This is the moment a man who fell while hiking in the mountain and survived a freezing night in a crevasse is brought to safety.

The 47-year-old Giorgio De Bona said that he was so deep in the hole that rescuers in a helicopter that flew overhead had several times missed him until finally after 24-hours later they saw him waving.

He was then rescued after the accident which happened when he had been hiking in the Belluno area in northern Italy on 19th December.

His family raised the alarm when he did not come back and a team went there to search for him.

A helicopter and about sixty people were present for the rescue as well as around thirty friends of Sergio.

Sergio told local media: “I fell at a certain point without being able to do anything, I was upside down at the end of a further drop and in a narrow place, wedged in the rock”

As he had also had training himself in mountain rescue he was able to get to a safer area in the crevasse where he kept moving and set an alarm to go off every 30 minutes and make sure he did not sleep while waiting for help.

As part of his psychological fight to stay alive, he was sending messages to his wife even though he had no network.

On Sunday morning, his rescue finally began. Sergio added: “I raised my arms when I saw a helicopter overhead, I waved to them and they saw me.”

He was taken to hospital and was treated for trauma to the shoulder.