George Christopher Band OBE (born 1929) is a British mountaineer. Having started climbing in the Alps while a student at Queens' College, Cambridge, he was the youngest person on the 1953 Everest expedition where Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful ascent of the peak. Two years later, in 1955, he and Joe Brown became the first climbers to ascend Kangchenjunga. Out of respect for the religious feelings of the people of Nepal and Sikkim, they stopped about ten feet below the actual summit.
Following these early mountaineering successes, George Band spent most of his professional life in oil and gas exploration. In 2005, as a still-active 76 year old, Band made the trek to the south-west Base Camp of Kangchenjunga in Nepal. George Band has been president of the Alpine Club and the British Mountaineering Council, and still travels around the world. He has written the books, Road to Rakaposhi and in 2003, Everest 50 Years on Top of the World (the official history - Mount Everest Foundation, Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club). In 2007 he wrote " Summit", a book celebrating 150 years of the Alpine Club. George is currently Chairman of the Himalayan Trust (UK).
Band is an Appeal Patron for BSES Expeditions, a youth development charity that operates challenging scientific research expeditions to remote wilderness environments
Band was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.[1]
Footnotes
- ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 58929, p. 9, 31 December 2008.
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