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Michael Horatio Westmacott (12 April 1925, Babbacombe, Torquay, Devon – 20 June 2012, Grange-over-sands, Cumbria) was a prominent British mountaineer.[1]
Westmacott was a member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition led by John Hunt. He was educated at Radley College , Radley near Abingdon, Oxfordshire and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he read mathematics. While Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were making the first ascent of the 8850m Everest mountain in 1953, it was Westmacott and his team of Sherpas who kept open the expedition's vital line of supply and return.
During World War II, Westmacott served as an officer with the British Indian Army Corps of Engineers in Burma. He was a junior officer in King George V's Bengal Sappers and Miners, building bridges in Burma with 150 Japanese PoWs under his command.
He climbed extensively in the United Kingdom and the European Alps prior to Everest, and later opened new routes in Peru, the Hindu Kush and Alaska. He became president of the Alpine Club and the Climbers Club and worked for Shell International as an economist after he ceased serious mountaineering.
Family
Michael was the oldest of three children of Horatio Westmacott, who served in the Royal Navy, and Irene Mary Juanita Gwennap Moore. His sisters were Monica Mary Westmacott and Catherine Penelope Westmacott. He married Sally, Sarah Ellen Seddon in 1957.
References
[edit]- ^ Ed Douglas (22 June 2012). "Mike Westmacott obituary". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
External links
[edit]- "Mike Westmacott". The Telegraph. London. 24 June 2012. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
- "Everest expedition climber Westmacott dies, aged 87". BBC News. 22 June 2012. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
- "On this day : 1953: Everest stories - Mike Westmacott". BBC. 29 May 1953. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
- Royal Geographical Society Archived 31 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine
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