Edmund Wigram

Numerous members of Wigram's family were climbers[2] so, having started climbing in Great Britain and the Alps as a schoolboy, he was already an experienced mountaineer when he went to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.

[8] On that expedition he and Bill Tilman climbed to the Lho La to investigate the possibility of either ascending Everest by the west ridge or of descending south from there onto the Nepalese side of the mountain.

[11] In 1936 the weather conditions were worse than experienced on any previous Everest expedition, several members of the party, including Wigram, reached the North Col at 7,020 metres (23,030 ft) but heavy snowfall, due to the early arrival of the monsoon, made further progress unjustifiable.

[5][13][14] Wigram survived the war although his elder brother, Aidan Frederick who was also an active climber, died in service leaving a wife and two children.

[2] Although the rope caught round a projecting rock and held him, he had incurred internal injuries after a fall of sixty or seventy feet and he died next day in the hospital at Bangor.

Tombstone of Edmund Wigram (1911-1945), St Julitta's church, Capel Curig.