2010 AG Awards Lifetime of Adventure: Lincoln Hall
LINCOLN HALL IS ONE of Australia’s best-known adventures. His passion for climbing began with rock climbing when he was 15. He climbed his first mountains in New Zealand, aged 20, and has climbed more than 40 mountains in seven countries. He has trekked, paddled and climbed in the remotest locations in the world and continues to promote adventure travel by working as a specialist tour guide.
As chief organiser of the First Australian Everest Expedition in 1984, Lincoln played a key role in the oxygen-less ascent of the new route on Everest’s North Face. His first book, White Limbo, tells the story of this pioneering expedition. In 1987 Lincoln was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to mountaineering.
In 2006 he finally reached the summit of Everest, but collapsed high on the mountain in the so-called death zone. Despite efforts from his climbing team, he was declared dead a few hundred metres below the summit and his body was left on the mountain. Miraculously, Lincoln survived the night, living to tell his inspirational story. Dead Lucky, published in 2007, was his own account of his climb during a tragic season in which eleven people perished on the world’s highest mountain.
In 2006 Lincoln was appointed to the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area Advisory Committee, working to enhance the conservation and management of the World Heritage Area. He is also a founding director of the Australian Himalayan Foundation, an organisation dedicated to improving the lives of the people of the Himalaya. Lincoln is an Ambassador for The Thin Green Line Foundation and the Patron of disaster relief organisation Shelter Box Australia
His most recent book, Alive in the Death Zone, won the CBCA Information Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Patricia Wrightson Prize in the 2010 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.
“I’ve never been comfortable receiving awards. But I’ve come to appreciate them. It gives the adventure world recognition; you can’t help but realise what an amazing world we live in. It’s really what we do live for.”
