A BRITISH climber has been rescued from the world’s third highest mountain as a French climber died during the expedition.

Adrian Michael Hayes was returning from the summit of Mt Kanchenjunga in the Nepalese Himalayas on May 10 when he began to suffer from severe altitude sickness.

Hayes was rescued by Sherpas and brought down to the high-altitude Camp IV as rescuers wait for better weather to evacuate him, the Himalayan Times reports.

Meanwhile a French climber on the same expedition has died.

Margareta Morin, 63, tragically died at 7,800m (25,590ft) on her way up the mountain as she couldn’t be rescued during severe weather.

Yogendra Tamang of Peak 15 Adventure said conversations were now underway with Morin’s insurance company to bring her body back down.

Morin reportedly did not have any prior experience on climbing mountains over 8000m (26,246ft).

Kangchenjunga’s summit is 8,500m (27,887ft) high and is found some 77miles east of Mt Everest.

Some 10 climbers, including Hayes, managed to reach the peak on Saturday out of a team of 13, consisting of six foreign climbers and seven Nepalese Sherpas.

Reports said they managed to reach the summit in difficult conditions.

The expedition also consisted of a Kosovan, two Iranians, and an Emirati.

The team reached the summit at 2.15pm after a 20-hour climb from Camp IV that began the previous evening.

The climb was the first of the season to reach the summit of the world’s third highest mountain.

Another team of Sherpas had gone ahead of them and had prepared the icy way for the climbers.

It comes after Brit hiker Tom Howard died after being hit by a falling boulder on a Himalayan trek, an inquest found.

Howard, 27, a data analyst from Weybridge, Surrey, was hiking the snow-covered Triund Trek in India with his pal when the disaster struck.