The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922

by C. G. Bruce

VI

On May 16 Somervell and I spent the morning in camp with some hopes of welcoming sooner or later the arrival of stores, and sure enough about midday the first detachment of a large convoy reached our camp. With the porters, somewhat to our surprise, were Strutt, Morshead, and Norton. The whole party seemed rather tired, though not more than was to be expected, and when a little later Crawford, the responsible transport officer, came in, he told us he had been mountain-sick. We were delighted to learn that General Bruce was now much happier about transport—hence these reinforcements; twenty-two Tibetan coolies were now working up to Camp I, more were expected, and the prospects were definitely brighter. A start had even been made, in spite of Finch’s continued sickness, with moving up the oxygen cylinders. We at once proceeded to discuss with Crawford how many porters could remain with us at Camp III. Taking into consideration the oxygen loads, he suggested a number below the hopes I had begun to entertain. It was agreed that eight could be spared without interfering with the work lower down. We had two before, so we should now have ten in all.

It was clear that all must carry up loads to Camp IV with the least delay in reason. But in view of the tremendous efforts that would be required of these men at a later stage, it was a necessary act of precautionary wisdom to grant the porters a day’s rest on the 16th; and in any case an extra day was advisable for the acclimatisation of us all before sleeping at 23,000 feet. Meanwhile we should be able to formulate exact plans for climbing the mountain. It had hitherto been assumed that the first attempt should be made only by Somervell and me, and General Bruce had not cancelled our orders; but he had now delegated his authority to Strutt, as second-in-command, to decide on the spot what had best be done. The first point, therefore, to be settled was the number of climbers composing the party of attack. Strutt himself took the modest rôle of assuming that he would not be equal to a considerable advance above Camp IV, but saw no reason why the other four of us (Crawford returned on the 15th to a lower camp) should be too many for one party provided our organisation sufficed. Norton and Morshead were evidently most anxious to come on, and for my part I had always held, and still held, the view that four climbers were a sounder party than two for this sort of mountaineering, and would have a better chance of success. It remained to determine what could be done for a party of four by the available porters. To carry the whole of what we should need up to Camp IV in one journey was clearly impossible. But we reckoned that twenty loads should be enough to provide for ourselves and for nine porters, who would have to sleep there and carry up another camp. The delay in making two journeys to the North Col was not too great; the one sacrifice involved by this plan was a second camp above the North Col. In my judgment, the chances of establishing such a camp, even for two climbers, with so small a number as ten porters, without reckoning further loss of time, would be small in any case. We were necessarily doubtful as to how much might be expected of our porters before the North Ridge had been explored, and before we had any evidence to show that these men were capable of much more than other porters had accomplished before. It was right, therefore, for the advantages of the stronger party, to sacrifice so uncertain a prospect. Nevertheless, we realised the terrible handicap in this limitation.

I shall perhaps appear as affirming or repeating what is merely commonplace if I venture to make some observations about the weather, but I must here insist upon its importance to mountaineers; and though I cannot remember that the subject was much discussed among us at Camp III, it remained but a little way below the surface of consciousness. In settled weather among mountains one has not a great deal to observe. The changing colours at sunrise and sunset follow an expected sequence, the white flocks of fleecy clouds form and drift upwards, or the midday haze gathers about the peaks, leaving the climber unperturbed. He has sniffed the keen air before dawn when he came out under the bright stars, and his optimism is assured for the day. On Mount Everest it had been supposed that the season preceding the monsoon would be mainly fair; but we knew that the warm moist wind should be approaching up the Arun Valley, pushing up towards us during the month of May, and we must expect to feel something of its influence. Moreover, we did not know very well how to read the signs in this country. We anxiously watched and studied them; each of us, I suppose, while he might be engaged upon one thing or another, or talking of matters infinitely and delightfully remote from Mount Everest, like a pilot had his weather-eye open. And what he saw would not all be encouraging. The drift of the upper clouds, it is true, was fairly consistent; the white wisps of smoke, as it seemed, were driven in our direction over the North Col, and occasionally the clear edge of the North Ridge would be dulled with powdery snow puffed out on the Eastern side. But looking across the snowfield from near our camp to where the head of Makalu showed over the Rapiu La, we saw strange things happening. On May 16, our day of rest, a number of us paid a visit to this pass, and as we stood above the head of the Kama Valley, the clouds boiling up from that vast and terrible cauldron were not gleaming white, but sadly grey. A glimpse down the valley showed under them the sombre blue light that forebodes mischief, and Makalu, seen through a rift, looked cold and grim. The evidence of trouble in store for us was not confined to the Kama Valley, for some clouds away to the North also excited our suspicion, and yet, as we looked up the edges of the North-east arête to its curving sickle and the great towers of the North-east shoulder, here was the dividing-line between the clear air and fair weather to the right, and the white mists to the left streaming up above the ridge and all the evil omens. The bitterest even of Tibetan winds poured violently over the pass at our backs. We wondered as we turned to meet it how long a respite was to be allowed us.

Preparation for what we intended to attempt was not to be made without some thought, or at all events I do not find such preparation a perfectly simple matter. It requires exact calculation. The first thing is to make a list—in this case a list of all we should require at Camp IV, with the approximate weights of each article. But not every article would be available to be carried up on the first of the two journeys to the North Col; for instance, we must keep our sleeping-bags for use at Camp III until we moved up ourselves. It was necessary, therefore, to mark off certain things to be left for the second journey, and to ascertain that not more than half of the whole was so reserved. It might be supposed that the problem could now be solved by adding up the weights, dividing the total by ten (the number of our porters), and giving so many pounds, according to this arithmetical answer, to each man for the first journey. In practice this cannot be done, and we have to allow for the fallibility of human lists. However carefully you have gone over in your mind and provided for every contingency, you may be quite sure you have omitted something, probably some property of the porters regarded by them as necessary to salvation, and at the last moment it will turn up. The danger is that one or two men will be seriously overloaded, and perhaps without your knowing it. To circumvent it, allowance must be made in your calculations. On this occasion we took good care to carry up more than half of what was shown on our list on the first journey. Another difficulty in the mathematical solution is the nature of the loads. They cannot be all exactly equal, because they are composed of indivisible objects. A tent cannot be treated like a vulgar fraction. The best plan, therefore, is to fix a maximum. We intended our loads to be from 25 to 30 lb. They were all weighed with a spring balance, and the upper limit was only exceeded by a pound or two in two cases, to the best of my remembrance.

On May 17 the fifteen of us, Strutt, Morshead, Norton, Somervell, and I, with ten porters, set off for Camp IV. The snow was in good condition, we had our old tracks to tread in, and the only mishap to be feared was the possible exhaustion of one or more porters. It was necessary that all the loads should reach their destination to-day; but the five climbers were comparatively unladen, and constituted a reserve of power. My recollections of going up to the North Col are all of a performance rather wearisome and dazed, of a mind incapable of acute perceptions faintly stirring the drowsy senses to take notice within a circle of limited radius. The heat and glare of the morning sun as it blazed on the windless long slopes emphasised the monotony. I was dimly aware of this puzzling question of light-rays and the harm they might do. I was glad I wore two felt hats, and that Strutt and Somervell had their solar topis. Morshead and Norton had no special protection, and the porters none at all. What did it matter? Seemingly nothing. We plodded on and slowly upwards; each of us was content to go as slowly as anyone else might wish to go. The porters were more silent than usual. They were strung up to the effort required of them. No one was going to give in. The end was certain. At length our success was duly epitomised. As he struggled up the final slope, Strutt broke into gasping speech: “I wish that—cinema were here. If I look anything like what I feel, I ought to be immortalised for the British public.” We looked at his grease-smeared, yellow-ashen face, and the reply was: “Well, what in Heaven’s name do we look like? And what do we do it for, anyway?”

At all events, we had some reason to feel hopeful on our subsequent day’s rest, May 18. Somervell more particularly pronounced that his second journey to Camp IV had been much less fatiguing than the first. I was able to say the same, though I felt that a sufficient reason was to be found in the fact that far less labour had been required of me. It was more remarkable, perhaps, that those who went for the first time to 23,000 feet, and especially the laden men, should have shown so much endurance.

On May 19 we carried up the remainder of our loads. And again we seemed better acclimatised. The ascent to the North Col was generally felt to be easier on this day; we had strength to spare when we reached the shelf. With all our loads now gathered about us at Camp IV, the first stage up from the base of the mountain was accomplished. To-morrow, we hoped, would complete the second. The five light tents were gradually pitched, two of them destined for the climbers a few yards apart towards the North Peak, the remaining three to accommodate each three porters in the same alignment; in all, a neat little row showing green against the white. The even surface of the snow was further disturbed by the muddled tracks, soon to be a trampled space about the tent-doors. For the safety of sleep-walkers, or any other who might feel disposed to take a walk in the night, these tent-doors faced inwards, toward the back of the shelf. There the gigantic blocks of ice were darker than the snow on which their deep shadow was thrown. Their cleft surfaces suggested cold colours, and were green and blue as the ocean is on some winter’s day of swelling seas—a strange impressive rampart impregnable against direct assault, and equally well placed to be the final defence of the North Col on this section, and at the same time to protect us amazingly, entirely, against the unfriendly wind from the West.

Other activities besides demanded our attention. It had been resolved that one more rope should be fixed on the steep slope we must follow to circumvent the ice-cliffs. Morshead and Somervell volunteered for this good work; Norton and I were left to tend the cooking-pots. As we had not burdened the porters with a large supply of water, we had now to make provision both for this evening and for to-morrow morning. The Primus stoves remained at Camp III, partly because they were heavy and partly because, however carefully devised, their performance at a high altitude must always be a little uncertain. They had served us well up to 21,000 feet, and we had no need to trust them further. With our aluminium cooking sets we could use either absolute alcohol in the spirit-burner or “Meta,” a French sort of solidified spirit, especially prepared in cylindrical shape and extremely efficient; you have only to put a match to the dry white cylinders and they burn without any trouble, and smokelessly, even at 23,000 feet, for not less than forty minutes. The supply of “Meta” was not very large, and it was considered rather as an emergency fuel. The alcohol was to do most of our heating at Camp IV, and all too rapidly it seemed to burn away as we kept filling and refilling our pots with snow. In the end six large thermos flasks were filled with tea or water for the use of all in the morning, and we had enough for our present needs besides.

Morshead and Somervell had not long returned, after duly fixing the rope, before our meal was ready. As I have already referred to our table manners, the more delicate-minded among my readers may not relish the spectacle of us four feasting around our cooking-pots—in which case I caution them to omit this paragraph, for now, living up to my own standard of faithful narrative, I must honestly and courageously face the subject of victuals. As mankind is agreed that the pleasures of the senses, when it is impossible they should be actually experienced, can most nearly be tasted by exercising an artistic faculty in choosing the dishes of imaginary repasts, so it might be supposed that the state of affairs, when those pleasures were thousands of feet below in other worlds, might more easily be brought to mind by reconstructing the associated menus. But such a practice was unfortunately out of the question, for it would have involved assigning this, that, and the other to breakfast, lunch, and supper; and when, calling to mind what we ate, I try to distinguish between one meal and another, I am altogether at a loss. I can only suppose they were interchangeable. The nature of our supplies confirms my belief that this was the case. Practically speaking, we hardly considered by which name our meal should be called, but only what would seem nice to eat or convenient to produce, when we next wanted food and drink. Among the supplies I classify some as “standard pattern”—such things as we knew were always to be had in abundance, the “pièce,” as it were, of our whole ménage—three solid foods, two liquid foods, and one stimulant.

The stimulant, in the first place, as long as we remained at Camp III, was amazingly satisfactory, both for its kind, its quality, and especially for its abundance. We took it shamelessly before breakfast, and at breakfast again; occasionally with or after lunch, and most usually a little time before supper, when it was known as afternoon tea. The longer we stayed at this camp, the deeper were our potations. So good was the tea that I came almost to disregard the objectionable flavour of tinned milk in it. I had always supposed that General Bruce would keep a special herd of yaks at the Base Camp for the provision of fresh milk; but this scheme was hardly practicable, for the only grass at the Base Camp, grew under canvas, and no one suggested sharing his tent with a yak. The one trouble about our stimulant was its scarcity as we proceeded up the mountain. It diminished instead of increasing to the climax where it was needed most. Fortunately, the lower temperatures at which water boils as the atmospheric pressure diminishes made no appreciable difference to the quality, and the difficulty of melting snow enough to fill our saucepans with water was set off to some extent by increasing the quantity of tea-leaves.

The two liquid foods, cocoa and pea-soup, though not imbibed so plentifully as tea, were considered no less as the natural and fitting companions of meat on any and every occasion. At Camp III it was not unusual to begin supper with pea-soup and end it with cocoa, but such a custom by no means precluded their use at other times. Cocoa tended to fall in my esteem, though it never lost a certain popularity. Pea-soup, on the other hand, had a growing reputation, and, from being considered an accessory, came to be regarded as a principal. However, before I describe its dominating influence in the whole matter of diet, I must mention the solid foods. The three of “standard pattern” were ration biscuits, ham, and cheese. It was no misfortune to find above the Base Camp that we had left the region of fancy breads; for while the chupatis and scones, baked by our cooks with such surprising skill and energy, were usually palatable, they were probably more difficult of digestion than the biscuits, and our appetite for these hard wholemeal biscuits increased as we went upwards, possibly to the detriment of teeth, which became ever more brittle. Ham, of all foods, was the most generally acceptable. The quality of our “Hunter’s hams” left nothing to be desired, and the supply, apparently, was inexhaustible. A slice of ham, or several slices, either cold or fried, was fit food for any and almost every meal. The cheese supplied for our use at these higher camps, and for expeditions on the mountains besides, were always delicious and freely eaten. We had also a considerable variety of other tinned foods. Harris’s sausages, sardines, herrings, sliced bacon, soups, ox tongues, green vegetables, both peas and beans, all these I remember in general use at Camp III. We were never short of jam and chocolate. As luxuries we had “quails in truffles,” besides various sweet-stuffs, such as mixed biscuits, acid drops, crystallized ginger, figs and prunes (I feel greedy again as I name them), and, reserved more or less for use at the highest camps, Heinz’s spaghetti. More important, perhaps, than any of these was “Army and Navy Rations,” from the special use we made of it. I never quite made out what these tins contained; they were designed to be, when heated up, a rich stew of mutton or beef, or both. They were used by us to enrich a stew which was the peculiar invention of Morshead. He called it “hoosch.” Like a trained chef, he was well aware that “the foundation of good cooking is the stock-pot.” But such a maxim was decidedly depressing under our circumstances. Instead of accepting and regretting our want of a “stock-pot,” Morshead, with the true genius that penetrates to the inward truth, devised a substitute and improved the motto: “The foundation of every dish must be pea-soup.” Or if these were not his very words, it was easy to deduce that they contained the substance of his culinary thoughts. It was a corollary of this axiom that any and every available solid food might be used to stew with pea-soup. The process of selection tended to emphasise the merits of some as compared with other solids until it became almost a custom, sadly to the limitation of Morshead’s art, to prefer to “sliced bacon,” or even sausages, for the flotsam and jetsam of “hoosch,” Army and Navy Rations. It was “hoosch” that we ate at Camp IV, about the hour of an early afternoon tea on May 19.

We had hardly finished eating and washing up—it was a point of honour to wash up, and much may be achieved with snow—when the shadow crept over our tents and the chill of evening was upon us. We lingered a little after everything was set in order to look out over the still sunlit slopes of Mount Everest between us and the Rapiu La, and over the undulating basin of snow towards the Lhakpa La and Camp IV, and to pass some cheerful remarks with the porters, already seeking shelter, before turning in ourselves for the night. It had been, so far as we could tell, a singularly windless day. Such clouds as we had observed were seemingly innocent; and now, as darkness deepened, it was a fine night. The flaps of our two tents were still reefed back so as to admit a free supply of air, poor and thin in quality but still recognisable as fresh air; Norton and I and, I believe, Morshead and Somervell also lay with our heads towards the door, and, peering out from the mouths of our eiderdown bags, could see the crest above us sharply defined. The signs were favourable. We had the best omen a mountaineer can look for, the palpitating fire, to use Mr. Santayana’s words, of many stars in a black sky. I wonder what the others were thinking of between the intervals of light slumber. I daresay none of us troubled to inform himself that this was the vigil of our great adventure, but I remember how my mind kept wandering over the various details of our preparations without anxiety, rather like God after the Creation seeing that it was good. It was good. And the best of it was what we expected to be doing these next two days. As the mind swung in its dreamy circle it kept passing and repassing the highest point, always passing through the details to their intention. The prospects emerging from this mental movement, unwilled and intermittent and yet continually charged with fresh momentum, were wonderfully, surprisingly bright, already better than I had dared to expect. Here were the four of us fit and happy, to all appearances as we should expect to be in a snug alpine hut after a proper nightcap of whisky punch. We had confidence in our porters, nine strong men willing and even keen to do whatever should be asked of them; surely these men were fit for anything. And we planned to lighten their burdens as far as possible; only four loads, beyond the warm things which each of us would carry for himself, were to go on to our next camp—two tents weighing each 15 lb., two double sleeping-bags, and provisions for a day and a half besides the minimum of feeding utensils. The loads would not exceed 20 lb. each, and we should have two men to one load, and even so a man in reserve. To provide a considerable excess of porters had for long been a favourite scheme of mine. I saw no other way of making sure that all the loads would reach their destination. As it was, we should start with the knowledge that so soon as any man at any moment felt the strain too great he could be relieved of his load, and when he in his turn required to be relieved the other would presumably be ready to take up his load again. Proceeding in this way we should be free of all anxiety lest one of the loads should be left on the mountain-side or else put on to a climber’s back, with the chance of impairing his strength for the final assault. Ceteris paribus, we were going to succeed at least in establishing another camp. This was no mere hope wherein judgment was sacrificed to promote the lesser courage of optimism, but a reasonable conviction. It remained but to ask, Would the Fates be kind?

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CHAPTER VI
THE HIGHEST POINT

My first recollection of the morning of May 20 is of shivering outside the porters’ tents. It is not an enviable task at 23,000 feet, this of rousing men from the snugness of their sleeping-bags between 5 and 6 a.m. One may listen in vain for a note of alertness in their response; the heard notes will not echo the smallest zest for any enterprise. On this occasion the replies made to my tender inquiries and encouragements were so profoundly disappointing that I decided to untie the fastenings of the tent, which were as nearly as might be hermetically sealed. In the degree of somnolence and inertia prevailing I suspected the abnormal. Soon I began to make out a tale of confused complaints; the porters were not all well. The cause was not far to look for; they had starved themselves of air during the night. The best chance of a remedy was fresh air now and a brew of tea, which could easily be managed.

Meanwhile Norton had been stirring, and while I retired to “dress” he began to busy himself with preparations for our own breakfast. Tea of course was intended for us too, and further two tins of spaghetti had been reserved to give us the best possible start for the day. But one small thing had been forgotten. Those precious tins had lain all night in the snow; they should have been cuddled by human bodies, carefully nursed in the warmth of sleeping-bags. Now their contents were frozen stiff and beyond extraction even by an ice-axe. Even so it might be supposed a little boiling water would put all to rights. Had a little sufficed I should omit to tell the doleful tale. Only very gradually were the outer surfaces thawed, permitting the scarlet blocks (tomato sauce was an ingredient) to be transferred to another saucepan, where they had still to be thawed to homogeneous softness and afterwards heated to the point required for doing justice to the genius of Mr. Heinz. As the expenditure of treasured hot water merely for thawing spaghetti involved more melting of snow to water and boiling of water for indispensable tea, the kitchen-maid’s task was disagreeably protracted; and the one among us, Norton, who most continuously and stubbornly played the man’s part of kitchen-maid, sitting upon the snow in the chill early morning became a great deal colder than anyone should be with a day’s mountaineering in front of him.

Of our nine porters it was presently discovered that five were mountain-sick in various degrees; only four were fit to come on and do a full day’s work carrying up our camp. The whole of our reserve was already exhausted before we had advanced a single step up the North Ridge. But pessimism was not in the air this morning. We had won through our various delays and difficulties, we had eaten and enjoyed our wonderful breakfast, and after all we were able to make a start about 7.30 a.m. The reserve had already been of use; without it we should have been obliged to remain in camp, waiting for sick porters to recover, and counting our stores. Morshead, who by the testimony of good spirits seemed the fittest of us all, was set to lead the party; I followed with two porters, while Norton and Somervell shepherded the others on a separate rope. In a short half-hour we were on the North Col itself, the true white neck to the South of those strange blocks of ice, and looking up the North Ridge from its foot.

The general nature of what lay ahead of us can readily be appreciated from this point of view. To the right, as you look up, the great Northern slopes of Mount Everest above the main Rongbuk Glacier are slightly concave; the North-eastern facet to the left is also concave, but much more deeply, and especially more deeply in a section of about 1,500 feet above the North Col. Consequently the ground falls away more suddenly on that side below the ridge. The climber may either follow the crest itself or find a parallel way on the gently receding face to right of it. The best way for us, we soon saw, was not to follow the crest of snow or even the snow-slopes immediately to the right; for these were merged after a little interval in the vast sweep of broken rocks forming the North face of the mountain, and at the junction between snow and rocks was an edge of stones stretching upwards for perhaps 1,500 feet at a convenient angle. Loose stones that slip as he treads on them are an abomination to the climber’s feet and only less fatiguing than knee-deep sticky snow. We presently found those stones agreeably secure; enough snow lay among them to bind and freeze all to the slope; we were able to tread on firm, flat surfaces without the trouble of kicking our feet into snow; no sort of ground could have taken us more easily up the mountain. The morning, too, was calm and fine. Though it can hardly be said that we enjoyed the exercise of going up Mount Everest, we were certainly able to enjoy the sensation so long as our progress was satisfactory. But the air remained perceptibly colder than we could have wished; the sun had less than its usual power; and in the breeze which sprang up on our side, blowing across the ridge from the right, we recognized an enemy, “the old wind in the old anger,” the devastating wind of Tibet. The wolf had come in lamb’s clothes. But we were not deceived. Remembering bitter experiences down in the plains now 10,000 feet below us, we expected little mercy here, we only hoped for a period of respite; so long as this gentle mood should last we could proceed happily enough until we should be obliged to fight our way up.

We had risen about 1,200 feet when we stopped to put on the spare warm clothes which we carried against such a contingency as this. For my part, I added a light shetland “woolly” and a thin silk shirt to what I was wearing before under my closely woven cotton coat. As this outer garment, with knickers to match, was practically windproof, and a silk shirt too is a further protection against wind, with these two extra layers I feared no cold we were likely to meet. Morshead, if I remember right, troubled himself no more at this time than to wrap a woollen scarf round his neck, and he and I were ready and impatient to get off before the rest. Norton was sitting a little way below with his rucksack poised on his lap. In gathering up our rope so as to have it free when we should move on I must have communicated to the other rope some small jerk—sufficient, at all events, to upset the balance of Norton’s rucksack. He was unprepared, made a desperate grab, and missed it. Slowly the round, soft thing gathered momentum from its rotation, the first little leaps down from one ledge to another grew to excited and magnificent bounds, and the precious burden vanished from sight. For a little interval, while we still imagined its fearful progress until it should rest for who knows how long on the snow at the head of the Rongbuk Glacier, no one spoke. “My rucksack gone down the kudh!” Norton exclaimed with simple regret. I made a mental note that my warm pyjama-legs which he had borrowed were inside it, so if I were to blame I had a share in the loss. A number of offers in woollen garments for the night were soon made to Norton; after which we began to explain what each had brought for comfort’s sake, and I wondered whether my companions’ system of selection resembled mine;—as I never can resolve in cold blood to leave anything behind, when each article presents itself as just the one I may particularly want, I pack them all into a rucksack and then pull out this and that more or less at random until the load is not greater than I can conveniently carry; even so I almost invariably find that I have more clothing in reserve than I actually use.

However, we had no time to spare for discussing the dispensation of absolute justice between the various claims of affection and utility among a man’s equipment. We were soon plodding upwards again, and had we been inclined to tarry the bite of the keen air would have hurried us along. The respite granted us was short enough. The sun disappeared behind a veil of high clouds; and before long grey tones to match the sky replaced the varied brightness of snow and rocks, and soon now we were struggling to keep our breath and leaning our bodies against a heavy wind. We had not the experience to reckon exactly the dangers associated with these conditions. We could only look to our senses for warning, and their warning soon became obvious enough. Fingertips and toes and ears all began to testify to the cold. By continuing on the windward flank of the ridge just where we were most exposed we should incur a heavy risk of frostbite and the whole party might be put out of action. It was clear that something must be done, and without delay. The best chance was to change our direction. Very likely we should find less wind, as is often the case, on the crest itself, and in any case we must reach shelter on the leeward side at the earliest possible moment.

While Morshead stopped, at last submitting so far as to put on a sledging suit, which is reputed to be the best possible protection, I went ahead, abandoned the rocks, and steered a slanting course over the snow to the left. Unlike the softer substance we had met in the region of the North Col, the surface here was hard; on this smooth slope the blown snow can find no lodgment, cannot stay to be gathered into drifts, and the little that falls there is swept clean away. The angle soon became steeper, and we must have steps to tread in. A strong kick was required to make the smallest impression in the snow. It was just the place where we could best be served by crampons and be helped up by their long steel points without troubling ourselves at all about steps. Crampons of course had been provided among our equipment, and the question of taking them with us above Camp IV had been considered. We had decided not to bring them: we sorely needed them now. And yet we had been right to leave them behind; for with their straps binding tightly round our boots we should not have had the smallest chance of preserving our toes from frostbite. The only way was to set to work and cut steps. The proper manner of cutting one in such a substance as this is to take but one strong blow, tearing out enough snow to allow the foot to finish the work as it treads in the hole. Such a practice is not beyond the strength and skill of an amateur in the Alps. But even if he can muster the power for this sort of blow at a great altitude, he will soon discover the inconvenience of repeating it frequently; he will be out of breath and panting and obliged to wait, so that no time has been gained after all. The alternative is to apply less force; three gentle strokes, as a rule, will be required for each step. To cut a staircase in this humble manner was by no means impossible, as was proved again on the descent, up to 25,000 feet. But the same rules and limitations determine this labour as every other up here. The work can be done and the worker will endure it provided sufficient time is allowed. It is haste that induces exhaustion. On this occasion we were obliged to hurry; our object was to reach shelter as soon as possible. In a wind like that on a bare snow-slope a man must take his axe in both hands to meet the present need; future contingencies will be left to take care of themselves. The slope was never steep; the substance was not obdurate; but when at length we lay on the rocks and out of the wind I computed our staircase to be 300 feet, and at least one of us was very tired.

I cannot say precisely how much time passed on this arduous section of our ascent. It was now 11.30 a.m. The aneroid was showing 25,000 feet compared with a reading of 23,000 on the North Col; the rise of 2,000 feet had taken us in all 3½ hours. For some reason Morshead had been delayed with two or three of the porters, and as the rest of us now sat waiting for them we began to discuss what should be done about fixing our camp. It had been our intention to reach 26,000 feet before pitching the tents. But it was evident that very few places would accommodate them. We had already seen enough to realise how steeply the rocks of this mountain dip towards the North, with the consequence that even where the ground is broken the ledges are likely to prove too steep for camping. We must pass the night somewhere on this leeward side, and we had little hopes of finding a place above us. However, at about our present level, well marked as the point of junction between snow and rocks, we had previously observed from Camp III some ground which appeared less uncompromising than the rest. A broken ledge offered a practicable line towards this same locality.

Whether the decision we came to at this crisis of our fortunes were right or wrong, I cannot tell, and I hardly want to know. I have no wish to excuse our judgment. Who can tell what might have happened had we decided otherwise? And who can judge? Then why should I be at the pains to analyse the thoughts which influenced our decision? It is perhaps a futile inquiry. Nevertheless it is such decisions that determine the fate of a mountaineering enterprise, and the operative motives or contending points of view may have an interest of their own. Among us there was deliberation often enough, but never contention. There never was a dissentient voice to anything we resolved to do, partly, I suppose, because we had little choice in the matter, more because we were that sort of party. We had a single aim in common and regarded it from common ground. We had no leader within the full meaning of the word, no one in authority over the rest to command as captain. We all knew equally what was required to be done from first to last, and when the occasion arose for doing it one of us did it. Some one, if only to avoid delay in action, had to arrange the order in which the party or parties should proceed. I took this responsibility without waiting to be asked; the rest accepted my initiative, I suppose, because I used to talk so much about what had been done on the previous Expedition. In practice it amounted only to this, that I would say to my companions, “A, will you go first? B, will you go second?” and we roped up in the order indicated without palaver. Apart from this I never attempted to inflict my own view on men who were at least as capable as I of judging what was best. Our proceedings in any crisis of our fortunes were informally democratic. They were so on the occasion from which I have so grievously digressed.

It must not be forgotten that we had just come through a trying ordeal. Nothing is more demoralising than a severe wind, and it may be that our morale was affected. But I don’t think we were demoralised, or not in any degree so as to affect our judgment. The impression I retain from that remote scene where we sat perched in discussion crowding under a bluff of rocks is of a party well pleased with their performance, rejoicing to be sheltered from the wind, and every one of them quite game to go higher. Perhaps the deciding influence was the weather. A mountaineer judges of the weather conditions almost by instinct; and apart from our experience of the wind, which had already been sufficiently menacing, we knew, so far as such things can be known, that the weather would get worse before it got better. But we could not imagine what might be coming without thinking definitely about the porters. It would be their lot, wherever our new camp was fixed, to return this same day to Camp IV. It was no part of our design to risk even the extremities of their limbs, let alone their lives; apart from any consideration of ethics it would not be sensible; no one supposed that this attempt on Mount Everest would be the last of the season, even for ourselves, and if the porters who first completed this stage were to suffer nothing worse than severe frostbite the moral effect of that injury alone might be an irreparable disaster. The porters must be sent down before the weather grew worse, and the less they were exposed to the cold wind the better. It was 12.30 p.m. before the stragglers who had joined us had rested sufficiently to go on. To fix a camp 1,000 feet higher would probably require, granted reasonably good fortune in finding a site, another three hours; and if snow began to fall or the ridge were enveloped in mist it would be necessary to provide an escort for the porters. Had we supposed a place might be found anywhere above us within range on this lee-side of the ridge, we might conceivably have accepted these hard conditions and pushed on. Deliberately to choose a site on the ridge with such a wind blowing and in defiance of every threat in the sky was a folly not to be contemplated, and our suppositions as to the lee side above us (they were afterwards proved correct) were all unfavourable to going higher. The plan of encamping somewhere near at hand, not lower than 25,000 feet, still left plenty to hope for this time besides building the best foundation for a second attempt. In my opinion no other alternative was sanely practicable; and I believe this conviction was shared by all when at length we left our niche, having conceded so much already to the mountain.

As the broken ledges we now followed presented no special difficulties the party was able to explore more than one level in search of some place sufficiently flat and sufficiently commodious. The nature of the ground and the presence of cloud, though we were never thickly enveloped, prevented any sort of extensive view. Many suggestions were mooted and rejected; a considerable time elapsed and still we had found no site that would serve. At about 2 p.m. Somervell and some porters shouted the news that one tent could be pitched in the place where they were. On the far side of a defined rib slanting up to the ridge we had left they had discovered some sort of a platform. It was evident that work would be required to extend and prepare it for the tent, and they at once set about building a supporting wall and levelling the ground. It remained to find a place near at hand for the other tent. We could see no obvious shelf, but the constructional works undertaken by Somervell seemed to contain such a promising idea that Norton and I in separate places each started works of our own. Each of us very soon reached the same conclusion, that nothing could be done where he was. We moved away and tried again; but always with the same result; the ground was everywhere too steep and too insecure. One soon tires of heaving up big stones when no useful end is served. Eventually coming together, we resolved to agree on the least unlikely site and make the best of it. We chose the foot of a long sloping slab—at all events it was part of the mountain and would not budge—and there built up the ground below it with some fine stones we found to hand. Our tent was pitched at last with one side of the floor lying along the foot of the sloping slab and the other half on the platform we had made. It was not a situation that promised for either of us a bountiful repose, for one would be obliged to lie along the slope and the only check to his tendency to slip down would be the body of the other. However, there it was, a little tent making a gallant effort to hold itself proudly and well.

Before we had concluded these operations the porters had been sent down about 3 p.m. and kitchen had been instituted, and a meal was already being prepared. Presumably because their single tent would have to accommodate the four of us (ours was too far away), when we set ourselves down to eat and be warm, Somervell and Morshead had arranged the kitchen outside it. Somervell had appointed himself chief in this department and it remained only for the rest of us to offer menial service. But so great had been his energy and perseverance, sheltering the flame from the cold draught and by every device encouraging the snow to melt, that almost all such offers were rejected. Like a famous pretender, I would have gladly been a scullion, but I was allowed only to open one or two tins and fill up a pot with snow. I have no recollection of what we ate; I remember only a hot and stimulating drink, Brand’s essence or bovril or something of the sort. We did not linger long over this meal. We wanted to go to bed still warm. Norton and I soon left the others in possession of their tent and began to make our dispositions for the night.

To the civilised man who gets into bed after the customary routine, tucks himself in, lays his head on the pillow, and presently goes to sleep with no further worry, the dispositions in a climber’s tent may seem to be strangely intricate. In the first place, he has to arrange about his boots. He looks forward to the time when he will have to start next morning, if possible with warm feet and in boots not altogether frozen stiff. He may choose to go to bed in his boots, not altogether approving the practice, and resolving that the habit shall not be allowed to grow upon him. If his feet are already warm when he turns in, it may be that he can do no better; his feet will probably keep warm in the sleeping-bag if he wears his bed-socks over his boots, and he will not have to endure the pains of pulling on and wearing frozen boots in the morning. At this camp I adopted a different plan—to wear moccasins instead of boots during the night and keep them on until the last moment before starting. But if one takes his boots off, where is he to keep them warm? Climbing boots are not good to cuddle, and in any case there will be no room for them with two now inside a double sleeping-bag. My boots were happily accommodated in a rucksack and I put them under my head for a pillow. It is not often that one uses the head for warming things, and no one would suspect one of a hot head; nevertheless my boots were kept warm enough and were scarcely frozen in the morning.

It was all-important besides to make ourselves really comfortable, if we were to get to sleep, by making experiments in the disposition of limbs, adjusting the floor if possible and arranging one’s pillow at exactly the right level—which may be difficult, as the pillow should be high if one is to breathe easily at a great altitude. I had already found out exactly how to be comfortable before Norton was ready to share the accommodation. I remarked that in our double sleeping-bag I found ample room for myself but not much to spare. Norton’s entrance was a grievous disturbance. It was doubtful for some time whether he would be able to enter; considering how long and slim he is, it is astonishing how much room he requires. We were so tightly pressed together that if either was to move a corresponding manœuvre was required of the other. I soon discovered, as the chief item of interest in the place where I lay, a certain boulder obstinately immovable and excruciatingly sharp which came up between my shoulder-blades. How under these circumstances we achieved sleep, and I believe that both of us were sometimes unconscious in a sort of light, intermittent slumber, I cannot attempt to explain. Perhaps the fact that one was often breathless from the exhaustion of discomfort, and was obliged to breathe deeply, helped one to sleep, as deep breathing often will. Perhaps the necessity of lying still because it was so difficult to move was good for us in the end. Norton’s case was worse than mine. One of his ears had been severely frostbitten on the way up; only one side was available to lie on; and yet the blessed sleep we sometimes sigh for in easy beds at home visited him too.

The party had suffered more than at first we realized from exposure in the wind on the way up. The damage to Norton’s ear was not all. I noticed when my hands got warm in bed that three finger-tips appeared to be badly bruised; the symptom could only point to one conclusion, and I soon made out how they had come to be frostbitten. At the time when the step-cutting began I had been wearing a pair of lined leather gloves, motor-drivers’ gloves well suited to the occasion, and my hands had been so warm that I thought it safe to change the glove on my right hand for a woollen one with which it was easier to grasp the axe. But wool is not a good protection against wind, and in grasping the axe I must have partially stopped the circulation in these finger-tips. The injury, though not serious, was inconvenient. And Morshead had felt the cold far more than I. It is still uncertain whether he had yet been frostbitten in toes and fingers, but though he made no complaint about them until much later I have little doubt they were already touched, if not severely frozen. At all events, he had been badly chilled on the way up; he was obliged to lie down when we reached our camp and was evidently unwell.

When all is said about our troubles and difficulties, the night, in spite of everything, was endurable. For distraction to pass the sleepless intervals engaging thoughts were not far to seek; we had still our plans for to-morrow; the climax was to come; and, might we not get so high by such a time? Then, might not the remaining hours be almost, even quite enough? Besides, we had accomplished something, and though the moments following achievement are occupied more often in looking forward than in looking back, we perhaps deliberately encouraged in ourselves a certain complacency on the present occasion; we were able to feel some little satisfaction in the mere existence of this camp, the two small tents perched there on the vast mountain-side of snow-bound rocks and actually higher, at 25,000 feet, than any climbing party had been before. “Hang it all!” we cooed, “it’s not so bad.”

The worst of it in dimly conscious moments was still the weather. The wind had dropped in the evening, as it often does, and nothing was to be deduced from that; but the hovering clouds had not cleared off and the night was too warm. I’m not meaning that we complained of the warmth; but for fine weather we must have a cold night, and it was no colder here than we had often known it at Camp III.[^[6]] Occasionally stars were visible during the night; but they shone with a feeble, watery light, and in the early morning we were listening to the musical patter of fine, granular snow on the roofs of our tents. A thick mist had come up all about us, and the stones outside were white with a growing pall of fresh snow. We were greatly surprised under these conditions when, at about 6.30 a.m., a perceptible break appeared in the clouds to the East of us, the “weather quarter,” and this good sign developed so hopefully that we were soon encouraged to expect a fair day. It was even more surprising perhaps that some one among us very quickly discovered his conscience: “I suppose,” he said with a stifled yawn, in a tone that reminded one of Mr. Saltena rolling over in his costly bed, “it’s about time we were getting up.” No one dissented—how could one dissent? “I suppose we ought to be getting up,” we grunted in turn, and slowly we began to draw ourselves out from the tight warmth of those friendly bags.

[6]. The thermometer confirmed our senses and showed a minimum reading for the night of 7° F.

I do not propose to emphasise the various agonies of an early-morning start or to catalogue all that may be found for fumbling fingers to do; but one incident is worth recording. A second rucksack escaped us, slipping from the ledge where it was perched, and went bounding down the mountain. Its value, even Norton will agree, was greater than that of the first; it contained our provisions; our breakfast was inside it. From the moment of its elusion I gave it up for lost. What could stop its fatal career? What did stop it unless it were a miracle? Somehow or another it was hung up on a ledge 100 feet below. Morshead volunteered to go and get it. By slow degrees he dragged up the heavy load, and our precious stores were recovered intact.

At 8 a.m. we were ready to start and roped up, Norton first, followed by myself, Morshead and Somervell. This bald statement of fact may suggest a misleading picture; the reader may imagine the four of us like runners at the start of a race, greyhounds straining at the leash, with nerves on the stretch and muscles aching for the moment when they can be suddenly tight in strong endeavour. It was not like that. I suppose we had all the same feelings in various degrees, and even our slight exertions about the camp had shown us something of our physical state. In spite of the occasional sleep of exhaustion it had been a long, restless night, scarcely less wearisome than the preceding day; we were tired no less than when we went to bed, and stiff from lying in cramped attitudes. I was clear about my own case. Struggling across with an awkward load from one tent to the other, I had been forced to put the question, Is it possible for me to go on? Judging from physical evidence, No; I hadn’t the power to lift my weight repeatedly step after step. And yet from experience I knew that I should go on for a time at all events; something would set the machinery going and somehow I should be able to keep it at work. And when the moment of starting came I felt some little stir of excitement. If we were not going to experience “the wild joy of living, the leaping from rock up to rock,” on the other hand this was not to be a sort of funeral procession. A certain keenness of anticipation is associated merely with tying on the rope. We tied it on now partly for convenience, so that no one would be obliged to carry it on his back, but no less for its moral effect: a roped party is more closely united; the separate wills of individuals are joined into a stronger common will. Our roping-up was the last act of preparation. We had “got ourselves ready,” lacing up our boots so as to be just tight enough but not too tight, disposing puttees so that they would not slip down, attending to one small thing or another about our clothing for warmth and comfort’s sake, possibly even tightening a buckle or doing up a button simply for neatness, and not forgetting to arrange the few things we wanted to take with us, some in rucksacks, some nearer to hand in pockets. Two of us, Norton and I, as Somervell’s photograph proves, appeared positively dainty; the word seems hardly applicable to Somervell himself: but at all events we were all ready; we felt ready; and when all these details of preparation culminated in tying on the rope we felt something more, derived from the many occasions in the past when readiness in mind and body contained the keen anticipation of strenuous delights.

How quickly the physical facts of our case asserted their importance! We had only moved upwards a few steps when Morshead stopped. “I think I won’t come with you any farther,” he said. “I know I should only keep you back.” Considering his condition on the previous day I had not supposed Morshead would get very much higher; but this morning he had so made light of his troubles, and worn so cheerful a countenance, that we heard his statement now with surprise and anxiety. We understood very well the spirit of the remark; if Morshead said that, there could be no longer a question of his coming on, but we wondered whether one of us should not stay behind with him. However, he declared that he was not seriously unwell and was perfectly capable of looking after himself. Somervell’s judgment as a doctor confirmed him, and it was decided he should remain in camp while we three went on without him.

Mallory and Norton approaching their highest point, 26,985 ft.

Our first object was to regain the crest of the North ridge, not by retracing our steps to the point where we had left it yesterday, but slanting up to meet it perhaps 800 feet above us. Ascent is possible almost everywhere on these broken slopes; a steeper pitch can usually be avoided, and the more difficult feats of climbing need not be performed. In fact, the whole problem for the mountaineer is quite unlike that presented by the ridge of any great mountain in the Alps, which, if it is not definitely a snow ridge like that from the Dômedu Gouter to the summit of Mont Blanc, will almost invariably present a sharper edge and a more broken crest. On the North ridge of Everest one has the sensations rather of climbing the face than the ridge of a mountain; and it is best thought of as a face-climb, for one is actually on the North face, though at the edge of it. I can think of no exact parallel in the Alps—the nearest perhaps would be the easier parts on the Hornli ridge of the Matterhorn, if we were to imagine the stones to be fewer, larger and more secure. Somervell’s photographs will convey more to the trained eye of a mountaineer than any words of mine, and it will readily be understood that there was no question for us of gymnastic struggles and strong arm-pulls, wedging ourselves in cracks and hanging on our finger-tips. We should soon have been turned back by difficulties of that sort. We could allow ourselves nothing in the nature of a violent struggle. We must avoid any hasty movement. It would have exhausted us at once to proceed by rushing up a few steps at a time. We wanted to hit off just that mean pace which we could keep up without rapidly losing our strength, to proceed evenly with balanced movements, saving effort, to keep our form, as oarsmen say, at the end of the race, remembering to step neatly and transfer the weight from one leg to the other by swinging the body rhythmically upwards. With the occasional help of the hands we were able to keep going for spells of twenty or thirty minutes before halting for three or four or five minutes to gather potential energy for pushing on again. Our whole power seemed to depend on the lungs. The air, such as it was, was inhaled through the mouth and expired again to some sort of tune in the unconscious mind, and the lungs beat time, as it were, for the feet. An effort of will was required not so much to induce any movement of the limbs as to set the lungs to work and keep them working. So long as they were working evenly and well the limbs would do their duty automatically, it seemed, as though actuated by a hidden spring. I remember one rather longer halt. In spite of all my care I found that one of my feet was painfully cold, and fearing frostbite I took off my boot. Norton rubbed my foot warm. I had been wearing four thick socks, and now put back on this foot only three. As it remained warm for the rest of the day I have no doubt that the boot was previously too tight. Once again I learned the futility of stopping the circulation by wearing one layer of wool too many.

It was our intention naturally in setting out this day to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Provided we were not stopped by a mountaineering difficulty, and that was unlikely, the fate of our Expedition would depend on the two factors, time and speed. Of course, we might become too exhausted to go farther before reaching our goal; but the consideration of speed really covers that case, for provided one were capable of moving his limbs at all he would presumably be able to crawl a few steps only so slowly that there would be no point in doing so. From the outset we were short of time; we should have started two hours earlier; the weather prevented us. The fresh snow was an encumbrance, lying everywhere on the ledges from 4 inches to 8 inches deep; it must have made a difference, though not a large one. In any case, when we measured our rate of progress it was not satisfactory, at most 400 feet an hour, not counting halts, and diminishing a little as we went up. It became clear that if we could go no farther—and we couldn’t without exhausting ourselves at once—we should still at the best be struggling upwards after night had fallen again. We were prepared to leave it to braver men to climb Mount Everest by night.

By agreeing to this arithmetical computation we tacitly accepted defeat. And if we were not to reach the summit, what remained for us to do? None of us, I believe, cared much about any lower objective. We were not greatly interested then in the exact number of feet by which we should beat a record. It must be remembered that the mind is not easily interested under such conditions. The intelligence is gradually numbed as the supply of oxygen diminishes and the body comes nearer to exhaustion. Looking back on my own mental processes as we approached 27,000 feet, I can find no traces of insanity, nothing completely illogical; within a small compass I was able to reason, no doubt very slowly. But my reasoning was concerned only with one idea; beyond its range I can recall no thought. The view, for instance—and as a rule I’m keen enough about the view—did not interest me; I was not “taking notice.” Wonderful as such an experience would be, I had not even the desire to look over the North-east ridge; I would have gladly got to the North-east shoulder as being the sort of place one ought to reach, but I had no strong desire to get there, and none at all for the wonder of being there. I dare say the others were more mentally alive than I; but when it came to deciding what we should do, we had no lively discussion. It seemed to me that we should get back to Morshead in time to take him down this same day to Camp IV. There was some sense in this idea, and many mountaineers may think we were right to make it a first consideration. But the alternative of sleeping a second night at our highest camp and returning next day to Camp III was never mentioned. It may have been that we shrank unconsciously from another night in such discomfort; whether the thought was avoided in this way, or simply was not born, our minds were not behaving as we would wish them to behave. The idea of reaching Camp IV with Morshead before dark, once it had been accepted, controlled us altogether. It was easy to calculate from our upward speed, supposing that we could treble this on the descent, at what time we ought to turn; we agreed to start down at 2.30 p.m., but we would maintain our rate of progress as best we could until that time approached.

At 2.15 we completed the ascent of a steeper pitch and found ourselves on the edge of an easier terrain, where the mountain slopes back towards the North-east shoulder. It was an obvious place for a halt: we were in need of food; and we lay against the rocks to spend the remaining fifteen minutes before we should turn for the descent according to our bond. None of us was altogether “cooked”; we were not brought to a standstill because our limbs would carry us no farther. I should be very sorry to reach such a condition at this altitude; for one would not recover easily; and a man who cannot take care of himself on the descent will probably be the cause of disaster to his companions, who will have little enough strength remaining to help themselves and him. It is impossible to say how much farther we might have gone. In the light of subsequent events it would seem that the margin of strength to deal with an emergency was already small enough. I have little doubt that we could have struggled up perhaps in two hours more to the North-east shoulder, now little more than 400 feet above us. Whether we should then have been fit to conduct our descent in safety is another matter.

While we ate such food as we had with us, chiefly sugar in one form or another, chocolate, mintcake, or acid-drops, and best of all raisins and prunes, we now had leisure to look about us. The summit of Everest, or what appeared to be the summit (I doubt if we saw the ultimate tip), lying back along the North-east ridge, was not impressive, and we were too near up under this ridge to add anything to former observations as to the nature of its obstacles. The view was necessarily restricted when Everest itself hid so much country. But it was a pleasure to look westwards across the broad North face and down it towards the Rongbuk Glacier; it was satisfactory to notice that the North Peak which, though perceptibly below us, had still held, so to speak, a place in our circle when we started in the morning, this same Changtse had now become a contemptible fellow beneath our notice. We saw his black plebeian head rising from the mists, mists that filled all the valleys, so that there was nothing in all the world as we looked from North-east to North-west but the great twins Gyachung Kang and Chö Uyo; and even these, though they regarded us still from a station of equality, were actually inferior. The lesser of them is 26,000 feet, and we could clearly afford to despise him; the greater Chö Uyo we had to regard respectfully before we could be sure; his triangulated height is 26,870, whereas our aneroid was reading only 26,800; it seemed that we were looking over his head, but such appearances are deceptive, and we were glad to have the confirmation of the theodolite later proving that we had reached 26,985 feet—higher than Chö Uyo by 100 feet and more.

The beneficent superiority with which we now regarded the whole world except Mount Everest no doubt helped us to swallow our luncheon—or was it dinner?—a difficult matter, for our tongues were hanging out after so much exercise of breathing. We had no chance of finding a trickle here as one often may in the blessed Alps; and medical opinion, which knew all about what was good for us, frowned upon the notion of alcoholic stimulant for a climber in distress at a high altitude. And so, very naturally, when one of us (Be of good cheer, my friend, I won’t give you away!) produced from his pocket a flask of Brandy—each of us took a little nip. I am glad to relate that the result was excellent; it is logically certain therefore that the Brandy contained no alcohol. The non-alcoholic Brandy, then, no doubt by reason of what it lacked, had an important spiritual effect; it gave us just the mental fillip which we required to pull ourselves together for the descent.

Summit of Mount Everest from the highest point of the first climb, 26,983 feet, 21st May, 1922.

Happily inspired by our “medical comfort,” I announced that I would take the lead. Norton and I changed places on the rope. I optimistically supposed that I should find an easier way down by a continuous snow-slope to the West of the ridge. Somervell, also moved by inspiration, suggested that he should remain behind to make a sketch and hurry down our tracks to catch us up later. He says that I found it difficult to understand that he would only require a few minutes, and that I replied irritably. I can hardly believe that my tone just then was anything but suave, but I have no doubt I was glad to have him with us to be our sheet-anchor, and particularly so a little later, for we were in difficulties almost at once. We found more snow on this new line, as I had supposed; but it was not to our liking; it lay not on a continuous slope, but covering a series of slabs and only too ready to slide off. We were obliged to work back to the ridge itself and follow it down in our morning’s tracks.

At 4 p.m. we reached our camp, where Morshead was waiting. He was feeling perfectly well, he reported, and ready to come down with us to Camp IV. After collecting a few of our possessions which we did not wish to abandon to the uncertain future, we roped up once more to continue our descent. So far our pace going down had been highly satisfactory. In the Alps one usually expects to descend on easy ground twice as fast as one would go up. But we had divided our time of ascent by 4, and in an hour and a half had come down 2,000 feet. Under normal conditions at lower altitudes even this pace would be considered slow; it would not be an exceptionally fast pace for going up these slopes; and yet the image that stays in my memory is of a party coming down quite fast. It is evident that the whole standard of speed is altered. On the ascent, too, I had the sensation of moving about twice as fast as we actually were. I imagine that the whole of life was scaled down, as it were, that we were living both physically and mentally at half, or less than half, the normal rate. However that may be, we had now to descend only 2,000 feet to Camp IV, and with more than three hours’ daylight left we supposed we should have no difficulty in reaching our tents before dark.

Meditating after the event about the whole of our performance this day, I have often wondered how we should have appeared at various stages to an unfatigued and competent observer. No doubt he would have noted with some misgiving the gradually diminishing pace of the party as it crawled upwards; but he would have been satisfied, I think, that each man had control of his limbs and a sure balance, and as we were moving along together over ground where the rope will very easily be caught under the points of projecting rocks and thereby cause inconvenience and delay while it is unhitched, this observer, watching the rope, would have noticed that in fact it almost never was caught up. The party at all events were “keeping their form” to the extent of managing the rope as it ought to be managed. For a moment when they were in difficulties after turning back, he might have thought them rather shaky; but even here they were able to pull themselves together and proceed with proper attention and care. Whether he would have noticed any difference when they started off again I cannot say. A certain impetus of concentration, a gathering of mental and physical energy, a reserve called up from who knows where when they turned to face the descent, had perhaps spent its force; and though the party was a stage nearer to the end of the journey, it was also a stage nearer to exhaustion and to that state where carelessness so readily slips in unperceived. It may be supposed we were a degree less alert, all the more because we foresaw no difficulty; we had not exercised the imagination to figure difficulties on the descent, and we now came upon them unexpectedly.

The fresh snow fallen during the night had so altered appearances that we could not be certain, as we traversed back towards the ridge again, that we were exactly following the line by which we had approached our camp the day before. My impression is that we went too low and missed it. We were soon working along broken ground above a broad snow slope. Fresh snow had to be cleared away alike from protruding rocks where we wished to put our feet and from the old snow where we must cut steps. It was not a difficult place and yet not easy, as the slope below us was dangerous and yet not very steep, not steep enough to be really alarming or specially to warn the climber that a slip may be fatal. It was an occasion when the need for care and attention was greater than obviously appeared, just the sort to catch a tired party off their guard. Perhaps the steps were cut too hastily, or in one way and another were taking small risks that we would not usually take. The whole party would not necessarily have been in grave danger because one man lost his footing. But we were unprepared. When the third man slipped the last man was moving, and was at once pulled off his balance. The second in the party, though he must have checked these two, could not hold them. In a moment the three of them were slipping down and gathering speed on a slope where nothing would stop them until they reached the plateau of the East Rongbuk Glacier, 3,500 feet below. The leader for some reason had become anxious about the party a minute or two earlier, and though he too was moving when the slip occurred and could see nothing of what went on behind him, he was on the alert; warned now by unusual sounds that something was wrong, he at once struck the pick of his axe into the snow, and hitched the rope round the head of it. Standing securely his position was good, and while holding the rope in his right hand beyond the hitch, he was able to press with the other on the shaft of the axe, his whole weight leaning towards the slope so as to hold the pick of the axe into the snow. Even so it would be almost impossible to check the combined momentum of three men at once. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred either the belay will give or the rope will break. In the still moment of suspense before the matter must be put to the test nothing further could be done to prevent a disaster one way or the other. The rope suddenly tightened and tugged at the axe-head. It gave a little as it gripped the metal like a hawser on a bollard. The pick did not budge. Then the rope came taut between the moving figures, and the rope showed what it was worth. From one of the bodies which had slid and now was stopped proceeded an utterance, not in the best taste, reproaching his fate, because he must now start going up hill again when he should have been descending. The danger had passed. The weight of three men had not come upon the rope with a single jerk. The two lengths between the three as they slipped down were presumably not stretched tight, and the second man had been checked directly below the leader before the other two. Probably he also did something to check those below him, for he was partly held up by projecting rocks and almost at once recovered his footing. We were soon secure again on the mountain-side, and—not the least surprising fact—no one had been hurt.

I suppose we must all have felt rather shaken by an incident which came so near to being a catastrophe. But a party will not necessarily be less competent or climb worse on that account. At all events we had received a warning and now proceeded with the utmost caution, moving one at a time over the snow-covered ledges. It was slow work. This little distance which with fair conditions could easily be traversed in a quarter of an hour must have taken us about five times as long. However, when we reached the ridge and again looked down the snow where we had come up the day before, though it was clear enough we must waste no time, we did not feel greatly pressed. Our old tracks were, of course, covered, and we looked about for a way to avoid this slope; but it seemed better to go down by the way we knew, and we were soon busy chipping steps. It was a grim necessity at this hour of the day. I felt one might almost have slipped down checking himself with the axe. We were distinctly tempted. But after all, we were not playing with this mountain; it might be playing with us. There was a clear risk, and we were not compelled to accept it. We must keep on slowly cutting our steps. The long toil was shared among us until the slope eased off and we had nothing more to fear. We looked down to the North Col below us. No difficulty could stop our descent. We had still an hour of daylight. After all, with ordinary good fortune, we should be back in our tents before dark.

I had been aware for some time that Morshead, though he was going steadily and well, was more tired than the rest of us. His long halt at our high camp can have done him little good. He had not recovered. His strength had just served to keep him up where it was urgently necessary that he should preserve his balance; but it was now exhausted; he had quite come to the end of his resources, and at best he could move downwards a few steps at a time. It was difficult to see what could be done for him. There were places where we might sit down and rest, and we should be obliged not only to stop often for two or three minutes, but also to stay occasionally for perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Anything like a longer halt must be avoided if possible, as the air was already cold, and an exhausted man would be particularly sensitive. Probably a longer rest would not have helped him, and we proceeded as best we could, so as to avoid delay as much as possible. One of us, and it was usually Norton, gave Morshead the support of his shoulder and an arm round his waist, while I went first, to pick out exactly the most convenient line, and Somervell was our rearguard in any steeper place. So we crawled down the mountain-side in the gathering darkness, until as I looked back from a few yards ahead my companions were distinguishable only as vague forms silhouetted against the snow. There were long hours before us yet, and they would be hours of darkness. Occasionally the flicker of lightning from distant clouds away to the West reminded us that the present calm might sometime be disturbed. Perhaps below on the col, or it might be sooner, the old unfriendly wind would meet us once again. For the present it was fortunate that the way was easy; the great thing was to keep on the snow, and we found that the edge of rocks by which we had come up, and where it was now so much more difficult to get along, could be avoided almost everywhere. With the same edge of stones to guide us, we could not miss our way, and were still stumbling on in the dark without a lantern when we reached the North Col. But we had a lantern with us, and a candle too, in Somervell’s rucksack, and we should now require a light. I was reminded once again of the most merciful circumstance, for the air was still so calm that even with matches of a Japanese brand, continually execrated among us, we had no difficulty in lighting our candle.

Two hundred yards, or little more in a direct line, now separated us from our tents, with the promise of safety, repose, and warmth in our soft eiderdown bags. Looking back, I never can make out how we came to spend so long in reaching them. We had but to go along the broken saddle of snow and ice where our tracks lay, and then drop down to our camp on the shelf. But the tracks were concealed, and not to be found; crevasses lay under the snow waiting for us. With nothing to guide us, we must proceed cautiously, and once among the confusing shapes of white walls and terraces and monticules and corridors, it was the easiest thing in the world to lose our way. Somervell, who had covered the ground once each way more often than any of us, held the helm, so to speak, against a sea of conflicting opinions. Even he, now our leader, was not always right, and we had more than once to come back along our tracks and take a cast in another direction. To avoid the possible trouble or disaster of having two men at once in a crevasse, we were obliged to keep our intervals on the ropes, so that Morshead had now to take care of himself. Perhaps the lower altitude had already begun to tell, for he was stronger now, and came along much better than was to be expected. At length we reached a recognisable landmark, a cliff of ice about 15 feet high, where we had jumped down over a crevasse on our first visit here in order to avoid a disagreeable long step over another crevasse on an alternative route. I was very glad we had come this way rather than the other, for though, looking down at the dimly lit space of snow which was to receive us, I boggled a little at the idea of this leap, the landing-place was sure to be soft, and it would be easy not to miss it.

The First Climbing Party.

I think each of us was just a little relieved when he found himself safely down, and I dimly remember congratulating, not Morshead, but Longstaff. I had already transposed the names several times, and he now protested; but it made no difference, as I could remember no other. “Longstaff” became an idée fixe, and though the entity of Morshead remained unconfused—I did not, for instance, give him Longstaff’s beard—he was fixedly Longstaff until the following morning.

The agreeable change of finding ourselves together in that curious coign was hardly disturbed by Somervell’s remark, “We’re very near the end of our candle.” We felt we were all very near the end of our journey, for we had dimly made out from the higher level we had just quitted the neat rank of our tents still standing on the shelf below and ready to welcome us. We had only to find the rope which had been fixed on the steep slope below us and we should be at the end of our troubles. But the rope was deeply buried, and we searched in vain, dragging the snow with our picks along the edge of the fall. We were still searching when the last of our candle burnt out. In the end we must do without the rope, and began the abrupt descent tentatively, dubiously, uncertain that we had hit off just the right place. The situation was decidedly disagreeable. Suddenly someone among us hitched up the rope from under the snow. It may be imagined we were not slow to grasp it. The blessed security of feeling the frozen but helpful thing firmly in our hands! We positively made some sort of a noise; unrecognisable, perhaps, it would have been to sober daylight beings who know how to produce the proper effect, but if a dim bat of the night were asked what this noise resembled, he might have indicated that distantly, but without mistake it was like a cheer. A few minutes more and then—then, at 11.30 p.m., and there on the good flat snow as we fumbled at the tent-doors, then and there at last we began to say, “Thank God.”

Had we known what was yet in store for us, or rather what was not in store, we might have waited a little longer for so emphatic an exclamation. We were in need of food, and no solid food could be eaten until something had been done towards satisfying our thirst. It was not that one felt, at least I did not feel, a desire to drink; but the long effort of the lungs during the day in a rarefied atmosphere where evaporation is so rapid had deprived the body of moisture to such an extent that it was impossible to swallow, for instance, a ration biscuit. We must first melt snow and have water. But where were the cooking-pots? We searched the tents without finding a trace of them. Presumably the porters whom we had expected to find here had taken them down to Camp III in error. As we sat slowly unlacing our boots within the tents, it was impossible to believe in this last misfortune. We waited for a brainwave; but no way could be devised of melting the snow without a vessel. Still supperless, we wriggled into our sleeping-bags. And then something happened in Norton’s head. In his visions of all that was succulent and juicy and fit to be swallowed with ease and pleasure there had suddenly appeared an ice-cream. It was this that he now proposed to us; we had the means at hand to make ice-creams, he said. A tin of strawberry jam was opened; frozen Ideal Milk was hacked out of another; these two ingredients were mixed with snow, and it only remained to eat the compound. To my companions this seemed an easy matter; their appetite for strawberry cream ice was hardly nice to watch. I too managed to swallow down a little before the deadly sickliness of the stuff disgusted me. My gratitude to Norton was afterwards cooled by disagreeable sensations. In the last drowsy moments before complete forgetfulness I was convulsed by shudderings which I was powerless to control; the muscles of my back seemed to be contracted with cramp; and, short of breath, I was repeatedly obliged to raise myself on my elbows and start again that solemn exercise of deep-breathing as though the habit had become indispensable.

The last stage of our descent to Camp III had still to be accomplished on the following morning of May 22. I imagine that a fresh man with old tracks to help him might cover the distance from Camp IV in about an hour and a quarter. But no sign was left of our old tracks, and the snow was deeper here than higher up. Only in the harder substance below the fresh surface could new steps be cut wherever the slope was steep; and as we began to understand that the way would be long and toilsome, another thought occurred to us—our sleeping-bags at Camp IV would now be required at Camp III, and porters must be sent to fetch them. Our tracks, therefore, must be made safe for them. Half our labour was in hewing so fine a staircase that the porters would be able to go up and down unescorted without danger. The wearisome descent, which began at 6 a.m., continued far into the morning; the sun pierced the vapoury mists and the heat was immoderate now as the cold had been higher up. The fatigued party regarded the conventions until the first man reached the snow at the foot of the final ice-slope. There, so far as I could understand, the van became possessed of the idea that it would be more companionable for all to finish together. I found myself deliberately pulled from my steps and slid about 80 feet down the ice until the pick of my axe pulled me up at the foot of the slope. I could have borne the ignominy of my involuntary glissade had I not found Finch at the foot of the slope taking advantage of my situation with a kodak.

Frostbitten climber being helped down to Camp II.

The presence of Finch was easily explained. Reinforcements had arrived at Camp III in our absence, and the transport had worked with such wonderful speed that the oxygen cylinders were already in action. Finch, whom we had last heard of in bed with dysentery at the Base Camp, had shown such energy that he was now testing the oxygen apparatus with Wakefield and Geoffrey Bruce. They were bound for the North Col with a party of porters, so the return of our sleeping-bags was easily arranged. The lesser injustices of fate are hard to forgive, and we regretted labour that might have been left to others. However, Wakefield now took us in charge, and at noon we were at Camp III once more. Strutt and Morris had come out to meet us. Noel had stayed in camp, and, like a tormentor waiting for his disarmed victim, there we found the “movie” camera and him winding the handle.

However, our welcome in camp is a pleasing memory. The supply of tea was inexhaustible. Somervell confesses to having drunk seventeen mugfuls; he can hardly have been so moderate. Morshead probably needed to drink more than any of us; he ascribed his exhaustion on the mountain to want of liquid, and medical opinion was inclined to agree with the suggestion. However that may be, the night’s rest at a lower elevation had largely restored his strength, and Morshead arrived at Camp III no more fatigued to all appearances than the rest of us. But he bore the marks of his painful ordeal. His condition had made him a prey to the cold, and we only began to realise how badly he had been frostbitten as we sat in camp while Wakefield bound up the black swollen fingers.

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THE ATTEMPT WITH OXYGEN

By

CAPTAIN GEORGE FINCH

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CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND ATTEMPT

With the departure of the last of our companions on March 27, Crawford and I found ourselves left behind in Darjeeling impatiently awaiting the arrival of the oxygen equipment from Calcutta. A week elapsed before we were able to set out for Kalimpong, where we picked up the oxygen stores on April 4. On the evening of our second march out from Kalimpong, suspicious rattlings were heard in the cases containing the oxygen cylinders. On investigation, it transpired that they had been packed metal to metal, and the continual chafing caused by the rough mule transport had already resulted in considerable wear in the steel. This dangerous state of affairs, which, if not speedily remedied, would undoubtedly soon have led to the bursting of some of the cylinders, with consequent demoralisation of our transport, let alone possible casualties, called for immediate attention; so throughout the night of April 5–6, Crawford and I, aided by our porters, worked steadily at grommeting the cylinders with string and repacking them in such a manner as would render impossible any recurrence of the trouble.

