Ashcent of Everest

Heroes who conquered highest peak in 1953 took 15,000 CIGS with them

HEROIC mountaineers in the team to conquer Everest were gasping for cigarettes as well as oxygen, a writer has discovered.

Among the supplies for the triumphant 1953 expedition were 15,000 cigarettes.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first climbers to scale the world’s highest peak, were not thought to smoke.

But others in the team liked to light up. Expedition leader John Hunt and climber Charles Evans smoked pipes but Wilfred Noyce was a cigarette man.

Noyce reached the 26,000ft South Col, between Everest and Lhotse mountain, on May 21, 1953.

Eight days later Hillary was on top of the world at 29,035ft. News of the success was released on the day of the Queen’s coronation.

But smoking while mountaineering was not confined to the Everest trip, as writer Mick Conefrey found out for his book The Last Great Mountain.

He spoke to British climber Joe Brown who, in 1955, climbed Kangchenjunga the world’s third highest mountain. The expedition to the mighty 28,169ft Himalayan peak took with it 25,000 cigarettes and 16lb of tobacco.

Many of the cigarettes were for porters and sherpas but about 5,000 were western brands intended for the two smokers in the climbing team. Brown is believed to have smoked as many as 2,000 cigarettes during the trip – and smuggled 1,000 back to Britain.

Sadly Brown died last month, aged 89. He told Conefrey he smoked five cigarettes in the tent he shared with his non-smoking climbing partner, George Band.

He came to regret his actions. He told Conefrey: “I’ve thought since, ‘What a horrible thing to do, to inflict it on George’, because he was in the tent too, and I’ve thought, ‘What a b ***** d’.”

Despite Brown’s enthusiasm for nicotine, even at high altitudes with perilously little oxygen, Conefrey notes that he went on to outperform Band in the successful push to the summit.

Brown made no health claims for his smoking habit.

But George Finch, the scientist who in 1922 first persuaded the committee organising attempts on Everest that bottled oxygen was vital to their success, believed smoking at high altitude could actually improve a mountaineer’s performance.

I smoked in tent when George was inside. What a horrible thing to inflict on him JOE BROWN REGRETS LIGHTING UP WHILE NON-SMOKER WAS IN THE TENT

FINAL DRAG Hillary and Norgay at 28,000ft FAGGED OUT Hillary, Evans, medic Michael Ward and Band relax GOING GETS PUFF Hunt smokes his pipe BREATHTAKING Summit of Everest

FULL PACK Baggage at Nepal