A Royal Navy commander from St Helens on the Isle of Wight has joined the team which is supporting a bid to scale the summit of Everest marking the 50th anniversary of the first conquest.

Royal Navy Lieutenant-Commander David Cummins from St Helens is part of 54-strong support team made up of Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel.

They are helping a ten-man mixed services and Sherpa team who will make the final assault on the summit.

The ten mountaineers will be scaling the peak on one of its most demanding routes. They will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first conquest of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who climbed the North East ridge in 1953.

The team will be using a revolutionary oxygen system on their trek, which began this week.

The climbers are to make a live video broadcast from the summit, which they plan to reach on May 27.

At the expedition's launch earlier this year, its leader Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Arding, from the Royal Marines, predicted only around three climbers would make it to the top.

"We are not expecting to have ten people in a fit state to reach the summit," he said, adding that acclimatising to the altitude would be their biggest challenge as they climbed the 29,028ft summit.

Everest's North East ridge is a steep and technically demanding route and the group of Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel will be climbing with the help of four Sherpas.

Sherpa Tenzing and Sir Edmund reached the summit of the mountain on May 29, 1953.