On April 8, in a snowstorm, we crossed the Jelep La; thence, proceeding viâ the Chumbi Valley and Phari, we ultimately rejoined the main body of the Expedition in Kampa Dzong on the 13th. The rest of our journey across Tibet to the Base Camp has already been described elsewhere, but perhaps I may be permitted to give a few of my own impressions of the country and its inhabitants.

In recollection, the strange land of Tibet stretches itself out before me in an endless succession of vast, dreary plains, broken by chains of mountains that, in relation to the height of their surroundings, sink into the insignificance of hills. Arid and stony desert wastes, almost totally unblessed by the living green of vegetation; interminable tracts of sand that shift unceasingly under the restless feet of an ever-hurrying, pitilessly cruel wind; bleak, barren, and unbeautiful of form, but fair and of indescribable appeal in the raiment of soft glowing rainbow hues with which distance, as in compensation, clothes all wide open spaces. Sunsets provided many a wondrous picture, while towards the South a glistening array of white-capped excrescences marked the main chain of the Himalaya. The honour of being the most poignant of my memories of Tibet, however, remains with the wind. It blew unceasingly, and its icy blasts invariably met one straight in the face. The pre-monsoon wind is westerly; the post-monsoon wind blows from the East. Our journey towards the Base Camp led us towards the West; homeward bound, during the monsoon, we travelled East. Both going and returning, therefore, we marched in the teeth of a wind, that gnawed even at our weather-beaten, hardened skins, and was the most generous contributor in the quota of discomforts that Tibet meted out to us.

And what of the dwellers in these inhospitable plains? Like all humankind, the Tibetans have their bad as well as their good points. The former are easily told. If one wishes to converse with a Tibetan, it is always advisable to stand on his windward side. A noble Tibetan once boasted that during his lifetime he had had two baths—one on the occasion of his birth, the other on the day of his marriage. Those of us honoured by his presence found the statement difficult to believe. Apart from this rather penetrating drawback, the Tibetans are a most likeable people; cheery, contented, good-natured, and hard-working; slow to give a promise, but punctilious to a degree in carrying it out; truthful and scrupulously honest. As testimony of this last-mentioned trait, be it said that during the whole of our long wanderings through Tibet, when it was quite impossible to keep a strong guard over our many stores, we never lost so much as a single ration biscuit through theft. Old age is seldom met with; it is exceptional to see a Tibetan whose years number more than fifty-five or sixty. Presumably living in so severe a climate, at an altitude of 14,000 feet or more above sea-level, proves too great a strain upon the human heart. The priests, or “Lamas,” as they are called in Tibet, constitute the governing class. They represent the educated section of the community; the monasteries are the seats of learning, and, as such, are well-nigh all-powerful. I regret to state that I did not like the priests as much as the laity. The reason is not far to seek. If you wish to hold converse with a Lama, it is advisable not only to stand on his windward side, but also to take care that the wind is exceptionally strong. The Lamas do not marry. As two-fifths of the able-bodied population of Tibet lead a monastic life, it will be readily understood that the odour of sanctity is all-pervading. In other respects the monks proved as attractive as their simpler countrymen. Inquisitive with the direct and pardonable inquisitiveness of children, they are nevertheless men of a distinctly high order of intelligence. Kindly, courteous, and appreciative of little attentions, they were always ready to lend assistance and to give information concerning their religion and the manners and customs of their country.

These few of the more lasting of my impressions would be incomplete without mention of Tibetan music. On the assumption that whatever is, is beautiful, Tibetan music is beautiful—to the Tibetan. To the Western ear it is elementary in the extreme, and, in point of view of sheer ugliness of sound, competes with the jarring, clashing squeaks, bangs, and hoots of the jazz-bands that were so fashionable at home at the time of our departure for India.

On May 2, the day after our arrival at the Base Camp, Strutt, Norton, and I were sent off by the General to reconnoitre for a suitable first camping site near the exit of the East Rongbuk Valley. Gaining the latter by the so-called terrace route which leads over the tremendous moraines on the right bank of the main Rongbuk Glacier, we had no difficulty in finding on the right bank of the East Rongbuk Stream, but a few hundred yards West of the end of the East Rongbuk Glacier, a favourable position for Camp No. I. We returned that afternoon, descending down the snowed-over and frozen-up stream to the main Rongbuk Glacier, making our way thence to the Base Camp through the trough leading down between the glacier and the moraines. With this little excursion my climbing activities ceased for the time being. Soon afterwards I was beset by a troublesome stomach complaint, which had already claimed as victims the majority of the other members of the Expedition, and it was not until May 16 that I was sufficiently restored from the wearing effects of my illness to resume climbing. In spite of this, my time at the Base Camp was fully occupied. Frequent oxygen drills were held, and all the oxygen stores overhauled and tested. Various members of the Expedition were instructed in the use of Primus stoves. There were many small repairs of different natures to be done, and in my leisure moments I was kept busy with matters photographic. In addition, Mount Everest and the weather conditions prevalent thereon became objects of the keenest study and interest. The remark, “I suppose Mont Blanc would be absolutely dwarfed into insignificance by Mount Everest,” has frequently been made to me in one form or another, and, to my questioners’ amazement, my answer has always been a decided “No.” As a matter of fact, Mont Blanc, as seen from the Brévant or the Flégère, excels in every way any view I have ever enjoyed of Mount Everest. It is true that I have seen the latter only from a tableland which is itself from 14,000 to 16,000 feet above sea-level, and that I know nothing of the wonderful sight that Mount Everest probably presents to the observer from the Southern (Nepalese) side. The grandeur of a mountain depends very largely upon the extent to which it is glaciated. Mont Blanc is nearly 16,000 feet high, and its glaciers descend to within 4,000 feet of sea-level—a vertical zone of 12,000 feet of perpetual ice and snow. Those glaciers of Mount Everest which flow North, and thus the only ones with which we are concerned, descend to a point about 16,500 feet above sea-level—a vertical zone of 12,500 feet of perpetual ice and snow. Thus it is evident that, from the point of view of vertical extent of glaciation, there is little difference between the monarch of the Alps and the Northern side of the highest summit in the world. From the point of view of beauty there can be no comparison. Seen from one quarter, Mont Blanc rises in a series of snowy domes piled one against the other in ever-increasing altitude to a massive yet beautifully proportioned and well-balanced whole. From another side we see great converging granite columns, breathing the essence of noble purpose, proudly supporting and lifting aloft to the sun the gleaming, snowy-capped splendour of the summit dome. Another view-point, though revealing perhaps a less beautiful Mont Blanc, lacking much of the graceful symmetry and strong, purposeful design of the other views, is redeemed by the fact that the observer is forced in so close to the mountain that the rattling din of stonefalls and the loud crash of the ice-avalanche are always in his ears. Mont Blanc asserts her authority with no uncertain voice. In the Mount Everest as we of this Expedition know it, revealed in the full glare of the tropical sun, all this is lacking. Symmetry and beauty cannot truthfully be read out of the ponderous, ungainly, ill-proportioned lump which carries, as if by chance, on its Western extremity a little carelessly truncated cone to serve as a summit. Avalanches are neither seen nor heard. Falling stones there are without doubt, but one is too far off to hear them. Yet Everest had her moments. Diffused with the borrowed glory of sunrise or sunset, and clad in a mantle of fresh snow, the harsh clumsiness of her form would be somewhat softened and concealed; bathed in the yellow-blue light of dawn, as yet unkissed by the sun, but whipped into wakefulness by a driving westerly wind that tore from head and shoulders the snowy veil which she had donned during the night, rending it into long, spun-out living streamers, no beholder could gainsay her beauty.

Mount Everest from Base Camp.

Weather conditions naturally proved of the greatest interest. On consulting my diary, I find that during the period from May 1 to June 5, there were two days when the weather was fine and settled, and that these two days succeeded snowstorms which had thickly powdered the mountain with fresh snow. On both days the sky was cloudless, or nearly so, and, judging from the absence of driven snow-dust about the summit, Mount Everest appeared to be undisturbed by wind. Apart from these two occasions, however, the weather was never absolutely fine. Cloudless skies there were, but the great streamers of snow smoking away from the highest ridges of the mountain testified to the existence of the fierce and bitter wind against which a mountaineer would have to fight his way. On four occasions there were periods of snowstorms lasting from but a single night to three days and three nights.

On May 10, Mallory and Somervell set out for Camp III, to make ready for a first attempt to climb Mount Everest. I had practically recovered from my stomach trouble, and expected to be able to leave the Base in the course of a day or two, in order to follow up the first attempt with a second attack, in which oxygen was to be used. Norton was to be my companion. Unfortunately, however, I suffered a relapse, and Strutt, Norton, and Morshead left to join Mallory and Somervell, whereas I had to resign myself to several more days at the Base. At length, on May 15, I was ready and eager to think about doing something. My climbing companions were Geoffrey Bruce and Lance-Corporal Tejbir, the most promising of the Ghurkas. Wakefield was to accompany us as far as Camp III, in order to give us a clean bill of health from there onwards. Leaving the Base on the 16th, we proceeded to Camp I, where the following day was spent attending to our oxygen apparatus and transport arrangements. Soon after midday on the 18th, we arrived at Camp II, where the greater part of the afternoon was devoted to giving Geoffrey Bruce, Tejbir, and several of the porters, a lesson in the elements of mountaineering and of ice-craft. On the 19th we reached Camp III, where we learned from Colonel Strutt that Mallory, Norton, Somervell, and Morshead had gone up to the North Col in the morning. Geoffrey Bruce and I immediately set about overhauling our equipment, in particular our oxygen stores, and as we worked we could see the first party making their way through the séracs, and climbing the ice-cliffs of the lofty depression of the North Col.

The cylinders containing our oxygen were found to be in good condition; but the apparatus—through no fault of the makers, who had, indeed, done their work admirably—leaked very badly, and to get them into satisfactory working order, four days of hard toil with soldering-iron, hacksaw, pliers, and all the other paraphernalia of a fitter’s shop were necessary. Our workshop was in the open. The temperature played up and down round about 0° F., but inclined more to the negative side of that irrational scale. The masks from which the oxygen was to be breathed proved useless, but by tackling the problem with a little thought and much cheerfulness a satisfactory substitute was eventually evolved, making it possible to use the oxygen apparatus in an efficient manner. Without this new mask no real use could have been made of our oxygen supplies; oxygen would have been misjudged as being useless, and the solution of the problem of climbing Mount Everest would have been as distant as ever.

Preparatory to embarking on the climb itself, we went for several trial walks—one over to the Rapiu La, a pass 21,000 feet high, at the foot of the North-east ridge of Everest, from which we hoped to obtain views of the country to the south. But only part of the North-east ridge showed hazily through drifting mists. Towards the north and looking down the East Rongbuk Glacier, views were clearer, though partially obscured by rolling banks of cloud. Colonel Strutt and Dr. Wakefield, unoxygenated, accompanied us on this little expedition, and oxygen at once proved its value, so easily did Bruce and I outpace them. On May 22, acting on instructions from Colonel Strutt, Geoffrey Bruce, Wakefield, Tejbir, and I, with a number of porters, set out for the North Col to meet and afford any required assistance to the members of the first climbing party who were on their way down from the mountain. It was also our intention to bring stores up into the North Col as well as give the oxygen apparatus a final severe try-out prior to embarking upon an attack upon Mount Everest itself. We met the first climbing party just above the foot of the final steep slopes leading up to the North Col. They were more or less in the last stage of exhaustion, as, indeed, men who have done their best on such a mountain should be. After supplying them with what liquid nourishment was available, and leaving Wakefield and two porters to see them back to Camp III, we carried on up to the North Col. In the afternoon we returned to Camp III. There had been a considerable amount of step-cutting, for fresh snow had fallen, compelling us to deviate from the usual route; but even so, oxygen had made a brief Alpine ascent of what is otherwise a strenuous day’s work. We took three hours up and fifty minutes down, with thirty-six photographs taken en route.

East Rongbuk Glacier near Camp II.

On May 24, Captain Noel, Tejbir, Geoffrey Bruce, and I, all using oxygen, went up to the North Col (23,000 feet). Bent on a determined attack, we camped there for the night. Morning broke fine and clear though somewhat windy, and at eight o’clock we sent off up the long snow-slopes leading towards the North-east shoulder of Mount Everest, twelve porters carrying oxygen cylinders, provisions for one day, and camping gear. An hour and a half later, Bruce, Tejbir, and I followed, and, in spite of the fact that each bore a load of over 30 lb., which was much more than the average weight carried by the porters, we overtook them at a height of about 24,500 feet. They greeted our arrival with their usual cheery, broad grins. But no longer did they regard oxygen as a foolish man’s whim; one and all appreciated the advantages of what they naïvely chose to call “English air.” Leaving them to follow, we went on, hoping to pitch our camp somewhere above 26,000 feet. But shortly after one o’clock the wind freshened up rather offensively, and it began to snow. Our altitude was 25,500 feet, some 500 feet below where we had hoped to camp, but we looked round immediately for a suitable camping site, as the porters had to return to the North Col that day, and persistence in proceeding further would have run them unjustifiably into danger. This I would under no circumstances do, for I felt responsible for these cheerful, smiling, willing men, who looked up to their leader and placed in him the complete trust of little children. As it was, the margin of safety secured by pitching camp where we did instead of at a higher elevation was none too wide; for before the last porter had departed downwards the weather had become very threatening. A cheerful spot in which to find space to pitch a tent it was not; but though I climbed a couple of hundred feet or so further up the ridge, nothing more suitable was to be found. Remembering that a wind is felt more severely on the windward side of a ridge than on the crest, a possible position to the West of the ridge was negatived in favour of one on the very backbone. The leeside was bare of any possible camping place within reasonable distance. Our porters arrived at 2 p.m., and at once all began to level off the little platform where the tent was soon pitched, on the very edge of the tremendous precipices falling away to the East Rongbuk and Main Rongbuk Glaciers, over 4,000 feet below. Within twenty minutes the porters were scurrying back down the broken, rocky ridge towards the snow-slopes leading to the North Col, singing, as they went, snatches of their native hillside ditties. What splendid men! Having seen the last man safely off, I looked to the security of the guy-ropes holding down the tent, and then joined Bruce and Tejbir inside. It was snowing hard. Tiny, minute spicules driven by the wind penetrated everywhere. It was bitterly cold, so we crawled into our sleeping-bags, and, gathering round us all available clothing, huddled up together as snugly as was possible.

With the help of solidified spirit we melted snow and cooked a warm meal, which imparted some small measure of comfort to our chilled bodies. A really hot drink was not procurable, for the simple reason that at such an altitude water boils at so low a temperature that one can immerse the hand in it without fear of being scalded. Over a post-prandium cigarette, Bruce and I discussed our prospects of success. Knowing that no man can put forward his best effort unless his confidence is an established fact, the trend of my contribution to the conversation was chiefly, “Of course, we shall get to the top.” After sunset, the storm rose to a gale, a term I use deliberately. Terrific gusts tore at our tent with such ferocity that the ground-sheet with its human burden was frequently lifted up off the ground. On these occasions our combined efforts were needed to keep the tent down and prevent its being blown away. Although we had blocked up the few very small openings in the tent to the best of our powers, long before midnight we were all thickly covered in a fine frozen spindrift that somehow or other was blown in upon us, insinuating its way into sleeping-bags and clothing, there to cause acute discomfort. Sleep was out of the question. We dared not relax our vigilance, for ever and again all our strength was needed to hold the tent down and to keep the flaps of the door, stripped of their fastenings by a gust that had caught us unawares, from being torn open. We fought for our lives, realising that once the wind got our little shelter into its ruthless grip, it must inevitably be hurled, with us inside it, down on to the East Rongbuk Glacier, thousands of feet below.

