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British climber in 1924 Olympic medal Everest quest

Kenton Cool, who completed his ninth ascent of the world’s highest mountain last year, is commemorating a 1922 expedition in which British adventurers got close to the summit, which had never been reached at the time.

The group, led by soldier Charles Bruce and accompanied by porters from the Himalayas, climbed within 500 metres of the top but failed thrice to complete the final stretch.

Disaster hit the expedition on the way down when an avalanche killed seven Indian members of the party.

Two years later at the 1924 Winter Olympics, the group was presented with medals to mark their achievement and their deputy leader, Edward Strutt, vowed to return to Everest and leave one of the medals at the summit.

Cool wants to honour Strutt’s pledge, which remains unfulfilled nearly 90 years later.

“The 1922 expedition was groundbreaking on so many levels — they got incredibly high... It smashed all records up to that date,” Cool told BBC radio.

“When they were awarded the gold medals — they were awarded en masse to Strutt — he turned round and said that at the next opportunity, one of these medals would make their way to the very summit of Mount Everest,” Cool said.

Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit in 1953.

Cool has borrowed the medal awarded to Arthur Wakefield, a medic on the 1922 expedition, from his family and will try to take it to the summit this year, setting off in May, two months before the Olympic Games begin in London.

“With the 2012 Olympics in London, I knew when I had to do it,” Cool told the BBC.