside. When he saw me. Jons jaw dropped right down to the middle of his chest. I was supposed to be dead. Conventional wisdom holds that in hypothermia cases, even so remarkable a resurrection as mine merely delays the inevitable, When they called Peach and told her that I was not as dead as they thought I was - but I was critically injured - they were trying not to give her false hope.

His wife Peaches coordinated with Stuart Hutchison, John Taske and three Sherpas to get a helicopter to a never-before-seen altitude to get her husband home. Beck underwent surgery to save his hand, which had become a set of dead puppets. A hand surgeon, Mike Doyle, told Beck: 1 dont know how to tell you this, but you dont have any blood supply in your right hand. It stops above the wrist. And you have very little in your left hand. I dont know what to say.

[Eight climbers died during the May 1996 storm ]

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Eight climbers died during the May 1996 blizzard(Image: Getty Images)

They also grew Beck a new nose. He wrote: A vaguely nosey-looking object was cut out of the skin in the center of my forehead. Then, using pieces of cartilage from my ears and skin from my neck, they shaped my new nose to give the whole thing some structure, and got it growing, upside down, on my forehead.

However, the near-death experience changed Becks life for the better and he has said he wouldnt change it. He wrote: For the first lime in my life I have peace. I no longer seek to define myself externally, through goals and achievements and material possessions. For the first time in my life, Im comfortable inside my own skin.

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