The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922

by C. G. Bruce

IV

The situation of Camp III when we reached it early in the afternoon was not calculated to encourage me, though I suppose it might be found congenial by hardier men. We had turned the corner of the North Peak so that the steep slopes of its Eastern arm rose above us to North and West. Our tents were to be pitched on the stones that have rolled down these slopes on to the glacier, and just out of range of a stone fall from the rocks immediately above us. A shallow trough divided us from the main plateau of the glacier, and up this trough the wind was blowing; since the higher current was hurrying the clouds from the normal direction, North-west, we might presume that this local variation was habitual. But wind we could hardly expect to escape from one direction or another. A more important consideration, perhaps, for a mountain camp is the duration of sunshine. Here we should have the sun early, for to the East we looked across a wide snowy basin to the comparatively low mountains round about the Lhakpa La; but we should lose it early too, and we observed with dismay on this first afternoon that our camp was in shadow at 3.15 p.m. The water supply was conveniently near, running in a trough, and we might expect it to be unfrozen for several hours each day.

Seracs, East Rongbuk Glacier, above Camp II.

Whatever we might think of this place it was undoubtedly the best available. Very little energy remained among the party, most of whom had now reached 21,000 feet for the first time in their lives. However, a number soon set to work levelling the ground which we chose for two tents. It was necessary to do this work thoroughly, for, unlike the smooth, flat stones at Camp I, these, like those at Camp II, of which we had obtained sufficient experience during the previous night, were extremely sharp and uncomfortable to lie on. After it was done we sent down the main body of the porters, keeping only one man for cook and each the man specially attached to him as servant by Geoffrey Bruce’s command long ago in Darjeeling. With these we proceeded to order our camp. The tents were pitched, some sort of a cookhouse was constructed from the wealth of building material, and we also began to put up walls behind which we could lie in shelter to eat our meals. Perhaps the most important matter was the instruction of Pou, our cook, in the correct use of the Primus stove; with the purpose of giving him confidence a fine fountain of blazing paraffin was arranged and at once extinguished by opening the safety valve; for the conservation of our fuel supply we carefully showed him how the absolute alcohol must be used to warm the burner while paraffin and petrol were to be mixed for combustion. Fortunately his intelligence rose above those disagreeable agitations which attend the roaring or the failure to roar of Primus stoves, so that after these first explanations we had never again to begrime our hands with paraffin and soot.

In our tent this evening of May 12, Somervell and I discussed what we should do. There was something to be said for taking a day’s rest at this altitude before attempting to rise another 2,000 feet. Neither of us felt at his best. After our first activities in camp I had made myself comfortable with my legs in a sleeping-bag, Somervell with his accustomed energy had been exploring at some distance—he had walked as far as the broad pass on the far side of our snowy basin, the Rápiu La, at the foot of Everest’s North-east ridge, and had already begun a sketch of the wonderful view obtained from that point of Makalu. When he returned to camp about 5.30 p.m. he was suffering from a headache and made a poor supper. Moreover, we were full of doubts about the way up to the North Col. After finding so much ice on the glacier we must expect to find ice on those East-facing slopes below the Col. It was not unlikely that we should be compelled to cut steps the whole way up, and several days would be required for so arduous a task. We decided therefore to lose no time in establishing a track to the North Col.

It was our intention on the following morning, May 13, to take with us two available porters, leaving only our cook in camp, and so make a small beginning towards the supply of our next camp. But Somervell’s man was sick and could not come with us. We set out in good time with only my porter, Dasno, and carried with us, besides one small tent, a large coil of spare rope and some wooden pegs about 18 inches long. As we made our way up the gently sloping snow it was easy to distinguish the line followed to the North Col after the monsoon last year—a long slope at a fairly easy angle bearing away to the right, or North, a traverse to the left, and a steep slope leading up to the shelf under the ice-cliff on the skyline. With the sun behind us we saw the first long slope, nearly 1,000 feet, glittering in a way that snow will never glitter; there we should find only blue ice, bare and hard. Further to the North was no better, and as we looked at the steep final slope it became plain enough that there and nowhere else was the necessary key to the whole ascent; for to the South of an imaginary vertical line drawn below it was a hopeless series of impassable cliffs. The more we thought about it the more convinced we became that an alternative way must be found up to this final slope. We had not merely to reach the North Col once: whatever way we chose must be used for all the comings and goings to and from a camp up there. Unless the connection between Camps III and IV were free from serious obstacles, the whole problem of transport would increase enormously in difficulty; every party of porters must be escorted by climbers both up and down, and even so the dangers on a big ice slope after a fall of snow would hardly be avoided.

