A British mountaineer is preparing to honour an Olympic pledge by climbing Mount Everest, taking with him a gold medal awarded to a member of the British Everest Expedition in 1922.

Kenton Cool described how the 1922 expedition was "groundbreaking on so many levels... and smashed all records right up to the date," but that they never reached the top because there was a huge avalanche in which seven people lost their lives.

Although the expedition narrowly failed to reach the summit, they were awarded the medal for mountaineering by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympic Games.

The team then pledged to finally complete their expedition and take one of the medals to the summit, which they were never able to fulfil.

He said the "story got forgotten... and the medals disappeared into far flung corners of the world", but the medal he will carry to the summit came from a medic with the team called Arthur Wakefield.

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