THE four climbers who stumbled on back-from-the-dead mountaineer Lincoln Hall on Mount Everest have told of their disbelief at finding the disoriented 50-

year-old half naked and sitting next to a 3050m drop.

The men were making their way to the summit on the morning of May 26 when sunrise “brought with it something none of us could have expected to see”.

“Sitting to our left, about two feet from a 10,000-foot drop, was a man. Not dead, not sleeping, but sitting cross-legged, in the process of changing his shirt.”

The climbers — Myles Osborne, Dan Mazur, Andrew Brashe and Jangbu Sherpa — reported that Hall had unzipped his suit to his waist and had pulled his arms out of the sleeves. He was also without a hat, gloves, sunglasses or water bottle.

“I imagine you’re surprised to see me here,” Hall said to the men.

According to the report, posted by Osborne on the website everestnews.com last night, Hall’s survival was barely believable. “This was a moment of total disbelief to us all. Here was a gentleman, apparently lucid, who had spent the night at 8600m, without proper equipment and barely clothed. And alive.”

Hall introduced himself to the men but was in a fragile state. “It became clear that he was extremely close to death,” the website report said. “His fingers looked like 10 waxy candle sticks. His head wagged and jerked around, his beady eyes were embedded in a frosty face. He seemed to be in deep distress and kept trying to pull himself closer to the edge of the cornice to the point that we physically held him back and eventually anchored him to the snow.

“Lincoln later told us that he believed he was on a boat, not a mountain, and that he wanted to be overboard … that is, 10,000ft down the Kangshung face.”

After feeding Hall and providing him with oxygen and extra clothing, Mazur radioed base camp with the news that he was alive. Hall’s wife, Barbara Scanlan, and his two teenage sons had only hours earlier been phoned at their Blue Mountains home and told he had died.

Osborne said that although his party was disappointed to have had to abandon their push to the summit, it was nothing compared with the act of saving someone’s life. And he criticised two Italian climbers who failed to help Hall.

“How in any way is a summit more important than saving a life? And the answer is that it isn’t. But in this skewed world up here, sometimes you can be fooled into thinking that it might be,” he told everestnews.com.

Hall continued to receive medical attention in Kathmandu yesterday for frostbite and the residual effects of altitude sickness.

He now looks set to cash in on his remarkable ordeal, with negotiations under way for a media deal believed to be worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Opinion — Page 12