III
I have said too much already about the early stage of acclimatisation: my excuse must be that much will depend upon this factor. The issue will depend no less on organisation and transport; and though this subject is General Bruce’s province, at all events so far as Camp III, I have a few words to add to what he has written.
In the calculation of what will be required at various stages in order to reach the summit of Mount Everest it is necessary to begin at the highest; and the climber imagines in the first place where he would like to have his camps. He may imagine that on the final day he might rise 2,000 feet to the summit; if he is to give himself the best chance of success he will not wish to start much lower than 27,000 feet, and in any case he cannot camp much higher, for he is very unlikely to find a place on the ridge above the North-east shoulder (27,400 feet) or on the steep rocks within 200 feet of it. We may therefore fix 27,000 feet approximately as the desirable height for the last camp. And we have another camping ground fixed for us by circumstances, approximately at 23,000 feet, the broad shelf lying in the shelter of the ice-cliffs on the North Col—there is no convenient place for a comparatively large camp for a considerable distance either above or below it. But to carry up a camp 4,000 feet at these altitudes would be to ask altogether too much of the porters. We must therefore establish an intermediary camp between these two, say at 25,000 feet if a place can be found.
Now what will be required at these three camps? We must ask first with what number of climbers the assault is to be made. A party of two appears insufficient, for if one man should become exhausted the other will probably want help in bringing him down. This difficulty is met by having three climbers. But since an exhausted man cannot be left alone, certainly not without the shelter of a tent, nor should one man go on alone, a party of three must turn back so soon as one man is unable to go further. Four men would give a better chance of success in this case, for then two might go on and still leave one to look after the sick man. Granted, then, that the best hope is for four men to start from a camp at 27,000 feet, we have firstly to provide them with tents. Two tents are better than one, for it may be difficult to find a place for four men to lie side by side, and the greater weight of two smaller tents above one larger is inconsiderable; and they must have sleeping-bags, provisions for two days, fuel, and cooking-pots. All these necessities have been previously carried up to the camp below at 25,000 feet; but other things besides are required there. We may assume that this camp is to be used as a stage on the way up only and not on the way down. Even so, six porters at least will have to sleep there before carrying up the highest camp, and their requirements will be the same as we have laid down for the four climbers; we must add another day’s provisions and fuel for the climbers themselves.
It will be understood from this method of calculation how we arrive at the number of loads which must be carried up to any given camp; it is observable that at each stage downwards the number increases in a proportion considerably greater than 2:1. Fortunately we are not obliged to proceed strictly on these lines; to the lower camps we need not carry up the whole of our stores on one day, and consequently we need not increase in this alarming ratio the number of our porters. But in any case when we get down to the North Col we must clearly have a large bulk of stores; and the fewer porters we employ between one stage and another, economizing on tents and sleeping-bags, the more time we shall require.
It was clear from the start that time was likely to be a formidable enemy. General Bruce’s problem was not only to move our vast quantity of stores across an almost barren country, but to move them in a given time. It was fortunate for this reason that the number of porters who came with us was not increased, for every man must add something to our burdens. No one who knows that arid country could fail to be surprised that we reached our Base Camp below the Rongbuk Glacier so early as the 1st of May. But now the number of Nepalese porters—only forty were available for carrying—was too small for all our needs. If they alone were to shoulder all our loads when should we reach the North Col? Some sort of depôt must be established below it at 21,000 feet for the supply of all higher camps on the mountain before we could proceed; and the reconnaissance party determined that two staging camps would be required between the Base Camp and this depôt. The existence and the solution of so large a problem of transport have so important a bearing on our later plans that I must refer to it again in this place. General Bruce has told how he impressed Tibetans into his service, and by using them up to Camp II was able to liberate our own porters much earlier than might have been expected for work further on. But the system of employing Tibetans did not work without a hitch. It was because the first labour battalion absconded that General Bruce gave orders for only two of us to go forward and use the first opportunities for pushing on from Camp III. With the prospect of an early monsoon and a shortage of transport it was desirable that, so soon as any porters were available for work above Camp III, this work should be pushed on without delay, and if necessary an assault should be made with the minimum of stores required by a party of two climbers. Without a further supply of transport there was no question of using the oxygen, for we should have more than enough to carry up without it.
On May 10 Somervell and I started from the Base Camp for Camp I. The way already customary among the porters led us at first over the flat waste of stones, intersected occasionally by dry stream-beds, which lies below the black, humpy snout of the Rongbuk Glacier; we then followed the deep trough below the glacier’s right (west) bank, an obvious line, but rough with great boulders. It is not before reaching the head of this trough, where one must turn up towards the East Rongbuk Glacier, that a problem arises as to how best to proceed; here we found that an adequate path had already been stamped on the loose moraine, and after ascending steeply we contoured the hillside at an easy gradient—a little forethought and energy had devised so good a way that we could walk comfortably from one camp to the other in two hours and a half. Moreover we were highly pleased by Camp I. The draught perpetually blowing down the main glacier was scarcely noticed in this side-valley; the afternoon sun was shining to cheer the stony scene, and away to the West some noble peaks were well placed for our delight. But beyond æsthetic satisfaction we were soon aware of a civilized habitation. We had been in camp only a few minutes when a cook brought us tea and sweet biscuits and demanded to know what we would like for dinner; we ordered a good dinner and proceeded to examine our apartments. Geoffrey Bruce, we knew, had been busy here with certain constructional works to obviate the difficulty of carrying up heavy tents which were required in any case at the Base Camp. We found a little house reserved for Europeans, one of four solidly built with stones and roofed, with the outer flies of Whymper tents. I never measured up this chamber; I suppose the floor must have been 8 feet × 10 feet and the roof 4 feet high. It is true the tent-poles bridging across from side to side in support of the roof were in dangerously unstable equilibrium, and there were windy moments when valetudinously minded persons might have pronounced it a draughty room. But we were far from hypercritical on this first night, particularly as no wind blew, and a wonderful and pleasant change it was, after living in tents, to sit, eat, and sleep in a house once more.
