BRITAIN'S top high-altitude mountaineer Alan Hinkes has described his narrow escape from a lonely death after he plunged into a crevasse close to the summit of the world's third highest peak.

And, although he still finds the experience traumatic to talk about, he has vowed to "get to grips" again with the 8,286m peak in his bid to become the first Briton to climb the world's 14 highest peaks.

Hinkes was speaking yesterday at the offices of his sponsor Berghaus, in Sunderland, after returning from his ill-fated assault on Kangchenjunga, in the Himalayas - the 12th on his list.

He had been descending after being forced by exhaustion and bad weather to abort the solo climb, just 600 metres from the peak.

He said: "I expected to come across a crevasse at that spot.

"But when the snow bridge collapsed and the ground opened up beneath me, it was like the trapdoor opening on the gallows."

Hinkes broke his elbow when he put his arm out to arrest his fall down a 60m chasm and managed to scramble out. With only one useful arm, he then faced a freezing and arduous return.

He said: "I was beyond being scared. I realised I just had to keep going. There was no one else on the mountain.

"The snow was two metres deep all the way down and it was a complete whiteout. I couldn't see where I was going.

"I spent the next two and a half days struggling down 3,000 metres, sometimes on my hands and knees."

By the time he reached base camp he had lost about a stone and a half in weight, but still faced a further ten-day trek back to Kathmandu.

The accident is not the first time Hinkes has come to grief on a Himalayan mountain.

Rapidly becoming known as the unluckiest living mountaineer, he had to call off his assault on the Pakistani peak of Nanga Parbat three years ago when he slipped a disc after sneezing on dust from a chapatti.

On a previous expedition to Makalu in Nepal, he slipped on a leaf on a muddy path while approaching the mountains, impaling his thigh on a bamboo and then having to be rescued by helicopter.

Northallerton-born Hinkes, whose latest expedition fell foul of an early monsoon, may try one of the other two remaining peaks in September, before returning to Kangchenjunga.