HE HAD to be hauled out of a crevasse after trapping his leg, and watched helplessly as two fellow climbers were rushed to hospital.

But 52-year-old Benji Ming, from Oxford, has proved his mettle by becoming one of the first people to climb Peak 6184 in the Indian Himalayas.

Mr Ming was one of four people who were the first to reach the 20,289ft mountain’s summit last month.

It was Mr Ming’s second assault on the mountain – an expedition last year was forced to turn back after heavy snowfall.

This time the actor and tree surgeon made it successfully to the top of the mountain — which he has co-named Mount Saraswati after the Hindu Goddess of knowledge.

Mr Ming, who lives on a canal boat in North Oxford and is unmarried, said: “It was just fantastic.

“I don’t know how to describe the feeling when I realised we were going to make it to the top. When I got there, I had tears in my eyes. It was brilliant.”

Originally nine people, two expedition leaders and a number of porters set out on the trip, but numbers dwindled as the journey went on.

One woman suffered a cerebral oedema (swelling of the brain), as a result of the altitude when she reached base camp at 14,100ft. After a month-long expedition, six climbers took on a sheer face of snow and ice in pitch darkness.

Four reached the summit following hours of climbing with ice axes.

Mr Ming said: “It looked nigh on impassable.

“Although I had done a lot of climbing, I hadn’t done a lot of that kind of technical climbing so I was operating on the edge of what I knew all the time.”

When Mr Ming reached the summit he celebrated by being photographed in his underpants.

Peak 6184 was the sixth mountain on which Mr Ming has been photographed wearing his “summit pants”.

The trip was a commercial expedition and Mr Ming paid about £2,600 to take part. He also provided and carried about £500 of his own equipment.

Mr Ming, who also holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person to navigate every connected waterway in Britain, said the climb had given him a taste for unconquered mountains.

He said: “There are some in the former Soviet Union, so maybe I could tackle one of them.”