The greater part of our alpine stores, with which I was especially concerned, had already reached Camp I, and there I found the various bundles of tents, ropes, sleeping-bags, crampons, paraffin, petrol, primus stoves, cooking-sets, etc., which I had carefully labelled for their respective destinations. The great majority were labelled for III—no higher destination had yet been assigned, and I speculated, not altogether optimistically, as to the probable rates of their arrival. As the general order of transport was interrupted for the present, we had to decide what we should take on with us both of food and alpine stores. Somervell, who by now was an expert in the numbers and contents of food-boxes, vigorously selected all that we preferred, and we went to bed with very good hopes for the future, at least in one respect. In consequence of these puzzling problems it took us some little time in the morning to make up our loads; it was past ten o’clock when we started on our way to Camp II.
View from Ice Cavern.
I was surprised, after we had proceeded some distance along the stones on the left bank of the East Rongbuk Glacier, to observe a conspicuous cairn, evidently intended to mark our way over the glacier itself. But the glacier in this lower end is so completely covered with stones that in choosing the easiest way one is only concerned to find the flattest surfaces, and as we mildly followed where the route had been laid out by Colonel Strutt and his party we found the glacier far less broken than was to be expected. Ultimately we walked along a conspicuous medial moraine, avoiding by that means some complicated ice, and descended it abruptly, to find ourselves on the flat space where Camp II was situated.
By this time we had seen a good deal of the East Rongbuk Glacier. As we came up the moraine near its left bank we looked northwards on a remarkable scene. From the stony surface of the glacier fantastic pinnacles arose, a strange, gigantic company, gleaming white as they stood in some sort of order, divided by the definite lines of the moraines. Beyond and above them was a vast mountain of reddish rock known to us only by the triangulated height of its sharp summit, marked in Wheeler’s map as 23,180. The pinnacles became more thickly crowded together as we mounted, until, as we followed the bend southwards, individuals were lost in the crowd and finally the crowd was merged in the great tumbled sea of the glacier, now no longer dark with stones, but exhibiting everywhere the bright surfaces of its steep and angry waves. At Camp II we were surrounded on three sides by this amazing world of ice. We lay in the shelter of a vertical cliff not less than 60 feet high, sombrely cold in the evening shadow, dazzlingly white in the morning sun, and perfectly set off by the frozen pool at its foot. Nothing, of course, was to be seen of Mount Everest; the whole bulk of the North Peak stood in front of it. But by mounting a few steps up some stony slopes above us we could see to the south-east, over the surface of the ice, the slopes coming down from the Lhapka La, from which high pass we had looked down the East Rongbuk Glacier in September, 1921, and observed the special whiteness of the broken stream, at our own level now, and puzzled over its curious course. We had yet another sight to cheer us as we lay in our tents. On the range between us and the main Rongbuk Glacier stood, in the one direction of uninterrupted vision, a peak of slender beauty, and as the moon rose its crests were silver cords.
Next morning, May 12, according to Colonel Strutt’s directions, we worked our way along the true left edge of the glacier and the stones of its left bank. The problem here is to avoid that tumbled sea of ice where no moraine can be continuously followed. Probably it would be possible to get through this ice almost anywhere, for it is not an ice-fall, the gradient is not steep, the pinnacles are not seracs, and there are few crevasses: but much time and labour would be wasted in attempting such a course. Further up the surface becomes more even, and the reconnaissance party had reached this better surface by only a short and simple crossing of the rougher ice. We easily found the place, marked by a conspicuous cairn, where they had turned away from the bank. Their tracks on the glacier, though snow was lying in the hollows, were not easy to follow, and we quickly lost them; but presently we found another cairn built upon a single large stone, and here proceeded with confidence to cross a deep and wide trough of which we had been warned; and once this obstacle was overcome we knew no difficulty could impede our progress to Camp III. The laden porters, however, did not get along very easily. Their nails, for the most part, were worn smooth, and they found the ice too slippery. As I had never seen in the Alps a glacier-surface like this one I was greatly surprised by the nature of the bare ice. In a sense it was often extremely rough, with holes and minute watercourses having vertical sides 6 inches to 13 inches high; but the upper surfaces of the little knobs and plateaus intervening were extraordinarily hard and smooth and the colour was very much bluer than the usual granular surface of a dry glacier. It was also surprising to find at most a thin coating of fine snow as high as 20,500 feet; for in 1921 we had found, even before the first heavy snowfall, plenty of snow on the glaciers above 19,000 feet. For my part, with new nails in my boots, I was not troubled by the slippery surfaces. But we decided to supply the porters with crampons, which they subsequently found very useful on this stage of the journey.