BECKY Bellworthy knows how lucky she is to be alive.

The Hampshire student made it safely up and down Mount Everest – the highest mountain in the world – on the same night that it claimed four lives.

Becky, who became briefly the youngest British woman to scale the mountain, knows how easily it could have been her.

The 20-year-old said she believed her team’s decision to leave three hours earlier than the standard time had helped them beat queues of people on the mountain and avoid delays which can lead to oxygen running out.

She said such decisions could have been the difference between life and death as those who left hours later perished.

Becky told how she had climbed for ten hours – eight of which were in the dark – and in temperatures of -30C (-22F), with a severe wind on the final stretch to the summit.

At one point she negotiated a narrow ridge with a three-mile drop on one side and a two-mile drop on the other before finally reaching the top, 29,029ft above sea level.

“I just feel very fortunate to get the opportunity,” said the 20-year-old, of Five Elms Drive, Romsey.

“It’s something that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”

She was able to spend 15 minutes there before it became too cold.

“I thought I’d break down in tears, but I was far too scared to be emotional,” she added.

“The whole way down I was thinking ‘Don’t fall, don’t fall’.”

It took five days to get from the base camp to the summit and another two to get down, but the whole expedition lasted two months, most of which was spent acclimatising.

Because of the altitude she spent the final two days of the ascent with an oxygen mask on, carrying a four-litre oxygen cylinder, describing the experience as “like having lead weights attached to your legs and trying to run up a hill while breathing through a straw”.

However, Becky said the biggest test was psychological.

She suffered only minor frostbite to her feet, but took several days to recover from the ordeal.

Fatalities Becky said she had not been surprised there were fatalities, as 150 people were all bidding to reach the top.

At times on the ascent and descent people had to queue one behind the other, sometimes waiting for hours.

Becky only learned the following day that the Himalayan peak had claimed four lives.

“It’s pretty harrowing because it could have been anyone really, but equally it’s expected, it happens every year and you know you are in the same predicament and it could happen to you,” said Becky.

“Everyone feels hugely fortunate that luck was in their favour.”

Becky passed several bodies on the way up, which she described as piles of clothes.

She said her friend Leanna Shuttleworth, who took over the mantle as the youngest woman to climb Everest from Becky 24 hours later, “was literally stepping over bodies from the night before”.

She was told they found a man still alive on the mountain but had to go past him and when they came down he was dead – it would be difficult to bring someone injured down the mountain.

On scaling Everest, she said: “I wouldn’t say I have conquered it. You wait until it lets you crawl up the side of it, you sneak to the top and get down as fast as you can. You are very much at the mountain’s mercy.”

The first-year medical student was yesterday already back to her studies at Southampton University after returning home on Sunday to be reunited with mum Anne and dad Eric.

Fortunately she suffered none of the setbacks from her attempt last year, which saw her taken off the mountain suffering from altitude sickness, with initial but unfounded fears she had had a stroke. Next she hopes to swim the English Channel.

Becky’s challenge is raising money for the charity Women for Women, which helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives.