She spoke to him briefly last night when he called from a camp set up on Mt Everest. "I'm at Camp 4. I made it. I did it," he told her before the line went dead.

She said Inglis had always dreamed of reaching the summit. "It's just something that he's always had at the back of his mind and something that he thought he could always achieve." Sir Edmund Hillary told smh.com.au he was very impressed by Inglis's achievement.

"'Quite obviously a remarkable effort to actually climb Mt Everest with a couple of artificial legs. And I have to admit that I admire his considerable effort ... he's done a pretty good job," said the 86-year-old, who together with Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit 52 years ago. Matthew Faid, a friend of Inglis and sponsor of his expedition, said the climber was "an awesome guy. He puts you to shame. He humbles you to be a human.

"It's just amazing what he does. He doesn't have an attitude that says 'Why not?' He says, 'How?"' Inglis had set out in his bid on his prosthetic legs with an early morning start in perfect weather from Camp 4 - within 450 metres of the summit, Anne Inglis said earlier from her home on South Island. Mount Everest is 8,850 metres high and Inglis has spent a gruelling 40 days on the mountain.

The original expedition party split into two groups with four members of the first group reaching the top earlier in the day, Anne Inglis said. Inglis and his group of 20, including Sherpa guides, were in the second party.

The climber had both legs severed just below the knees after suffering frostbite in 1982 when he was trapped by storms climbing New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook. Inglis was a mountain guide when he and climbing companion Phil Doole were found barely alive two weeks after they were forced into an ice cave high on Mount Cook by storm and blizzard conditions. A wine maker and father of three, Inglis climbed 8,201-metre Mount Cho Oyu in Tibet in 2004.

His prosthetic legs had been no trouble on the climb, his wife said, despite one of the carbon-fibre prosthetic limbs snapping in a fall at an altitude of about 6,400 metres. It was repaired with spare equipment. The expedition is expected to raise several hundred thousand dollars for a Cambodian centre that provides rehabilitation for landmine amputees, polio victims and other disabled people.

with AP