A doctor has been charged with three crimes after he allegedly faked hypothermia to try and summon a helicopter to collect him while he climbed Denali.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Fairbanks, Alaska federal court, Dr. Jason Lance, an Ogden, Utah-based radiologist, is now facing the charges following a May 24 incident that occurred over 17,000 feet up Denali, formerly known as Mt. McKinley. The Alaskan peak is the United States' tallest mountain, with its summit reaching 20,320 feet.
Lance, 47, is said to have tried to hail the chopper while descending from the mountain after giving up on his attempt to reach its peak, and complaining that he lacked the correct equipment to descend. He was accompanied at the time by two friends, Adam Rawski, named in court documents as AR, and another unnamed climber.
After being told by park rangers that the helicopter 'Cannot safely descend,' he wrote back saying: 'Cant decend [sic] safely. Patients in shock. Early hypothermia... Cant you land east of pass?,' according to the complaint seen by the Daily Beast.
On descending to a safe altitude, Lance, who denies the charges against him, and the two climbers he was with were met by park rangers.
The two climbers he was with told rangers that 'neither of them had suffered from any form of medical shock or hypothermia at any point during their ascent or descent contrary to Dr. Lance’s claims to Denali NPS,' according to the complaint.
Pictured: Dr. Jason Lance, an Ogden-based radiologist, is now facing the charges following a May 24 incident that occurred 17,000 feet up Denali, formerly known as Mt. McKinley
'Both [climbers] reported that they spent hours attempting to convince Dr. Lance to rope up and descend with them from 18,200 ft to 17,200 ft high camp after the trio watched A.R. fall. [The climbers] reported that Dr. Lance insisted the three stay put, told [the climbers] that the NPS was going to rescue them, and that the NPS was obligated to do so because ‘we’ve paid our fee.’”
Lance is then said to have hidden himself in a tent and ignored a ranger's orders not to delete messages from a Garmin satellite phone. A subsequent subpoena of the device is said to have revealed a message from Lance saying the real reason he'd summoned the chopper is that he lacked the equipment to get back down the mountain.
The 47-year-old doctor and his 31-year-old friend and climbing partner, identified in the criminal complaint as Adam Rawski, set out from Denali's Camp 3, at 14,200 feet, to try and reach the mountain's summit.
On the day of Lance and his friend's climb, the American Alpine Institute issued a warning describing his intended next stop, Camp 4, as 'very windy and inhospitable place,” and says that 'more than one team has been stuck at 14 [thousand feet] for a week waiting for the wind and weather to abate higher on the mountain.'
This graphic shows where the climb started - Camp III - with the attempt to reach the summit later abandoned
At around 17,200 feet, climbers begin to experience temperatures that drop below -30 degrees Fahrenheit and winds over 70 mph.
The climb from 17,200 feet to the summit, which is another 3,120 feet, and back is extremely difficult, and can take even the most experienced climbers 13-14 hours to complete.
The complaint states that Lance and Rawski, named in documents as AR, were between 18,600 and 19,200 feet when Lance 'observed AR begin to exhibit symptoms of altitude sickness.'
Lance then left him behind with a second pair of climbers after realizing that Rawski was too sick to continue, and took