And what of my companions in the tent? To me, who had certainly passed his novitiate in the hardships of mountaineering, the situation was more than alarming. About Tejbir I had no concern; he placed complete confidence in his sahibs, and the ready grin never left his face. But it was Bruce’s first experience of mountaineering, and how the ordeal would affect him I did not know. I might have spared myself all anxiety. Throughout the whole adventure he bore himself in a manner that would have done credit to the finest of veteran mountaineers, and returned my confidence with a cheerfulness that rang too true to be counterfeit. By one o’clock on the morning of the 26th the gale reached its maximum. The wild flapping of the canvas made a noise like that of machine-gun fire. So deafening was it that we could scarcely hear each other speak. Later, there came interludes of comparative lull, succeeded by bursts of storm more furious than ever. During such lulls we took it in turn to go outside to tighten up slackened guy-ropes, and also succeeded in tying down the tent more firmly with our Alpine rope. It was impossible to work in the open for more than three or four minutes at a stretch, so profound was the exhaustion induced by this brief exposure to the fierce cold wind. But with the Alpine rope taking some of the strain, we enjoyed a sense of security which, though probably only illusory, allowed us all a few sorely needed moments of rest.

Dawn broke bleak and chill; the snow had ceased to fall, but the wind continued with unabated violence. Once more we had to take it in turns to venture without and tighten up the guy-ropes, and to try to build on the windward side of the tent a small wall of stones as an additional protection. The extreme exhaustion and the chill produced in the body as a result of each of these little excursions were sufficient to indicate that, until the gale had spent itself, there could be no hope of either advance or retreat. As the weary morning hours dragged on, we believed we could detect a slackening off in the storm. And I was thankful, for I was beginning quietly to wonder how much longer human beings could stand the strain. We prepared another meal. The dancing flames of the spirit stove caused me anxiety bordering on anguish lest the tent, a frail shelter between life and death, should catch fire. At noon the storm once more regained its strength and rose to unsurpassed fury. A great hole was cut by a stone in one side of the tent, and our situation thus unexpectedly became more desperate than ever.

But we carried on, making the best of our predicament until, at one o’clock, the wind dropped suddenly from a blustering gale to nothing more than a stiff breeze. Now was the opportunity for retreat to the safety of the North Col camp. But I wanted to hang on and try our climb on the following day. Very cautiously and tentatively I broached my wish to Bruce, fearful lest the trying experience of the last twenty-four hours had undermined his keenness for further adventure. Once again might I have spared myself all anxiety. He jumped at the idea, and when our new plans were communicated to Tejbir, the only effect upon him was to broaden his already expansive grin.

It was a merry little party that gathered round to a scanty evening meal cooked with the last of our fuel. The meal was meagre for the simple reason that we had catered for only one day’s short rations, and we were now very much on starvation diet. We had hardly settled down for another night when, about 6 p.m., voices were heard outside. Our unexpected visitors were porters who, anxious as to our safety, had left the North Col that afternoon when the storm subsided. With them they brought thermos flasks of hot beef-tea and tea provided by the thoughtful Noel. Having accepted these most gratefully, we sent the porters back without loss of time.

Oxygen Apparatus.

Captain Noel kinematographing the ascent of Mount Everest from the Chang La.

That night began critically. We were exhausted by our previous experiences and through lack of sufficient food. Tejbir’s grin had lost some of its expanse. On the face of Geoffrey Bruce, courageously cheerful as ever, was a strained, drawn expression that I did not like. Provoked, perhaps, by my labours outside the tent, a dead, numbing cold was creeping up my limbs—a thing I had only once before felt and to the seriousness of which I was fully alive. Something had to be done. Like an inspiration came the thought of trying the effect of oxygen. We hauled an apparatus and cylinders into the tent, and, giving it the air of a joke, we took doses all round. Tejbir took his medicine reluctantly, but with relief I saw his face brighten up. The effect on Bruce was visible in his rapid change of expression. A few minutes after the first deep breath, I felt the tingling sensation of returning life and warmth to my limbs. We connected up the apparatus in such a way that we could breathe a small quantity of oxygen throughout the night. The result was marvellous. We slept well and warmly. Whenever the tube delivering the gas fell out of Bruce’s mouth as he slept, I could see him stir uneasily in the uric, greenish light of the moon as it filtered through the canvas. Then half unconsciously replacing the tube, he would fall once more into a peaceful slumber. There is little doubt that it was the use of oxygen which saved our lives during this second night in our high camp.

Before daybreak we were up, and proceeded to make ready for our climb. Putting on our boots was a struggle. Mine I had taken to bed with me, and a quarter of an hour’s striving and tugging sufficed to get them on. But Bruce’s and Tejbir’s were frozen solid, and it took them more than an hour to mould them into shape by holding them over lighted candles. Shortly after six we assembled outside. Some little delay was incurred in arranging the rope and our loads, but at length at 6.30 a.m., soon after the first rays of the sun struck the tent, we shouldered our bundles and set off. What with cameras, thermos bottles, and oxygen apparatus, Bruce and I each carried well over 40 lb.; Tejbir with two extra cylinders of oxygen shouldered a burden of about 50 lb.

Our scheme of attack was to take Tejbir with us as far as the North-east shoulder, there to relieve him of his load and send him back. The weather was clear. The only clouds seemed so far off as to presage no evil, and the breeze, though intensely cold, was bearable. But it soon freshened up, and before we had gone more than a few hundred feet the cold began to have its effect on Tejbir’s sturdy constitution, and he showed signs of wavering. Bruce’s eloquent flow of Gurumuki, however, managed to boost him up to an altitude of 26,000 feet. There he collapsed entirely, sinking face downwards on to the rocks and crushing beneath him the delicate instruments of his oxygen apparatus. I stormed at him for thus maltreating it, while Bruce exhorted him for the honour of his regiment to struggle on; but it was all in vain. Tejbir had done his best; and he has every right to be proud of the fact that he has climbed to a far greater height than any other native. We pulled him off his apparatus and, relieving him of some cylinders, cheered him up sufficiently to start him with enough oxygen on his way back to the high camp, there to await our return. We had no compunction about letting him go alone, for the ground was easy and he could not lose his way, the tent being in full view below.

After seeing him safely off and making good progress, we loaded up Tejbir’s cylinders, and, in view of the easy nature of the climbing, mutually agreed to dispense with the rope, and thus enable ourselves to proceed more rapidly. Climbing not very steep and quite easy rocks, and passing two almost level places affording ample room for some future high camp, we gained an altitude of 26,500 feet. By this time, however, the wind, which had been steadily rising, had acquired such force that I considered it necessary to leave the ridge and continue our ascent by traversing out across the great northern face of Mount Everest, hoping by so doing to find more shelter from the icy blasts. It was not easy to come to this decision, because I saw that between us and the shoulder the climbing was all plain sailing and presented no outstanding difficulty. Leaving the ridge, we began to work out into the face. For the first few yards the going was sufficiently straightforward, but presently the general angle became much steeper, and our trials were accentuated by the fact that the stratification of the rocks was such that they shelved outward and downward, making the securing of adequate footholds difficult. We did not rope, however. I knew that the longer we remained unroped, the more time we should save—a consideration of vital importance. But as I led out over these steeply sloping, evilly smooth slabs, I carefully watched Bruce to see how he would tackle the formidable task with which he was confronted on this his first mountaineering expedition. He did his work splendidly and followed steadily and confidently, as if he were quite an old hand at the game. Sometimes the slabs gave place to snow—treacherous, powdery stuff, with a thin, hard, deceptive crust that gave the appearance of compactness. Little reliance could be placed upon it, and it had to be treated with great care. And sometimes we found ourselves crossing steep slopes of scree that yielded and shifted downwards with every tread. Very occasionally in the midst of our exacting work we were forced to indulge in a brief rest in order to replace an empty cylinder of oxygen by a full one. The empty ones were thrown away, and as each bumped its way over the precipice and the good steel clanged like a church bell at each impact, we laughed aloud at the thought that “There goes another 5 lb. off our backs.” Since leaving the ridge we had not made much height although we seemed to be getting so near our goal. Now and then we consulted the aneroid barometer, and its readings encouraged us on. 27,000 feet; then we gave up traversing and began to climb diagonally upwards towards a point on the lofty North-east ridge, midway between the shoulder and the summit. Soon afterwards an accident put Bruce’s oxygen apparatus out of action. He was some 20 feet below me, but struggled gallantly upwards as I went to meet him, and, after connecting him on to my apparatus and so renewing his supply of oxygen, we soon traced the trouble and effected a satisfactory repair. The barometer here recorded a height 27,300 feet. The highest mountain visible was Chö Uyo, which is just short of 27,000 feet. We were well above it and could look across it into the dense clouds beyond. The great West Peak of Everest, one of the most beautiful sights to be seen from down in the Rongbuk Valley, was hidden, but we knew that our standpoint was nearly 2,000 feet above it. Everest itself was the only mountain top which we could see without turning our gaze downwards. We could look across into clouds which lay at some undefined distance behind the North-east shoulder, a clear indication that we were only a little, if any, below its level. Pumori, an imposing ice-bound pyramid, 23,000 feet high, I sought at first in vain. So far were we above it that it had sunk into an insignificant little ice-hump by the side of the Rongbuk Glacier. Most of the other landmarks were blotted out by masses of ominous, yellow-hued clouds swept from the West in the wake of an angry storm-wind. The point we reached is unmistakable even from afar. We were standing on a little rocky ledge, just inside an inverted V of snow, immediately below the great belt of reddish-yellow rock which cleaves its way almost horizontally through the otherwise greenish-black slabs of the mountain. Though 1,700 feet below, we were well within half a mile of the summit, so close, indeed, that we could distinguish individual stones on a little patch of scree lying just underneath the highest point. Ours were truly the tortures of Tantalus; for, weak from hunger and exhausted by that nightmare struggle for life in our high camp, we were in no fit condition to proceed. Indeed, I knew that if we were to persist in climbing on, even if only for another 500 feet, we should not both get back alive. The decision to retreat once taken, no time was lost, and, fearing lest another accidental interruption in the oxygen supply might lead to a slip on the part of either of us, we roped together. It was midday. At first we returned in our tracks, but later found better going by aiming to strike the ridge between the North-east shoulder and the North Col at a point above where we had left it in the morning. Progress was more rapid, though great caution was still necessary. Shortly after 2 p.m., we struck the ridge and there reduced our burdens to a minimum by dumping four oxygen cylinders. The place will be easily recognised by future explorers; those four cylinders are perched against a rock at the head of the one and only large snow-filled couloir running right up from the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier to the ridge. The clear weather was gone. We plunged down the easy, broken rocks through thick mists driven past us from the West by a violent wind. For one small mercy we were thankful—no snow fell. We reached our high camp in barely half an hour, and such are the vagaries of Everest’s moods that in this short time the wind had practically dropped. Tejbir lay snugly wrapped up in all three sleeping-bags, sleeping the deep sleep of exhaustion. Hearing the voices of the porters on their way up to bring down our kit, we woke him up, telling him to await their arrival and to go down with them. Bruce and I then proceeded on our way, met the ascending porters and passed on, greatly cheered by their bright welcomes and encouraging smiles. But the long descent, coming as it did on the top of a hard day’s work, soon began to find out our weakness. We were deplorably tired, and could no longer move ahead with our accustomed vigour. Knees did not always bend and unbend as required. At times they gave way altogether and forced us, staggering, to sit down. But eventually we reached the broken snows of the North Col, and arrived in camp there at 4 p.m. A craving for food, to the lack of which our weakness was mainly due, was all that animated us. Hot tea and a tin of spaghetti were soon forthcoming, and even this little nourishment refreshed us and renewed our strength to such an extent that three-quarters of an hour later we were ready to set off for Camp III. An invaluable addition to our little party was Captain Noel, the indefatigable photographer of the Expedition, who had already spent four days and three nights on the North Col. He formed our rearguard and nursed us safely down the steep snow and ice slopes on to the almost level basin of the glacier below. Before 5.30 p.m., only forty minutes after leaving the col, we reached Camp III. Since midday, from our highest point we had descended over 6,000 feet; but we were quite finished.

The British Members of the Second Climbing Party.

That evening we dined well. Four whole quails truffled in pâté-de-foie gras, followed by nine sausages, left me asking for more. The last I remember of that long day was going to sleep, warm in the depths of our wonderful sleeping-bag, with the remains of a tin of toffee tucked away in the crook of my elbow.

Next morning showed that Bruce’s feet were sorely frostbitten. I had practically escaped; but the cold had penetrated the half-inch-thick soles of my boots and three pairs of heavy woollen socks, and four small patches of frostbite hampered me at first in my efforts to walk. Bruce was piled on to a sledge, and I journeyed with him as his fellow-passenger. Willing porters dragged us down until the surface of the glacier became so rough as to impose too great a strain on our slender conveyance with its double burden.

Our attack upon Mount Everest had failed. The great mountain with its formidable array of defensive weapons had won; but if the body had suffered, the spirit was still whole. Reaching a point whence we obtained our last close view of the great unconquered Goddess Mother of the Snows, Geoffrey Bruce bade his somewhat irreverent adieux with “Just you wait, old thing, you’ll be for it soon!”—words that still are expressive of my own sentiments.

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CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSIONS

Geoffrey Bruce and I arrived back at the Base Camp early in the afternoon of May 29. The next few days were spent in resting, and I then underwent the same experience as the members of the first climbing party; that is, instead of recovering my strength rapidly during the first three or four days, if anything a further decline took place. However, as the weather appeared fine, and there seemed promise of a bright spell prior to the breaking of the monsoon, it was decided to make another attempt on the mountain. Of the remaining climbing members of the Expedition, Somervell was undoubtedly the fittest, with Mallory a good second. Both had enjoyed some ten days’ rest since their first assault upon Mount Everest, and therefore had a chance of recovering from the abnormal strain to which they had been submitted. Medical opinion as to my condition after so brief a rest was somewhat divided, but in the end I was passed as sufficiently fit to join in the third attempt. On the 3rd of June we left the Base Camp. The party consisted of Wakefield as M.O., Crawford, and later Morris, as transport officers, Mallory, Somervell and myself as climbers. The attempt was to be made with oxygen, and I was placed in command. It required a great effort for me to get as far as Camp I, and I realised there that the few days’ rest which I had enjoyed at the Base Camp had been quite insufficient to allow of my recuperation. During the night the weather turned with a vengeance and it snowed heavily, and I knew that there could be no object in my proceeding farther. After giving Somervell final detailed instructions regarding the oxygen apparatus, I wished them all the best of luck, and on the 4th returned to the Base Camp. As Strutt, Longstaff, and Morshead were leaving next day for Darjeeling, I was given, and availed myself of, the opportunity of accompanying them.

That return journey constitutes one of the most delightful experiences of my life. Within a week of leaving the Base Camp, I had entirely regained my strength, although a certain tenderness in the soles of my feet made itself felt for some considerable time. For the most part the weather was warm, and everywhere the eye feasted on the riotous colouring of blossoms such as we had never before seen. The only fly in the ointment was the ever-present sense of defeat coupled with the knowledge that with only a little better luck we should have won through.

In spite of our failure, however, I felt that we had learnt much; and perhaps the most important lesson of all was that we had been taught the real value of oxygen. Prior to the formation of the 1922 Expedition, the oxygen problem had already been the subject of much discussion round which two distinct schools of thought had arisen. The first, headed by Professor G. Dreyer, F.R.S., Professor of Pathology at the University of Oxford, was staunch to the belief that, without the assistance of a supply of oxygen carried in containers on the back of the climber, it would be impossible for a man to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The second body of scientific opinion held that, not only would it be possible for a man to attain the summit of Everest unaided by an artificial supply of oxygen, but that the weight of such a supply would only hamper the climber in his efforts, and thus completely counterbalance any advantages likely to accrue from its use. To arrive at an impartial conclusion as to the correctitude of these two divergent opinions, it is only necessary to give careful consideration to the results achieved on the two high climbs of May 22 and May 27 respectively. The former was made without an artificial supply of oxygen, the latter with. The first climbing party, consisting of Mallory, Morshead, Norton, and Somervell, left the North Col at 7 a.m. on the 20th of May, and that afternoon, at an altitude of 25,000 feet above sea-level, pitched a camp just off the great North ridge leading down from the shoulder. Morshead had suffered from the cold and was evidently unwell. One of Norton’s ears had been badly frostbitten, and Mallory had frostbitten finger-tips. Somervell alone was, to all intents and purposes, as yet untouched. Snow fell during the night, but they were untroubled by wind. At eight o’clock next morning they left their camp—all save Morshead, who, apparently at the end of his tether and unable to go farther, had to remain behind. After over six hours’ climbing, Mallory, Norton, and Somervell succeeded in reaching an altitude of 26,985 feet; so that, since their departure from their high camp, they had gained a vertical height of 1,985 feet at a rate of ascent of 330 feet per hour. The point at which they turned back lies below the shoulder on the great North ridge, and is, in horizontal distance, about 1⅛ miles from the summit, and rather over 2,000 feet below it in vertical height. They began to retrace their steps at 2.30 in the afternoon, and regained their high camp at four o’clock; their rate of descent therefore was 1,320 feet per hour. Shortly after 4 p.m., accompanied by Morshead, they started on the return journey to the North Col, where they arrived at 11.30 that night, a rate of descent of 270 feet per hour. We had seen them on their way down from their high camp, and acting on instructions from Colonel Strutt, we went up towards the North Col on the 23rd to render them assistance. We met them just above the foot of the steep slopes leading up the col. They were obviously in the last stages of exhaustion, as, indeed, men should be who had done their best on a mountain like Mount Everest.

