:quality(70):focal(394x253:404x263)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YZDPASVOWRH6NCNFYCIRKGSYSQ.JPG)
Born: January 18th, 1967
Died: April 18th, 2023
Northern Ireland adventurer, mountain guide and endurance athlete Noel Hanna, who has died aged 56, scaled Mount Everest 10 times, achieved many firsts in climbing and helped others to set their own records. He died after achieving another first – the first Irish ascent of Annapurna, (8,091m) the tenth highest peak in the world, in the Himalayas.
His wife Lynne said he had returned to the tent after the climb, “took some hot soup and fell asleep, never to awaken again, no drama, no big story. It was his time to go, and he died in the Himalayas; what better place for my mountain man?”
:quality(70):focal(4167x1189:4177x1199)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CPZF5BZAOZBFBJVC4ROL7ATON4.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/LB6A5NIQFDFLYOG4UZAEDKXD6I.jpg)
:quality(70):focal(2928x1948:2938x1958)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/ZUZM42HP2VRXWJM4LIRPPGQDYU.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/QL6ZNTOAVNAIRE5TRAB27K7WTI.JPG)
Dawson Stelfox, the first Irish person to climb Everest, said Noel Hanna was one of very few Irish mountaineers “who embraced and rose to the top of the modern commercial expedition approach as his impressive tally of ascents of Everest demonstrates.”
His achievements include being the first person from the island of Ireland to successfully summit and descend K2 – the world’s second highest mountain. Ger McDonnell, the first Irish person to reach the summit, died in an avalanche during his descent. Stelfox said Noel Hanna was pragmatic about the dangers involved in mountaineering and was conscious of the insignificance of climbers within the scale and hostility of high mountains.
“Noel’s love for, and empathy with, high and remote mountains went far beyond his work as a guide being just a job – it was intrinsically a way of life for him, not in any misty-eyed romanticism, but in a deep commitment to living and thriving in hard, hostile environments, taking on the constant challenges of high altitude and revelling in the rewards of achievement and shared experiences with his Nepali team-mates and their clients,” he said.
In later life he would climb mountains in the most spectacularly scenic places but he still loved to come back to the Mourne mountains, describing them as ‘God’s own country’
Mountains featured in Hanna’s life from the moment he was born. He grew up on a cattle, pig and sheep farm in Finnis, under the shadow of Slieve Croob, in Dromara, Co Down. In later life he would climb mountains in the most spectacularly scenic places but he still loved to come back to the Mourne mountains, describing them as “God’s own country”.
He became an RUC police reservist in 1987 and worked in antiterrorism before moving to the canine unit. He said this was where he truly caught the fitness bug. The RUC, prison and army forces ran a biathlon for their dog handlers and the dogs, and he won this event three years in a row.
He became a certified fitness instructor and took on his first major challenge in 1997 when he won the Himalayan 100-mile stage race. He ran the race with a friend whose sister had died from a brain tumour, raising more than £18,000 for brain and spine foundation research.
He told Robbie Marsh on The Inspirational Runner podcast in 2019 that he remembered being blown away by the views of four of the world’s highest peaks. “It was probably here where I got to thinking: some day I’d love to be in those hills.”
New challenges
From then on, every year brought new challenges, including the Marathon de Sables twice, several Eco-Challenge adventure races, and Badwater, a 135km race through Death Valley in temperatures of more than 40 degrees.
As it became more difficult to balance work with the far-flung endurance events, he qualified as a close protection officer and became a bodyguard.
This gave him time to focus on some unique challenges. In 2005, he tackled the Seven Summits – the highest peaks of each continent – but to make it even more gruelling, he travelled to sea level by bike, ski or on foot, after scaling each summit. This involved cycling in more 40-degree heat in India, and skiing 300km across Antarctica.
He met his wife Lynne after he put up a notice in a hotel gym looking for a female team member for an adventure race in 2000. She couldn’t go on that trip, but they made up for it in the years that followed. In 2016, they became the first married couple to summit Mount Everest from both the Nepal south side and the Tibet north side of the mountain.
In his work as a guide, he accompanied Decatur Boland (12) and his father Daniel to the summit of Pico De Orizabo in Mexico (5,636m) – the highest volcano in North America, making Decatur the youngest person to achieve this feat. He also accompanied Sarah Khumalo when she became the first black African woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2019.
[ Renowned climber Noel Hanna dies on Nepal mountain ]
Mountaineering Ireland presented him with the prestigious Lynam Medal in 2021 to mark his achievements. As he delivered the Lynam Lecture, which looked back on his life, he said climbing the Burke Khang technical peak (6,942m) in the Himalayas in 2017 was probably his greatest achievement. He and three sherpas were the first people to reach the summit. “It’s very nice to be standing here knowing that nobody else in the world has ever been here before,” he said. “There’s been more people to the moon than there has been to the summit here.”
I believe that when you are born, there’s a date in the calendar of the day you are going to go. So I always say, live life to the full
— Noel Hanna
He remained humble about his achievements, telling the Mountaineering Ireland audience there was nothing special about him. “Everybody out there, if they put the effort and the time in, can do what I’ve done,” he said. “There’s nothing special about anybody that climbs Everest.”
After his death, many climbers described him as a generous and gracious mentor. Paul Devaney, of the Irish Seven Summits Project said he was “a straight-talking and easily approachable source of advice (sometimes necessarily blunt) and encouragement. He didn’t suffer fools and might ruffle feathers on occasion, but his kindness and enthusiasm marked him out from the crowd”.
Brushes with death
He was always ready to help people in difficulty or to retreat if he felt the conditions were too risky, according to Patrick O’Sullivan, editor of Mountaineering Ireland’s Irish Mountain Log. “Noel was a soft-spoken, selfless mountaineer who was a thoroughly nice person,” he said.
Hanna said one of his closest brushes with death was when he was climbing Mount Everest in 2015 and an earthquake struck Nepal. He was standing on solid rock but said it felt like the boglands in the Mourne mountains. There was a lake in the glacier beside the base camp, “and I was more worried about it opening up, not that it probably would have killed you, but you would have been washed down the valley,” he recalled.
[ Climbing Mount Everest: A dangerous pursuit ]
With his wife Lynne, his adventures raised valuable funds for several charities. While many people ventured into their gardens to do the ice bucket challenge for motor neuron disease charities in 2014, he broke a record with Rasmus Henriksen by completing the world’s highest ice bucket challenge on the summit of Kilimanjaro.
He never shied away from the dangers posed by his expeditions and said there was always a chance he would not come home from a trip.
“I believe that when you are born, there’s a date in the calendar of the day you are going to go,” he told Outsider magazine. “So I always say, live life to the full, because you could walk out that door and get knocked down by a bus. You’ll regret the stuff you didn’t do.”
Noel Hanna is survived by his wife Lynne, his siblings Malcolm and Irene, and extended family.