John Stokes (mountaineer)

Personal life

Stokes was born in 1945 Hamstead, then a mining village straddling the border of South Staffordshire, and Birmingham, England, hence his nickname of 'Brummie'.

His autobiography, Soldiers & Sherpas, A Taste For Adventure, was published in 1988.

He died in January 2016, and was survived by his wife Lynn and their two sons.

Military service

At the age of seventeen, Stokes joined the Royal Green Jackets, and infantry regiment of the British Army. Three years later, he joined the SAS Regiment.

With the SAS he saw action in the Falklands War. He left the army in 1985. He was awarded a British Empire Medal for his nineteen years' work in the Special Air Service. He was well liked by all his fellow Soldiers.

Mountaineering

Stokes took part in an expedition to Nuptse in 1975, in which four members of the team died. The next year, during a British Army expedition to Everest in 1976, he reached the summit along with fellow SAS colleague Bronco Lane. Stokes lost all his toes and part of each foot to frostbite. Nonetheless, Stokes became only the third Briton to conquer Everest. In 1984 while climbing on the north face of Everest (having proved himself by climbing Mount McKinley in Alaska), an avalanche wiped out advanced base camp, killing one of the members and injuring several others, and Stokes' neck was broken.

After leaving the army, he was part of an attempt to conquer Everest's last unclimbed route, its north east ridge, accessed via China. Although he succeed in climbing the ridge, the summit could not be reached due to weather conditions, and Stokes was partially paralysed by cerebral oedema.

Charity work

In 1991, with his wife, Stokes established and ran the 'Taste for Adventure Centre', a registered Charity and outdoor activity centre for less privileged children, at Credenhill. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for this work, in 2004.