Endeavouring to trace out a satisfactory route from the shelf of the North Col downwards, we soon determined that we should make use of a sloping corridor lying some distance to the left of the icy line used last year and apparently well covered with snow. For 300 or 400 feet above the flat snowfield it appeared to be cut off by very steep ice slopes; nevertheless the best hope was to attempt an approach more or less direct to the foot of this corridor; and first we must reconnoitre the steepest of these obstacles, which promised the most convenient access to the desired point could we climb it. Here fortune favoured our enterprise. We found the surface slightly cleft by a fissure slanting at first to the right and then directly upwards. In the disintegrated substance of its edges it was hardly necessary to cut steps, and we mounted 250 feet of what threatened to be formidable ice with no great expenditure of time and energy. Two lengths of rope were now fixed for the security of future parties, the one hanging directly downwards from a single wooden peg driven in almost to the head, and another on a series of pegs for the passage of a leftward traverse which brought us to the edge of a large crevasse. We were now able to let ourselves down into the snow which choked this crevasse a little distance below its edges, and by means of some large steps hewn in the walls and another length of rope a satisfactory crossing was established. Above this crevasse we mounted easy snow to the corridor.

So far as the shelf which was our objective we now met no serious difficulty. The gentle angle steepened for a short space where we were obliged to cut a score of steps in hard ice; we fixed another length of rope, and again the final slope was steep, but not so as to trouble us. However, the condition of the snow was not perfect; we were surprised, on a face where so much ice appeared, to find any snow that was not perfectly hard; and yet we were usually breaking a heavy crust and stamping down the steps in snow deep enough to cover our ankles. It was a question rather of strength than of skill. An East-facing slope in the heat and glare of the morning sun favours the enemy mountain-sickness, and though no one of us three was sick our lassitude increased continually as we mounted and it required as much energy as we could muster to keep on stamping slowly upwards.

We lay down at length on the shelf, not yet shaded by the ice-cliff above it, in a state of considerable exhaustion. Here presumably was the end of a day’s work satisfactory in the most important respect, for we felt that the way we had found was good enough, and with the fixed ropes was suitable for use under almost any conditions. It occurred to us after a little interval and some light refreshment that one thing yet remained to be done. The lowest point of the North Col, from which the North ridge of Everest springs a little way to the South of our shelf, is perhaps ten minutes’ walk. We ought to go just so far as that in order to make quite sure of the way onward.

In the direction of the North-east shoulder, now slightly East of South from us, the shelf slopes gradually upwards, a ramp as it were alongside the battlements almost attaining the level of the crest itself. In the whirl of snow and wind on that bitter day of September 1921, Bullock, Wheeler, and I had found it necessary, in order actually to gain this level, to take a few steps to the right round the head of a large crevasse slanting across our line to the North Col. Somervell and I soon found ourselves confronted by this same crevasse, and prepared to evade it by the same manœuvre. But during those intervening months the crack had extended itself some distance to the right and prevented the possibility of getting round at that end. It was also much too wide to be leapt. The best chance was in the other direction. Here we were able to work our way down, before the steep slopes plunge over towards the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier, to a snow bridge within the crevasse giving access to a fissure in its opposite wall. We carefully examined the prospects of an ascent at this point. Our idea was to go up in the acute angle between two vertical walls of ice. A ladder of footsteps and finger-holds would have to be constructed in the ice, and even so the issue would be doubtful. When we set against the severe labour our present state of weakness and considered the consequences of a step into the gulf of the crevasse while steps were being cut—how poor a chance only one man could have of pulling out his companion—it was clear that a performance of this kind must wait for a stronger party. In any case, we reckoned, this was not a way which could safely be used by laden porters. If it must be used we should apply to General Bruce for a 15-foot ladder, more permanent than any we could make in the ice, and no doubt the mechanical ingenuity so much in evidence at the Base Camp would devise a ladder both portable and strong. Even this thought failed to inspire us with perfect confidence, and it seemed rather a long way to have come from England to Mount Everest, to be stopped by an obstacle like this.