On the 25th of May the second party, consisting of Geoffrey Bruce, Tejbir and myself, left the North Col. Our porters, who did not use oxygen, left at eight o’clock; we, using oxygen, left at 9.30 a.m., and in an hour and a half succeeded in overtaking them at an altitude of 24,500 feet, where, somewhat fatigued with their three hours’ effort, they paused to rest. A moment’s calculation will show that we had been climbing at the rate of 1,000 feet per hour. Leaving the porters to follow, we eventually gained an altitude of 25,500 feet, where, owing to bad weather, we were constrained to camp. It was not until two o’clock in the afternoon that the porters rejoined us, despite the fact that our own progress had been hindered by the necessity for much step-cutting. That night in our high camp was a night of trial and no rest, and the following day, the 26th, was little better; in addition, our supply of food was exhausted. Then followed a second night, when the advantages of using oxygen to combat fierce cold were strikingly evident. At six o’clock on the morning of the 27th, having had practically no rest for two nights and a day, half starved and suffering acutely from hunger, we set out from our high camp in full hopes of gaining the summit of Mount Everest. Half an hour later, at an altitude of 26,000 feet, Tejbir broke down—an unfortunate occurrence that may be largely attributed to his lack of really windproof clothing. On arriving at a height of 26,500 feet we were forced to leave the ridge, so violent and penetratingly cold was the wind to which we were exposed. The thousand feet from our camp up to this point had occupied one and a half hours, some twenty minutes of which had been employed in re-arranging the loads when Tejbir broke down. Our rate of progress, therefore, had been about 900 feet per hour, in spite of the fact that we each carried a load of over 40 lb. After leaving the ridge we struck out over difficult ground across the great North face of the mountain, gaining but little in altitude, but steadily approaching our goal. Eventually we decided to turn back at a point less than half a mile in horizontal distance from, and about 1,700 feet below, the summit. Thus, although we had climbed in vertical height only some 300 feet higher than the first party, nevertheless we were more than twice as close to the summit than they had been when they turned back.

To summarise the two performances. The first party established a camp at an altitude of 25,000 feet, occupied it for one night, and finally reaching a point 26,985 feet in height, and 1⅛ miles from the summit, returned without a break to the North Col. The second party established a camp at an altitude of 25,500 feet, occupied it for two nights and almost two days, and eventually reaching a point of 27,300 feet high and less than half a mile from the summit, returned without a break to Camp III. The weather conditions throughout were incomparably worse than those experienced by the first party. The difference between the two performances cannot be ascribed to superior climbing powers on the part of the second party, for the simple reason that all the members of the first party were skilled and proven mountaineers, while Geoffrey Bruce and Lance-Corporal Tejbir, though at home in the hills, had never before set foot on a snow and ice mountain. No matter how strong and willing and gallant an inexperienced climber may be, his lack of mountaineering skill and knowledge inevitably results in that prodigality of effort—much of it needless—which invariably and quickly places him at a grave disadvantage when compared with the trained mountaineer. The strength of a climbing party is no greater than that of its weakest member. Judged on this basis the second party was very weak compared with the first, and the superior results obtained by the former can only be ascribed to the fact that they made use of an artificial supply of oxygen.

The contention, therefore, that the disadvantages of its weight would more than counterbalance the advantages of an artificial supply of oxygen, may be dismissed as groundless, and the assumption may be made that on any further attempt upon Everest oxygen will form a most important part of the climber’s equipment. The question next arises as to the exact stage in the proceedings at which recourse should be made to the assistance of oxygen. The strongest members of the Expedition felt fit and well, and recuperated readily from fatigue, at Camp III, 21,000 feet above sea-level, but at the North Col this was no longer the case. Thus it would seem that the upper level of true acclimatisation lies somewhere between 21,000 and 23,000 feet. I would therefore advocate commencing to use oxygen somewhere between these two levels, preferably at the foot of the steep slopes leading up to the North Col. The use of small quantities would allow the climber to reach the Col without unduly tiring himself. From the North Col to a high camp situated at an altitude of about 26,500 feet, a slightly increased quantity of oxygen would suffice to enable the climber to progress almost as rapidly as he would in the much lower levels of the Alps. We know from experience that a camp at the above-mentioned altitude can be readily established, and in all except the worst of weather conditions a party can make its way down again. Between the camp and the summit there would be a vertical height of only 2,500 feet, and it is conceivable that with a full supply of oxygen this distance could be covered in as little as four hours. I am strongly of the opinion that only one camp should be used between the North Col and the summit. No matter what precautions are taken, man’s strength is rapidly sapped during the stay at these great altitudes, and the plan of campaign most likely to ensure success would appear to be leisurely and comfortable progress as far as the North Col, the establishment of a high camp at 26,500 feet, and a final dash to the summit. This last part of the programme, however, would not be feasible unless a small dump of oxygen were made at a height of about 27,500 feet. To do this it would be necessary for a specially detailed party to spend one night at the high camp, and on the following day employ their strength in making a dump somewhere above the shoulder. This done, they would then be able to return to the North Col with the satisfaction of knowing that they had made it possible for the actual climbing party to win through.

It is by no means yet certain which is the best line of approach to the North Col. The route hitherto followed, viâ the East Rongbuk Glacier, is tedious and roundabout, but it has the advantage of being well sheltered from the wind, and, except for the final steep slopes beneath the col, safe under any conditions. Much more direct, however, and probably less arduous, is the approach from over the main Rongbuk Glacier. The line of ascent thence to the summit of the col presents no real difficulty, and, provided it is not found to be too exposed to the wind, is undoubtedly much safer, even after heavy snowfalls, than that previously followed. In the light of past experience one can hardly hope to count on good weather as an ally; adequate protection in the form of windproof clothing will enable the climber to face all but actual snowstorms.

Climbing parties making the final assaults on the summit should be small, consisting of two men and no more. In the event of one man collapsing, his comrade, if at all up to scratch, should be able to get him down in safety. By so limiting the size of the parties, a number of attacks, each one as strong as if effected by a large and cumbersome team of, say, four, could be carried out. Again, in the case of small parties as suggested, mutual attention to each other’s oxygen outfit is possible and any necessary repair or adjustment more expeditiously made.

The type of climber who should go farthest on Mount Everest would appear to be similar to that which best suits the Alps. Of the physical attributes necessary, the following points, in addition to what is usually termed perfect physical fitness, may be emphasised. In the rarefied atmosphere of high altitudes the larger the vital capacity the better. By the term “vital capacity” is meant the maximum amount of air an individual is able to expel from the lungs by voluntary effort after taking the deepest possible inspiration. Compared with the lean, spare type of individual, the thickset, often musclebound man, though possibly equal to an immense effort provided it is of short duration, is, as a rule, at a great disadvantage. The Expedition has also shown beyond all possible doubt that the tall man is less prone to become fatigued than one of shorter stature. Again, as is well known amongst mountaineers, the long-legged, short-trunk type of body is immensely superior to the short-legged, long-trunk type.

Perhaps more important than perfect physical fitness to the would-be conqueror of Everest is the possession of the correct mentality. Absolutely essential are singleness of aim, namely, the attainment of the summit, and unswerving faith in the possibility of its achievement. Half-heartedness in even one member of the attacking party spells almost certain failure. Many a strong party in the Alps has failed to reach its objective through the depressing effect of the presence of one doubting Thomas. Like an insidious disease, a wavering, infirm belief is liable to spread and cause the destruction of the hopes of those who come into contact with it. The man who cannot face Mount Everest without at the same time proclaiming that the mountain has the odds in its favour would do better by himself and others to leave the proposition severely alone. Of almost equal importance is the possession of what may be called mental energy or will power, or simply “go.” Mountaineers may be divided into two classes according to their behaviour when, tired and well-nigh exhausted, they are called upon to make yet one more supreme effort. There are those who, lacking the will power necessary to force their jaded bodies on to still further action, give in; others, possessed of an almost inexhaustible fund of mental energy, will rise to the occasion, not once, but time and again. Physical pain is the safety valve which nature has provided to prevent harm being done to the body by exhaustion. But nature’s margin of safety is a wide one. On Everest, this margin must be narrowed down, if necessary, to vanishing-point; and this can only be done by the climber whose fund of mental energy is sufficient to drive his body on and on, no matter how intense the pains of exhaustion, even to destruction if need be.

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CHAPTER IX
NOTES ON EQUIPMENT

Our recent experiences having shown that the greatest altitude at which acclimatisation takes place is about 22,000 feet above sea-level, it may be reasonably assumed that, from the climber’s point of view, high altitude on Mount Everest begins at that height. Incidentally, also, on approaching the North Col over the East Rongbuk Glacier, the snow and ice conditions met with up to this level approximate very closely to summer conditions in the Alps. Above 22,000 feet, however, such conditions, particularly the state of the snow, resemble those met with in the Alps in mid-winter. This high-altitude zone may be further divided into two sub-zones—the first, from 22,000 feet (the foot of the steep snow and ice slopes leading up to the North Col) to 23,000 feet, in which climatic conditions are by no means severe, as the North Col affords protection from the prevailing west wind; and the second, from 23,000 feet onwards, of which extreme cold and strong wind are the predominant characteristics.

It is therefore evident that the climber must be equipped according to the zone in which he finds himself. In the first zone clothing somewhat warmer than that used in the Alps in the summer is practically sufficient. Owing to the marked intensity of the sun’s rays, however, it is advisable to cover the trunk with at least one layer of sunproof material, such as a sunproof shirt with spine pad, while a solar topee and suitable snow-glasses constitute the best form of headgear. Crookes’ glasses of smoke-blue colour proved superior to other varieties; they afford complete protection from glare and do not cause eye-strain and subsequent headache. As sunburn, even very superficial and involving only a small area, is invariably followed by conditions of feverishness which must impair one’s fitness, a veil should be worn over the face and gloves on the hands. Oxygen should be employed from the foot of the North Col slopes onwards, for no useful purpose can be served by tiring oneself through not using it, when, as we have seen elsewhere, full recovery from fatigue is no longer possible at 23,000 feet. The second zone (from 23,000 feet onwards), where a radical change in climatic conditions is manifest, demands more complicated preparation. Wind is seldom absent, and the degree of intensity of the cold is comparable with that met with at the Poles, and indeed probably often exceeds it. Also, owing to the rarefied state of the atmosphere, the cold is felt much more severely than would be the case at sea-level. A far greater volume of air is expelled from the climber’s lungs, and this air, at blood heat and under a low pressure approximating to one-third of an atmosphere, is saturated with moisture drawn from the body viâ the lungs. The result is a proportionately far greater loss of animal heat. Further, the partial pressure of oxygen contained in a normal atmosphere becomes so low at altitudes over 23,000 feet that, unless the climber has recourse to a supply of oxygen carried by himself, his climbing efficiency is enormously reduced. The climbing equipment of the mountaineer in this second zone of high altitude should therefore include, firstly, a supply of oxygen; secondly, warm and windproof clothing and foot-gear; thirdly, plenty of food and drink, as the use of oxygen has a most stimulating effect upon the appetite.

The oxygen equipment has already been fully described by Mr. Unna in the Alpine Journal, vol. xxxiv., page 235. The apparatus is, in principle, quite simple. It consists of a frame carried on the shoulders of the climber, at whose back, in a rack attached to the frame, are four steel cylinders filled with oxygen compressed to 120 atmospheres. From the cylinders the oxygen is taken by means of copper tubes over to an instrument arm in front of the climber. This instrument arm, also attached to the frame, carries the pressure gauges and so forth which indicate how much oxygen the climber is left and how rapidly the supplies are being used up. Close to the instrument arm and readily accessible are the valves necessary for controlling the rate of flow of oxygen from the apparatus. From the instrument arm the oxygen passes through a flexible rubber tubing up to a mask covering the face of the climber. The two types of mask supplied to the Expedition proved useless, partly owing to their stifling effect upon the wearer, and partly to the fact that saliva and moisture collected rapidly under them and froze. Both, therefore, had to be discarded, but fortunately I was able to make a substitute which functioned successfully. This mask consists of a rubber tube into which is let a rubber bladder by means of a glass T-piece, or by means of two straight pieces of glass tube let in at opposite ends of the bladder. One end of the rubber tube is fastened to the tube of the apparatus out of which the oxygen flows, the other end being held in the climber’s mouth. On exhaling, the climber closes the rubber tube by biting upon it, and the oxygen issuing from the apparatus, instead of being wasted, is stored up in the rubber bladder. On inhaling, the pressure of the teeth is released sufficiently to allow the rubber tube to open, thus permitting the oxygen stored up in the bladder to flow into the climber’s mouth, whence, mixing with the air exhaled, it is drawn into the lungs. The chief advantages of this mask are that, firstly, it economises oxygen to the greatest possible extent, and secondly, the swelling and the shrinking of the bladder during each exhalation and inhalation respectively give the climber a fair idea as to how rapidly the oxygen is flowing from the apparatus, and thus enables him to keep a check upon the readings of the flow-meter, or instrument which indicates the rate of flow of gas. In actual practice it was found that in the space of a few minutes the climber used the mask quite automatically. The biting upon and closing the rubber tube and subsequent opening were performed without mental effort.

A certain amount of breathing takes place viâ the pores of the skin. As, however, the best clothing for a climber on Mount Everest is windproof, there is a likelihood of the air surrounding the body becoming stale, in which case the process of skin-breathing is seriously impeded. This difficulty could be easily surmounted by flushing out the stale air by means of a tube inserted inside the climber’s clothes, the flushing-out process being done at intervals by temporarily fixing this tube to the orifice of the oxygen apparatus. It is not known definitely whether the advantage gained would be worth the trouble, but there is every reason for believing so. In any case it is a matter which might well be critically tested on the next Expedition.

Cigarette-smoking proved of great value at high altitudes. Geoffrey Bruce, Tejbir, and I, after pitching camp at 25,500 feet, settled down inside our little tent about 2.30 in the afternoon. From then until seven o’clock the following evening we used no oxygen at all. At first we noticed that unless one kept one’s mind on the question of breathing—that is, made breathing a voluntary process instead of the involuntary process it ordinarily is—one suffered from lack of air and a consequent feeling of suffocation—a feeling from which one recovered by voluntarily forcing the lungs to work faster than they would of their own accord. There is a physiological explanation for this phenomenon. At normal altitudes human blood holds in solution a considerable quantity of carbon dioxide, which serves to stimulate the nerve centre controlling one’s involuntary breathing. At great altitudes, however, where, in order to obtain a sufficiency of oxygen, the climber is forced to breathe enormous volumes of air, much of this carbon dioxide is washed out of the blood, and the nerve centre, no longer sufficiently stimulated, fails to promote an adequately active involuntary breathing. A voluntary process must be substituted, and this throws a considerable strain upon the mind, and renders sleep impossible. On smoking cigarettes we discovered after the first few inhalations it was no longer necessary to concentrate on breathing, the process becoming once more an involuntary one. Evidently some constituent of cigarette smoke takes the place and performs the stimulating function of the carbon dioxide normally present. The effect of a cigarette lasted for about three hours. Clothing is a most important matter. It would be difficult to exaggerate the intensity of the cold encountered at high altitudes on Mount Everest. Several layers—the innermost of which should be of silk, the others wool of moderate weight—form a much better protection against cold than one or two heavy layers. The chief item of clothing, however, should consist of a jumper and trousers made of windproof material. Two of these windproof suits should be worn one above the other, and every precaution taken to reduce the circulation of the air to the smallest possible extent. The hands must be protected in accordance with the same principles, and the head. I used a R.N.A.S. pattern flying helmet and found it most satisfactory. Helmet and snow-glasses should completely cover the head and face, leaving no skin exposed. Boots were a source of trouble to all, but fortunately we had so many different designs which we could test out thoroughly that we are now able to form a very shrewd idea as to which kind is the most suitable. Leather conducts heat too well for reliance to be placed upon it for the preservation of warmth. The uppers of the boots should be of felt, strengthened where necessary to prevent stretching, by leather straps covered by duroprened canvas. Toe and heel caps must be hard and strong, and the former especially should be high, so that the toes are given plenty of room. The sole of the boot should be composed of a layer of thin leather attached to a layer of three-ply wood, hinged in two sections at the instep. A thin layer of felt should form the inside of the sole. The boots should be large enough to accommodate in comfort two pairs of thick socks, or, even better still, two pairs of thin socks and one pair of thick socks. Nails used in the boots should penetrate through the leather into the three-ply wood, but not through the latter.

