Eric Shipton

Eric Shipton (1907 to 1977) was an English Himalayan mountaineer. He was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where his father, a tea planter, died before Shipton was three, and his mother brought him to London for his education when he was eight. His first encounter with mountains was at 15, on a visit to the Pyrenees with his family, and within a year of travelling in Norway with a school friend he had begun climbing seriously. In 1928 he went to Kenya as a coffee grower and in 1929 first climbed Nelion, a peak of Mount Kenya, going on to a career of Himalayan exploration and climbing that earned him a CBE.