Ian Handford: From Torbay cliffs to Everest dreams

The oldest of three children of Naval Commander Horatio Westmacott and Irene Mary Juanita Gwenap Moore, it was not surprising Michael was awarded Horatio as a second Christian name, as one of his two sisters was also awarded Mary from their mother's name.

Michael was born at Coombe House, St Georges Crescent, Babbacombe, on April 12, 1925, and Mike (as he would always be known) was almost destined to be a climber, as my story will relate. He chose to become an "icefall doctor," which involves the climber maintaining passageways through ice cliffs and dangerous crevasses so that climbers ascending or descending can know they have a safe passage through any impasse.

Educated at Radley College, Oxfordshire, and a "boarder" on visits home, Mike would often enjoy climbing experiences when scrambling up Torbay's limestone and sandstone cliffs littered around the bay. From Radley, Mike attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied mathematics, and later, after his father was invalided out of the Royal Navy, Mike would often join the family when on trips to Dartmoor. Now he would further test his climbing skills on the many small tors found on the moor. When World War II started, Mike was appointed a junior officer with the King George V Bengal Sappers, and then he rose to become a senior officer in the British Indian Army in Burma, where he oversaw the construction of many bridges across crevasses using 150 Japanese prisoners of war put under his command.

With the war over, Mike returned to university to complete his degree in mathematics in the hope of becoming a statistician in civvy street. While at Oxford he joined the Open University Mountaineering Club (OUMC), then rapidly growing into what was eventually seen as "the cusp of a post-war mountaineering renaissance." One George Band of Cambridge University and Mike of Oxford's OUMC then became president of their respective clubs, which would in years to come provide many of the official or formal British climbers of the 1950s. It was around this time that the famous climber John Hunt would spot this still young man as a potential star to add to his future climbing group.

Having left university, Mike now started his career in an agriculture centre at Rothampstead, an experimental complex analysing the effects of penicillin (then the new wonder drug) on pigs, while Mike became the statistics man. It was during this time (the early fifties) that family holidays involving more climbs were beginning to be taken more seriously. Mike's first formal climb had been in Napes Wasdale in December 1947 as part of an OUMC group, when apparently (can we believe it?) Mike completed the climb wearing floppy tennis shoes. That would not be repeated when later a whole season was spent climbing in the Alps—now a clear sign climbing was now more serious.

Above: 29 May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay after successfully completing the first ascent of Mount Everest at 11.30am. Image. Jamling Tenzing Norgay / Creative Commons

It was on returning to Switzerland and the Alps for another three weeks that Mike undertook what he called "a clutch of climbs," and in looking back later he said would be the envy of Alpinists today as the finish involved a "traverse of the Matterhorn." Meanwhile, an expedition by a Eric Shipton penetrated the Western Cwm of Snowden when rigging rope "bridges" across a crevasse for the very first time. That allowed Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay to get to a height of 8600 metres before, sadly, fatigue and bad weather set in, forcing a return to base camp in 1952. It was not long after this failure that a short recollection of Mike's experiences was published in the Alpine Journal, which stated, "As we made for our doss at Satfelalp," fellow climber Dick Viney said, "We've had a marvellous day's climbing, Mike. Nothing like in the Himalayas—all slog, slog, slog—but wouldn't you give everything to go to Everest next year?