Everest Survivor In 'Amazing Shape'

An Australian climber who was left for dead on the slopes of Mount Everest but later survived has been rescued from the mountain and is in "amazing shape," his spokesman said Tuesday.

Lincoln Hall, 50, was driven to the Nepalese capital of Katmandu on Tuesday from the base camp in Tibet, China, and is being treated at a clinic, his spokesman Simon Balderstone said.

Hall had been left by members of his team near the summit who thought he had died but was later found alive by another team of climbers and helped down the mountain.

"Doctors say for what he has been through he is in amazing shape," said Balderstone, who flew to Katmandu with Hall's wife, Barbara.

Hall was being treated at a travel medicine clinic in Katmandu for frostbite to his fingers, thumb and toes, slight pulmonary edema and chest infection.

"He's doing much better than the days before," Harry Kiekstra, an Everest expedition leader who was on the mountain with Hall said on CBS News' The Early Show.

"He was left exposed to the elements for 23 hours. He was at 28,000 feet. It really is a miracle that he's alive at all," Keikstra said.

Balderstone said it could be a few days before Hall can fly back home to Australia.

Balderstone said Hall expressed no resentment about being left on the mountain and said the climber was in good spirits.

"We shared a joke or two, which is always a good sign," he said.

Hall fell ill around the 28,543-foot point, just below the summit where oxygen levels are so low they cannot sustain life for long.

His two Sherpa guides tried to help him down, but were eventually forced to leave him in order to save themselves, and Hall was then declared dead.

"This is a death zone. They tried all they could do," Kiekstra told CBS News. The sherpas left him because they almost killed themselves by trying to go back after Hall, "and there was no expectancy that he would survive even if he was alive at all," Kikstra added.

Hall, who had been on a Russian-led expedition, made it to the summit of Everest but grew gravely ill from oxygen deprivation during his descent.

The morning after his guides were forced to abandon him, other climbers found him alive, prompting a rescue team to help bring Hall to safety.