Those trapped at the camps had descended to the icefall to examine the possibility of fixing it with ropes and other equipment dropped by helicopter on Sunday, but it was deemed too hazardous.
He offered to help the crew finish fixing the ropes.
The Brits are also the first foreign climbers to reach the 8,850 metre (29,035ft) peak this season, after a group of Sherpa guides fixing ropes got to the top on Wednesday.
Teams of Sherpas busied themselves fixing ropes and ladders from the entrance to the Icefall a kind of frozen 2,000-foot 2,000-foot–and tidalall the wave andhe summithen
On the way up, Steck, the Italian climber Simone Moro and the photographer Jon Griffith passed a group of Sherpas who were fixing ropes low on Mount Everest.
He and his climbing partner that year, the Italian Simone Moro, had got into a dispute with a group of Sherpas who were fixing ropes on the Lhotse Face and felt that the climbers were endangering them.
In 1979 a Yugoslav team, led by Tone Skarja, made the first ascent, fixing ropes to Camp V at an elevation of about 26,750 feet (8,120 metres), with one rope fixed farther up a steep rock chimney (a crack or gorge large enough to permit a climber to enter).
This lightweight approach precludes fixing miles of safety ropes and carrying heavy supplemental oxygen.
The First World War in the Dolomites saw the first widespread use of via ferrata – a system of fixed ladders and ropes built into the rock – to aid the movement of troops.
The approach they used, without fixing ropes or camps and without the support of others, was the purest possible – known as alpine style.
