British watchmaker Loomes is auctioning a watch made for the Royal Gurkha Regiment climbing team that reached the top of Mount Everest on May 15th this year.
It was the most successful Army expedition ever to climb Everest, in getting three British officers and thirteen Nepalese RGR soldiers to the summit.
The auction, run by Bonhams, will raise money for the Mountain Trust and Gurkha Welfare Trust.
The story behind the watch is all the more dramatic because the Royal Gurkha Regiment climbing team made two attempts to scale the world’s highest mountain.
An attempt in 2015 was thwarted by an avalanche triggered by a catastrophic earthquake in Nepal that killed 9000 people.
The climbing team was on the mountain at the time, above the avalanche that killed 18 people at a lower base camp.
Loomes has supported both attempts to scale Everest, with mountaineers using the company’s timekeepers in some of the most punishing conditions on earth.
A watch made for the expedition will be on display in Stamford for one day only, before moving to the Saatchi Gallery in London on November 2-4 for SalonQP.
The online auction will run until November 4 before the proceeds from the watch sale will be donated to The Mountain Trust, a charity specialising in aid to the most remote regions of the Himalayas, badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake.
Speaking about the watch auction and the dramatic story behind it, Loomes managing director Robina Hill said: “It has been so much more poignant to do this since the earthquake of 2015 when one of the poorest countries in the world was hit hard, and then hit hard again this summer with harsh flooding.”
Charles Malcolm-Brown, chairman of The Mountain Trust, added: “The British Gurkha Everest Expedition which placed Loomes watches on the summit to raise funds for the Mountain Trust and Gurkha Welfare Trust was a nail-biting, courageous and gripping adventure. Funds raised for the Mountain Trust will rebuild houses and schools levelled by the 2015 earthquakes.”
