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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]
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (June 2024) |
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.
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