Canadian Andrew Brash had the summit in sight and was just 200 metres away from the top of the world's highest mountain, when he ditched his dream of conquering Mount Everest so he could help rescue a fellow climber from Australia.

That decision earned Brash, a Calgary resident, worldwide acclaim. But to hear him tell it there was really no choice.

"When I saw Lincoln sitting on the ridge, I knew our trip was over," he said. "I knew what we were going to do."

Brash and his team stopped when they found fellow mountaineer Lincoln Hall with no gloves and no hat, just sitting on the edge of a cliff in a thin shirt.  His Sherpas left him for dead the night before, thinking he had died from brain swelling on his way down from the summit.

At first, Brash thought Hall would surely die: his hands were white and he kept trying to jump over the side of a huge precipice.

"He would lunge for the base, he wanted to jump off it. We had to actually pin him down and hold on to him."

The incident came just days after about 40 climbers offered no help to a British mountaineer dying on the side of Everest.

Brash still doesn't understand why that happened. "I find it hard to believe no one stopped." 

It's clear Hall would have died on the side of Everest if not for the help of strangers.

Brash says he had to help, even though he was so close to the top.

"We really felt like we would have got to the top that day, but then we met Lincoln. But that's OK, Lincoln has got a family, and I'm glad he's still around."