Party ascending the Chang La.

But was there no possible alternative? On this side of the crest we had nothing more to hope; but on the far side, could we reach it, there might exist some other shelf crowning the West-facing slopes of the Col, and connecting with the lowest point. We retraced our steps, going now in the opposite direction with the battlement on our left. Beyond there was a snow slope ascending towards the formidable ridge of the North Peak. The crevasse guarding it was filled with snow and presented no difficulty, and though the slope was steep we were able to make a staircase up the edge of it and presently found ourselves on the broken ground of the Northern end of the crest. As we turned back toward Everest a huge crevasse was in our way. A narrow bridge of ice took us across it and we found we were just able to leap another crevasse a few yards further.

We had now an uninterrupted view of all that lies to the West. Below us was the head of the main Rongbuk Glacier. On the skyline to the left was the prodigious North-west ridge of Everest, flanked with snow, hiding the crest of the West Peak. Past the foot of the North-west ridge we looked down the immense glacier flowing South-westwards into Nepal and saw without distinguishing them the distant ranges beyond. Near at hand a sharp edge of rocks, the buttress of Changtse falling abruptly to the Rongbuk Glacier, blocked out vision of the two greatest mountains North-west of Everest, Gyachung Kang (25,990) and Cho Uyo (26,367). But we could feel no regret for this loss, so enchanted were we by the spectacle of Pumori; though its summit (23,190) was little higher than our own level, it was, as it always is, a singularly impressive sight. The snow-cap of Pumori is supported by splendid architecture; the pyramidal bulk of the mountain, the steep fall of the ridges and faces to South and West, and the precipices of rock and ice towards East and North, are set off by a whole chain of mountains extending West-north-west along a frail, fantastic ridge unrivalled anywhere in this district for the elegant beauty of its cornices and towers. No more striking change of scenery could be imagined than this from all we saw to the East—the gentle snowy basin; the unemphatic lines of the slopes below and on either side of the Lhakpa La, dominated as they are by the dullest of mountains, Khartaphu; the even fall of rocks and snow from the East ridge of Changtse and from the North-east ridge of Everest. Pumori itself stood only as a symbol of this new wonderful world before our eyes as we stayed to look westwards, a world exciting, strange, unearthly, fantastic as the sky-scrapers in New York City, and at the same time possessing the dignity of what is enduring and immense, for no end was visible or even conceivable to this kingdom of adventure.

However, even Somervell’s passion for using coloured chalks did not encourage him to stay long inactive in a place designed to be a funnel for the West wind of Tibet at an elevation of about 23,000 feet. We sped again over snow-covered monticules thrust up from the chaos of riven ice, and at last looked down from one more prominent little summit to the very nape of the Chang La. We saw our conjectured shelf in real existence and a fair way before us. In a moment all our doubts were eased. We knew that the foot of the North Ridge, by which alone we could approach the summit of Mount Everest, was not beyond our reach.

Dasno meanwhile was stretched in the snow on the sheltered shelf, which clearly must serve us sooner or later for Camp IV. As we looked down upon him from the battlements, we noticed that their shadow already covered the greater part of the shelf. It was four o’clock. We must delay no longer. The tent which Dasno had carried up was left to be the symbol of our future intentions, and we hastened down. Since 7 a.m. Somervell and I had been spending our strength with only one considerable halt, and latterly at a rapid rate. For some hours now we had felt the dull height-headache which results from exertion with too little oxygen, a symptom, I am told, not unlike the effect of poisoning by carbon monoxide. The unpleasing symptom became so increasingly disagreeable as we came down that I was very glad to reach our tent again. As it was only fair that Somervell should share all my sufferings, it now seemed inconsiderate of him to explain that he had a good appetite. For my part, I took a little soup and could face no food; defeated for the first and last time in either expedition before the sight of supper. I humbly swallowed a dose of aspirin, lay my head on the pillow and went to sleep.