You're thinking of the Himalaya above a certain height. There it's impossible to rescue.

On K2, multiple knowledged people have said in interviews that usually you would only need to give him oxygen and then he should have been able to descend himself. Eyewitnesses say that to their knowledge he couldnt move by himself anymore. But those eyewitnesses also said he was dead within an hour, which has been proven to be wrong.

The critical thing here is that no one was asked for help. The crews trying to summit simply decided to continue upwards, and no one tried to bring him down the mountain or ask for help from the basecamp.