Mountaineer George joins an elite BandMountaineer George joins an elite Band

Gangtok,31 January
IT HAS been a long time coming, but the remarkable life of a north Hampshire mountaineer is finally receiving the recognition it deserves.

George Band, who turns 80 on Monday, was in the party that first conquered Mount Everest.

And with colleague Joe Brown, he was the first to scale the world’s third highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, which is considered a more difficult climb.

Through his career in the oil industry, he played a considerable part in the development of the British North Sea oil fields.

And now he is not resting on his laurels as he leads fundraising efforts that are helping to transform the lives of the people in the Himalayan Mountains.

As previously reported in The Gazette, Mr Band was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Years honours for his charity work and mountaineering feats.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Cheshire, he first became interested in mountaineering while on holiday in North Wales as a teenager.

He said: “I saw these guys on ropes tackling a face, and I thought ‘gosh, that looks exciting. I would like to try some of that’.”

A National Service posting in Yorkshire gave him a chance. He then went on to join Cambridge University’s mountaineering club and spent three summers climbing in the Alps.

He applied for the Everest expedition and was one of two climbers with no Himalayan experience picked for the attempt.

Mr Band was a member of a small advance party that found a way through the Khumbu Icefall to enable the team to establish the camps higher up Everest from which Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay mounted their assault on the peak.

“It’s like a football team. One or two people can score the goals but they can only do it if the whole team is backing them up,” he said.

Two years later, he and Manchester builder Joe Brown became the meta-phorical goal-scorers when they became the first to the top of Kangchenjunga – a 28,169ft peak.

The duo were part of a reconnaissance party aiming for a feature called the Great Shelf.

“If we made that, it would be easier for a couple of thousand feet and it wasn’t far from the summit. We thought if can get there, we can have a bash,” he said. “We took sufficient oxygen to launch an attempt and we succeeded – which was very satisfying.”

They stopped a few feet below the summit to honour an agreement with the people of Sikkim, who regarded it as sacred.

Mr Band said: “Kangchenjunga was my best mountaineering feat because it’s considered more difficult than Everest.”

After Kangchenjunga, Mr Band undertook several more mountaineering expeditions but mainly focused on a career in the oil industry.

But he carried on climbing in his spare time and went on to head up several mountaineering organisations, including being president of the Alpine Club.

In 2003, he took over chairmanship of the Himalayan Trust UK, from another veteran of the Everest expedition, George Lowe.

“It was the least I could do,” said Mr Band. “We were an extended family and we are here to improve the lot of the Sherpas.”

The charity has built schools, trained the people to run them, and has also provided two hospitals and 13 health clinics.

Following its success in the area around Everest, the UK trust has extended its work to new regions, including the Kangchenjunga region.

Now, the fundraising efforts and a lifetime of achievement have brought Mr Band some well-earned official recognition with the award of the OBE.

“It was a pleasant surprise to suddenly find that your efforts have been recognised,” he said.