Just days after fellow Australian climber Bob Killip was among a party criticised by Everest’s first conqueror, Edmund Hillary, for leaving an injured climber on the mountain, Hall was abandoned by two sherpas after becoming disoriented and falling to the ground during his descent from the world’s highest summit.

Friends had started to mourn the 50-year-old’s death yesterday, but in the early evening a report on the website MountEverest.net said: “Lincoln Hall is still alive”. “This morning (US climber) Dan Mazur on a summit push discovered the still alive Lincoln Hall at thesecond step and gave him hot tea and oxygen and he was able to use the radio to call his expedition,” Mazur’s expedition director, Duncan Chessell, said.

British climber David Sharp was left to die on the mountain this week when Killip’s team — which included Kiwi double amputee Mark Inglis — did not have the capacity or resources to carry him out. “When we discovered David on the way down, we did everything we could to get him up on his feet but his legs were frozen from the knees down and his arms frozen from the elbows down,” Killip toldThe Australian yesterday.

A DRAMATIC rescue operation was under way last night for veteran Australian climber Lincoln Hall, who was left for dead after finally conquering Mount Everest.

Just days after fellow Australian climber Bob Killip was among a party criticised by Everest’s first conqueror, Edmund Hillary, for leaving an injured climber on the mountain, Hall was abandoned by two sherpas after becoming disoriented and falling to the ground during his descent from the world’s highest summit.

Initial reports from Hall’s team leader, Russian Alexander Abramov, said the sherpas lowered the Australian from 8700m to 8600m over nine hours, “but at 19.20 (Thursday) he was pronounced dead”.

“The probable reason: brain cerebral edema, pulmonary edema (an acute form of altitude sickness),” the website EverestNews.com yesterday reported Abramov as saying.

Abramov then ordered the sherpas, who were beginning to suffer from snow blindness, to go down the mountain, leaving Hall where he was.

Friends had started to mourn the 50-year-old’s death yesterday, but in the early evening a report on the website MountEverest.net said: “Lincoln Hall is still alive”. “This morning (US climber) Dan Mazur on a summit push discovered the still alive Lincoln Hall at thesecond step and gave him hot tea and oxygen and he was able to use the radio to call his expedition,” Mazur’s expedition director, Duncan Chessell, said.

Chessell told ABC TV last night that Hall was in a “perilous condition” and might not make the night. He was still at 8300m and two to three days away from base camp at 5380m.

However, in a posting on his website at 9.15pm (AEST), Abramov said it was hoped Hall would be at a specially

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set-up field hospital at North Col at 7000m by early today, and would begin at dawn the descent to advance camp, at 6000m.

Abramov said Mazur had found Hall “motionless”, but showing “weak attributes of life” at 8700m.

Three sherpas sent by Abramov reached Hall by 11am local time (3pm AEST) administering liquid, oxygen and medicine before moving him down ahead of a rescue group of 13 sherpas from North Col.

“Lincoln has a rest, drinks tea. He in consciousness. However, not completely understands what happens … (but) could not move independently,” Abramov said. “If weather will allow, rescue will proceed all night.”

Chessell told The Weekend Australian last night that Hall, married to Barbara Scanlan and with two teenage sons, Dylan and Dorje, was still in grave danger.

“It’s premature to write a story he’s dead and premature to write a story he’s been saved.”

Chessell said people had survived after being left for dead on the world’s highest peak, most notably American climber Beck Weathers in 1996.

Another climber saw Weathers up to his waist in snow at 8200m and assumed he was dead. He woke up next morning and, despite horrendous frostbite and temporary blindness, walked off the mountain.

But Glen Nash, who worked alongside Hall at the Australian School of Mountaineering in Katoomba, west of Sydney, said that while his friend of 25 years was “a fighter, I’ve been to Everest twice and I know that if you’re missing overnight, they just write you off”.

“Surviving a night on the mountain is basically unheard of. If they do get him down, then he has come back from the dead.”

British climber David Sharp was left to die on the mountain this week when Killip’s team — which included Kiwi double amputee Mark Inglis — did not have the capacity or resources to carry him out. “When we discovered David on the way down, we did everything we could to get him up on his feet but his legs were frozen from the knees down and his arms frozen from the elbows down,” Killip toldThe Australian yesterday.

“That’s why David was totally unretrievable. He had been in those conditions for 24 hours and was frozen. If you can’t get to your feet, you can’t get down.”

For Hall, the Everest climb began as a chance for redemption. He had been close once before, in 1984 as part of the first all-Australian team to make the climb. While some in the group reached the summit, frostbite caused him to fall a few hundred metres short.

In his book on the expedition, White Limbo, he wrote of his disappointment that he would never see the summit panorama. But he said no view was worth the price.

This time, however, he would not be denied. The rest of his Australian group, including cinematographer Michael Dillon, veteran climber Richard Harris and his 15-year-old son Christopher — attempting to become the youngest person to scale the peak — had turned around days earlier, with Christopher suffering severe respiratory problems.

But Hall pressed on up the north side of the mountain, accompanied by two sherpas. Elated calls from his radio to friends on Thursday at 9am confirmed he had stood at the top of the world.

There have been 14 deaths on Everest this year, with sight- impaired German Thomas Weber dying on Thursday just 50m from the top, in Hall’s sight as he reached the peak.

Just before Hall made the final tilt for the top, Weber completely lost his sight in the difficult conditions and was forced to abandon his attempt.

Shortly after noon Weber collapsed. “I have died,” he said, before losing consciousness.

Close friend and Australian Himalayan Foundation chairman Simon Balderstone said last night that reports Hall was still alive remained unconfirmed.

“He was getting slower and slower as he headed down. He was becoming irrational. He could go no further. Two sherpas stayed with him and he died there,” he said. “We think he went into a coma and died.

“He reminds us all to follow our dreams and take the calculated risk. His was a noble endeavour and he conducted it with great integrity. He had this ongoing dream, this inspiration, to climb the mountain.”

The first Australian to climb Mount Everest, Tim Macartney- Snape, who was one of those Hall watched reach the summit in 1984, described Hall as a “very passionate climber”.

“He was a very accomplished climber … with a terrific sense of humour,” Macartney-Snape said. “He was a good person to be on an expedition with — he was very tough but could see the funny side of things.

“That is what you want in an expedition partner.”