Alone in the snow at 8,700m (28,500ft) sat a motionless, ragged figure. He had no hat; his snow jacket was half torn off; his climbing equipment was missing; and frostbite was attacking his face and hands.

“I imagine you are surprised to see me here,” the man whispered as Dan Mazur, 44, bent down to check for signs of life.

The ragged figure was that of Lincoln Hall, the Australian climber pronounced dead by his sherpas and abandoned to the mountain the previous evening. Mr Hall, 50, had collapsed, suffering from altitude sickness, shortly after achieving his lifelong ambition to reach the top of Everest on Thursday morning. His sherpas had battled for nine hours to try to save him but eventually left, believing him to be the eleventh recorded fatality on Everest this grim climbing season.

The mystery is how Mr Hall survived a night alone on Everest without shelter and oxygen, and without, it seems, all of his clothing in the high-death zone where the thin air saps strength and makes breathing extremely difficult.

Mr Mazur gave the first account of the rescue yesterday, relayed by satellite phone from advance base camp on Everest to George Williams, the general manager of EverestNews, the authoritative website.

Mr Williams told The Times: “Lincoln was sitting up when they got to him and then he said, ‘I imagine you are surprised to see me’. That sounds like an Australian guy, don’t it? The bad news is that Dan Mazur says he is in bad shape. Half his clothes were off, a lot of his equipment was gone. He says he had no hat on and his face is going to be a mess.”

Mr Mazur immediately abandoned his ascent and, with his paying client, tended Mr Hall, feeding him hot tea, giving him oxygen and radioing for help.

Myles Osborne, 26, a British postgraduate student from Warsash, Hampshire, was one of four climbers who had paid Mr Mazur $30,000 (£16,200) to act as guide to the summit. His fundraising trip for Naomi House hospice in Sutton Scotney, near Winchester, was cut short by the rescue.

Mr Mazur said that soon afterwards two Italian climbers came past. They did not stop to assist and went on to complete their climb. Mr Mazur and his client stayed with Mr Hall until sherpas and members of other expeditions arrived to assist the stricken climber with a stretcher. He was manoeuvred down the mountain to the North Col at 7,040m (23,000ft), where a Russian doctor began treating him and where he spent the night.

Alexander Abramov, the leader of the Russian expedition that assisted Mr Hall — who is one of Australia’s most experienced climbers — reported over the weekend that he was suffering acute psychosis and disorientation and had initially resisted efforts to help him.

He was believed to be suffering from acute oedema, a frequently fatal swelling of the brain that occurs at extremely high altitudes. Mr Hall, who lost several toes to frostbite on an earlier climb, has severe frostbite to his fingers.

According to Simon Baulderstone, a fellow mountaineer and a close friend of Mr Hall’s family in Sydney, the moun-taineer’s condition has steadily improved since his discovery. Yesterday afternoon he was being ferried on a yak down the 22km (13½ miles) of loose rock and ice to base camp at 5,300m (17,388ft).

Mr Baulderstone said that Mr Hall had spoken by satellite phone to his wife, Barbara, and two teenage sons. He said: “This appears to be an unprecedented effort by a whole lot of expeditions on that mountain to go and get him and bring him down. [But] his family will not celebrate until he’s off the mountain.”

Mr Hall, who is expected to return home by Friday, has served as a director of the Australian Himalayan Foundation and is the author of several books, including White Limbo, in which he recounted he decision to abandon his first attempt on Everest in 1984 when he became ill at 8,300m (27,200ft), leaving his friends to succeed.

He wrote of his decision: “Though I shall never see the summit panorama other than through the eyes of Tim and Greg, I know that no view is worth that price.”

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