[1] Ayres was a mentor to Edmund Hillary, who had proposed him to Eric Shipton as a member of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition.
[2] He fought in WWII in the Pacific from 1942 to 1944 where he contracted tropical diseases that affected his health significantly.
[2] In 1956, Ayres traveled to Antarctica with the New Zealand party of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
In the 1981 New Year Honours, Ayres was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to mountaineering.
In 1987, Ayres went missing to be found drowned in Lyttelton Harbour / Whakaraupō from expected suicide.