The BBC's Alva McNichol: "It was an extremely difficult and dangerous operation"

Steve Ball suffered severe frostbite and a badly broken leg after being stranded on Mount McKinley.

A nursing supervisor at Providence Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, said he had undergone surgery to reset his leg.

She said: "He is still in a serious condition. Frostbite takes a long time to heal. It can take weeks. We have to wait to see if the circulation comes back."

It was too early to speculate on whether the leg might need to be amputated, she said.

Staff had the hospital had said on Monday morning that the operation had gone "just fine", but that Mr Ball would need further surgery when the frostbite had subsided.

Plucked from mountain

"We were simply trying to get his leg realigned for the moment", the nursing supervisor said.

Mr Ball's fellow climbers Nigel Vardy and Antony Hollinshead were both said to be in a fair condition. They are being treated for frostbite and are still being sedated.

The three men were plucked from the mountain after freezing temperatures and gale force winds trapped them just a few hundred feet below the summit.

Sangeeta Mhaiskar reports: The third climber was found by rescuers after going missing for more than 28 hours"

Mr Vardy, 29, from Derbyshire, and Mr Hollinshead, 33, from Shropshire, were the first to be rescued after they were injured in a fall in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Mr Ball, 42, an experienced climber from Stoke-on-Trent, is thought to have fallen after setting out for help for his friends.

He was finally winched to safety on a 100ft rope below a helicopter early on Saturday.

A hospital spokeswoman, speaking earlier about Mr Ball's condition, said: "His hands, arms, nose, feet and legs all have severe frostbite and the injury to his leg is an open fracture, so there is potential for infection.

"You can't clearly tell where the divide is between the healthy tissue and the frostbite tissue that is not going to recover."

The hospital's nursing supervisor said Mr Ball's wife Linda had spent Sunday at his bedside, and was staying in a hospitality suite next to the hospital.

Antony Hollinshead is suffering from frostbite

She said the father-of-three was conscious, and had been asking about his two fellow climbers, although she could not confirm he had spoken to them.

Jane Tranel, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service in Alaska, said the trio had become stranded 19,500ft (5,900m) up in temperatures below minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Mr Hollinshead is suffering from frostbite to his fingers and toes, and Mr Vardy has a frostbitten face, body and fingers.

Mr Hollinshead said the weather on Mount McKinley, which is 20,320ft (6,194m) high, was the worst he had ever encountered.

"We managed to get somewhere out of the wind in a hole in the ice. We climbed in and then built a snow wall around ourselves," he said.

Repeat of last summer's incident

Mr Hollinshead, an engineer with a company in Birmingham, said they took a joint decision to send Mr Ball for help because he was the fittest.

The pair were only 300 feet from the spot where two British soldiers got into difficulties last summer.

Sergeant Martin Spooner and Corporal Carl Bougard were part of a six-strong British Army team who became stranded on Mt McKinley. Fifteen climbers have died on the mountain since 1972.

This week's incident is believed to have started when Mr Vardy slipped after losing his grip due to frostbite. They fell together because they were roped to each other.