Who was Noel Hanna - record-breaking Northern Ireland adventurer who died on his descent from Annapurn in Nepal

On May 21, 2016 Noel and his wife Lynne became the first married couple to summit Mount Everest from both the Nepal south side and the Tibet north side of the mountain.

History was made again on October 5, 2017 when Noel and three sherpas made the first ascent of the technical peak Burke Khang (6,942 metres) which borders Nepal and Tibet. There had been numerous attempts to summit this peak in previous years without any success.

On July 21, 2018 Noel became the first Irish person to successfully summit and descend K2 on the China – Pakistan border. It is known as the savage mountain with less than 350 climbers making it up and down the peak. It has one of the highest fatality rate on the mountain with one in four climbers losing their life.

In February 2019 Noel accompanied the youngest person ever to climb to the summit of the highest volcano in North America – Pico De Orizabo (5,636 metres) in Mexico. His companions were 12-year-old American Decatur Boland along with his father Daniel.

On May 16, 2019 Noel returned to Mount Everest, a mountain he has scaled on 10 occasions.

He accompanied Sarah Khumalo to the summit of Mount Everest (8,848 metres) making her the first black African female to reach the summit of the highest mountain on earth.

And on September 27, 2019 Noel and his wife stood on top of the eighth highest mountain in the world Mount Manaslu (8,163 metres) in the Nepalese Himalayas without the use of supplemental oxygen.

In doing so Lynne became the first female from the island of Ireland to summit a 8,000 metres plus mountain without using oxygen and Noel the the first from Northern Ireland.

Noel, a fitness coach and bodyguard, had started his adventures in the late 1990s as an endurance runner and was always up for a challenge. In 2014 he completed the world’s highest Ice Bucket Challenge on summit of Kilimanjaro.

It was reported today that Noel died in the high camp after returning from the summit of Mount Annapurna. Indian female climber Baljeet Kaur also went missing near Camp IV while making her descent.