If your brain is on hiatus, no amount of technology will save you, or get you a rescue more quickly, no matter if you're in wilderness or not.
Well said.
To give an example from a little higher, my friend Bob S developed early HACE on Kili. It is a simple trail but he could not stay on it, he seemed coherent but just kept veering to the right - had to be escorted down where he recovered.
Ataxia (unstable/wobbly gait/balance) is considered a reliable sign of HACE, a life-threatening complication of AMS. It is a rare diagnosis on a mountain the height of Whitney, but possible. Ataxia it is said to be a
sine qua non - an essential manifestation that by itself highly suggests the diagnosis. Although HACE can develop rapidly in just hours, usually it is over days or weeks and higher up, and usually by the time ataxia shows up, earlier signs have been missed, underestimated, or ignored by the climber and those around him.
The earliest symptoms of HACE and HAPE, for even the most experienced climber, can be confused with the usual discomforts of acclimatization, and a misunderstanding can be fatal. Anatoli Boukreev,
The Climb, page 78
We do not know if the unfortunate man in our case here may have had HACE, but just any degree of AMS can make you feel so bad that you get Mountaineer's Foot - can't put one in front of the other (or in the right place). For whatever reason out of many; AMS, non-AMS illness or fatigue, simple fall, whatever it was, his walk in the sky became his last. Rest in Peace.