In conclusion, I should like to thank the Governing Body of the Imperial College of Science and Technology for granting me the necessary leave to enable me to take part in the 1922 Mount Everest Expedition, and also for granting me facilities for carrying out a considerable number of investigations in the laboratory of the Department of Chemical Technology upon questions relating, amongst others, to oxygen equipment, fuels, and vacuum flasks. These last were required in order to enable us to keep foods liquid at heights over 23,000 feet, and the flasks obtained on the market proved quite useless for this purpose in view of the fact that they had not been sufficiently well evacuated.

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THE THIRD ATTEMPT

By

GEORGE LEIGH-MALLORY

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CHAPTER X
THE THIRD ATTEMPT

The project of making a third attempt this season was mooted immediately on the return of Finch and Geoffrey Bruce to the Base Camp. There in hours of idleness we had discussed their prospects and wondered what they would be doing as we gazed at the mountain to make out the weather on the great ridge. We were not surprised to learn when they came down that the summit was still unconquered, and we were not yet prepared to accept defeat. The difficulty was to find a party. Of the six who had been already engaged only one was obviously fit for another great effort. Somervell had shown a recuperative capacity beyond the rest of us. After one day at the Base he had insisted on going up again to Camp III in case he might be of use to the others. The rest were more or less knocked out. Morshead’s frostbitten fingers and toes, from which he was now suffering constant pain, caused grave anxiety of most serious consequences, and the only plan for him was to go down to a lower elevation as soon as possible. Norton’s feet had also been affected; he complained at first only of bruises, but the cold had come through the soles of his boots; his trouble too was frostbite. In any case he could not have come up again, for the strain had told on his heart and he now found himself left without energy or strength.

Geoffrey Bruce’s feet also were so badly frostbitten that he could not walk. Finch, however, was not yet to be counted out. He was evidently very much exhausted, but an examination of his heart revealed no disorder; it was hoped that in five or six days he would be able to start again. My own case was doubtful. Of my frostbitten finger-tips only one was giving trouble; the extremity above the first joint was black, but the injury was not very deep. Longstaff, who took an interest which we all appreciated in preventing us from doing ourselves permanent injury, pointed out the probability that fingers already touched and highly susceptible to cold would be much more severely injured next time, and was inclined to turn me down, from his medical point of view, on account of my fingers alone. A much more serious matter was the condition of my heart. I felt weak and lazy when it was a question of the least physical exertion, and the heart was found to have a “thrill.” Though I was prepared to take risks with my fingers I was prepared to take none with my heart, even had General Bruce allowed me. However, I did not abandon hope. My heart was examined again on June 3, no thrill was heard, and though my pulse was rapid and accelerated quickly with exertion it was capable of satisfactory recovery. We at once arranged that Somervell, Finch, and I, together with Wakefield and Crawford, should set forth the same day.

It was already evident that whatever we were to do would now have to wait for the weather. Though the Lama at the Rongbuk Monastery had told us that the monsoon was usually to be expected about June 10, and we knew that it was late last year, the signs of its approach were gathering every day. Mount Everest could rarely be seen after 9 or 10 a.m. until the clouds cleared away in the evening; and a storm approaching from the West Rongbuk Glacier would generally sweep down the valley in the afternoon. Though we came to despise this blustering phenomenon,—for nothing worse came of it than light hail or snow, either at our camp or higher,—we should want much fairer days for climbing, and each storm threatened to be the beginning of something far more serious. However, we planned to be on the spot to take any chance that offered. The signs were even more ominous than usual as Finch and I walked up to Camp I on the afternoon of June 3; we could hardly feel optimistic; and it was soon apparent that, far from having recovered his strength, my companion was quite unfit for another big expedition. We walked slowly and frequently halted; it was painful to see what efforts it cost him to make any progress. However, he persisted in coming on.

We had not long disposed ourselves comfortably within the four square walls of our “sangar,” always a pleasant change from the sloping sides of a tent, when snow began to fall. Released at last by the West wind which had held it back, the monsoon was free to work its will, and we soon understood that the great change of weather had now come. Fine, glistening particles were driven by the wind through the chinks in our walls, to be drifted on the floor or on our coverings where we lay during the night; and as morning grew the snow still fell as thickly as ever. Finch wisely decided to go back, and we charged him with a message to General Bruce, saying that we saw no reason at present to alter our plans. With the whole day to spend confined and inactive we had plenty of time to consider what we ought to do under these conditions. We went over well-worn arguments once more. It would have been an obvious and easy course, for which no one could reproach us, to have said simply, The monsoon has come; this is the end of the climbing season; it is time to go home. But the case, we felt, was not yet hopeless. The monsoon is too variable and uncertain to be so easily admitted as the final arbiter. There might yet be good prospects ahead of us. It was not unreasonable to expect an interval of fine weather after the first heavy snow, and with eight or ten fair days a third attempt might still be made. In any case, to retire now if the smallest chance remained to us would be an unworthy end to the Expedition. We need not run our heads into obvious danger; but rather than be stopped by a general estimate of conditions we would prefer to retire before some definite risk that we were not prepared to take or simply fail to overcome the difficulties.

After a second night of unremitting snowfall the weather on the morning of June 5 improved and we decided to go on. Low and heavy clouds were still flowing down the East Rongbuk Glacier, but precipitation ceased at an early hour and the sky brightened to the West. It was surprising, after all we had seen of the flakes passing our door, that no great amount of snow was lying on the stones about our camp. But the snow had come on a warm current and melted or evaporated, so that after all the depth was no more than 6 inches at this elevation (17,500 feet). Even on the glacier we went up a long way before noticing a perceptible increase of depth. We passed Camp II, not requiring to halt at this stage, and were well up towards Camp III before the fresh snow became a serious impediment. It was still snowing up here, though not very heavily; there was nothing to cheer the grey scene; the clinging snow about our feet was so wet that even the best of our boots were soaked through, and the last two hours up to Camp III were tiresome enough. Nor was it a cheering camp when we reached it. The tents had been struck for the safety of the poles, but not packed up. We found them now half-full of snow and ice. The stores were all buried; everything that we wanted had first to be dug out.

The snow up here was so much deeper that we anxiously discussed the possibility of going further. With 15 to 18 inches of snow to contend with, not counting drifts, the labour would be excessive, and until the snow solidified there would be considerable danger at several points. But the next morning broke fine; we had soon a clear sky and glorious sunshine; it was the warmest day that any of us remembered at Camp III; and as we watched the amazing rapidity with which the snow solidified and the rocks began to appear about our camp, our spirits rose. The side of Everest facing us looked white and cold; but we observed a cloud of snow blown from the North Ridge; it would not be long at this rate before it was fit to climb. We had already resolved to use oxygen on the third attempt. It was improbable that we should beat our own record without it, for the strain of previous efforts would count against us, and we had not the time to improve on our organisation by putting a second camp above the North Col. Somervell, after Finch’s explanation of the mechanical details, felt perfectly confident that he could manage the oxygen apparatus, and all those who had used oxygen were convinced that they went up more easily with its help than they could expect to go without it. Somervell and I intended to profit by their experience. They had discovered that the increased combustion in the body required a larger supply of food; we must arrange for a bountiful provision. Their camp at 25,000 feet had been too low; we would try to establish one now, as we had intended before, at 26,000 feet. And we hoped for a further advantage in going higher than Finch and Bruce had done before using oxygen; whereas they had started using it at 21,000 feet, we intended to go up to our old camp at 25,000 feet without it, perhaps use a cylinder each up to 26,000 feet, and at all events start from that height for the summit with a full supply of four cylinders. If this was not the correct policy as laid down by Professor Dryer, it would at least be a valuable experiment.

Our chief anxiety under these new conditions was to provide for the safety of our porters. We hoped that after fixing our fifth camp at 26,000 feet, at the earliest three days, hence on the fourth day of fine weather, the porters might be able to go down by themselves to the North Col in easy conditions; to guard against the danger of concealed crevasses there Crawford would meet them at the foot of the North Ridge to conduct them properly roped to Camp IV. As the supply officer at this camp he would also be able to superintend the descent over the first steep slope of certain porters who would go down from Camp IV without sleeping after carrying up their loads.

But the North Col had first to be reached. With so much new snow to contend with we should hardly get there in one day. If we were to make the most of our chance in the interval of fair weather, we should lose no time in carrying up the loads for some part of the distance. It was decided therefore to begin this work on the following day, June 7.

In the ascent to the North Col after the recent snowfall we considered that an avalanche was to be feared only in one place, the steep final slope below the shelf. There we could afford to run no risk; we must test the snow and be certain that it was safe before we could cross this slope. Probably we should be obliged to leave our loads below it, having gained, as a result of our day’s work, the great advantage of a track. An avalanche might also come down, we thought, on the first steep slope where the ascent began. Here it could do us no harm, and the behaviour of the snow on this slope would be a test of its condition.

The party, Somervell, Crawford, and I, with fourteen porters (Wakefield was to be supply officer at Camp III), set out at 8 a.m. In spite of the hard frost of the previous night, the crust was far from bearing our weight; we sank up to our knees in almost every step, and two hours were taken in traversing the snowfield. At 10.15 a.m., Somervell, I, a porter, and Crawford, roped up in that order, began to work up the steep ice-slope, now covered with snow. It was clear that the three of us without loads must take the lead in turns stamping out the track for our porters. These men, after their immense efforts on the first and second attempts, had all volunteered to “go high,” as they said once more, and everything must be done to ease the terrible work of carrying the loads over the soft snow. No trace was found of our previous tracks, and we were soon arguing as to where exactly they might be as we slanted across the slope. It was remarkable that the snow adhered so well to the ice that we were able to get up without cutting steps. Everything was done by trenching the snow to induce it to come down if it would; every test gave a satisfactory result. Once this crucial place was passed, we plodded on without hesitation. If the snow would not come down where we had formerly encountered steep bare ice, a fortiori, above, on the gentler slopes, we had nothing to fear. The thought of an avalanche was dismissed from our minds.

It was necessarily slow work forging our way through the deep snow, but the party was going extraordinarily well, and the porters were evidently determined to get on. Somervell gave us a long lead, and Crawford next, in spite of the handicap of shorter legs, struggled upwards in some of the worst snow we met until I relieved him. I found the effort at each step so great that no method of breathing I had formerly employed was adequate; it was necessary to pause after each lifting movement for a whole series of breaths, rapid at first and gradually slower, before the weight was transferred again to the other foot. About 1.30 p.m. I halted, and the porters, following on three separate ropes, soon came up with the leading party. We should have been glad to stay where we were for a long rest. But the hour was already late, and as Somervell was ready to take the lead again, we decided to push on. We were now about 400 feet below a conspicuous block of ice and 600 feet below Camp IV, still on the gentle slopes of the corridor. Somervell had advanced only 100 feet, rather up the slope than across it, and the last party of porters had barely begun to move up in the steps. The scene was peculiarly bright and windless, and as we rarely spoke, nothing was to be heard but the laboured panting of our lungs. This stillness was suddenly disturbed. We were startled by an ominous sound, sharp, arresting, violent, and yet somehow soft like an explosion of untamped gunpowder. I had never before on a mountain-side heard such a sound; but all of us, I imagine, knew instinctively what it meant, as though we had been accustomed to hear it every day of our lives. In a moment I observed the surface of the snow broken and puckered where it had been even for a few yards to the right of me. I took two steps convulsively in this direction with some quick thought of getting nearer to the edge of the danger that threatened us. And then I began to move slowly downwards, inevitably carried on the whole moving surface by a force I was utterly powerless to resist. Somehow I managed to turn out from the slope so as to avoid being pushed headlong and backwards down it. For a second or two I seemed hardly to be in danger as I went quietly sliding down with the snow. Then the rope at my waist tightened and held me back. A wave of snow came over me and I was buried. I supposed that the matter was settled. However, I called to mind experiences related by other parties; and it had been suggested that the best chance of escape in this situation lay in swimming. I thrust out my arms above my head and actually went through some sort of motions of swimming on my back. Beneath the surface of the snow, with nothing to inform the senses of the world outside it, I had no impression of speed after the first acceleration—I struggled in the tumbling snow, unconscious of everything else—until, perhaps, only a few seconds later, I knew the pace was easing up. I felt an increasing pressure about my body. I wondered how tightly I should be squeezed, and then the avalanche came to rest.

My arms were free; my legs were near the surface. After a brief struggle, I was standing again, surprised and breathless, in the motionless snow. But the rope was tight at my waist; the porter tied on next me, I supposed, must be deeply buried. To my further surprise, he quickly emerged, unharmed as myself. Somervell and Crawford too, though they had been above me by the rope’s length, were now quite close, and soon extricated themselves. We subsequently made out that their experiences had been very similar to mine. But where were the rest? Looking down over the foam of snow, we saw one group of porters some little distance, perhaps 150 feet, below us. Presumably the others must be buried somewhere between us and them, and though no sign of these missing men appeared, we at once prepared to find and dig them out. The porters we saw still stood their ground instead of coming up to help. We soon made out that they were the party who had been immediately behind us, and they were pointing below them. They had travelled further than us in the avalanche, presumably because they were nearer the centre, where it was moving more rapidly. The other two parties, one of four and one of five men roped together, must have been carried even further. We could still hope that they were safe. But as we hurried down we soon saw that beneath the place where the four porters were standing was a formidable drop; it was only too plain that the missing men had been swept over it. We had no difficulty in finding a way round this obstacle; in a very short time we were standing under its shadow. The ice-cliff was from 40 to 60 feet high in different places; the crevasse at its foot was more or less filled up with avalanche snow. Our fears were soon confirmed. One man was quickly uncovered and found to be still breathing; before long we were certain that he would live. Another whom we dug out near him had been killed by the fall. He and his party appeared to have struck the hard lower lip of the crevasse, and were lying under the snow on or near the edge of it. The four porters who had escaped soon pulled themselves together after the first shock of the accident, and now worked here with Crawford and did everything they could to extricate the other bodies, while Somervell and I went down into the crevasse. A loop of rope which we pulled up convinced us that the other party must be here. It was slow work loosening the snow with the pick or adze of an ice-axe and shovelling it with the hands. But we were able to follow the rope to the bodies. One was dug up lifeless; another was found upside down, and when we uncovered his face Somervell thought he was still breathing. We had the greatest difficulty in extricating this man, so tightly was the snow packed about his limbs; his load, four oxygen cylinders on a steel frame, had to be cut from his back, and eventually he was dragged out. Though buried for about forty minutes, he had survived the fall and the suffocation, and suffered no serious harm. Of the two others in this party of four, we found only one. We had at length to give up a hopeless search with the certain knowledge that the first of them to be swept over the cliff, and the most deeply buried, must long ago be dead. Of the other five, all the bodies were recovered, but only one was alive. The two who had so marvellously escaped were able to walk down to Camp III, and were almost perfectly well next day. The other seven were killed.

This tragic calamity was naturally the end of the third attempt to climb Mount Everest. The surviving porters who had lost their friends or brothers behaved with dignity, making no noisy parade of the grief they felt. We asked them whether they wished to go up and bring down the bodies for orderly burial. They preferred to leave them where they were. For my part, I was glad of this decision. What better burial could they have than to lie in the snow where they fell? In their honour a large cairn was built at Camp III.

A few words must be added with regard to this accident. No one will imagine that we had pushed on recklessly disregarding the new conditions of fresh snow. Three members of the Alpine Club, with experience of judging snow for themselves, chiefly, of course, in the Alps, had all supposed that the party was safe. They had imagined that on those gentle slopes the snow would not move. In what way had they been deceived? The fact that the avalanche snow came to rest on the slope where they were proves that their calculation was not so very far wrong. But the snow cannot all have been of the quality that adhered so well to the steep ice-slope lower down. Where the avalanche started, not from the line of their steps, but about 100 feet higher, it was shaded to some extent by a broken wall of ice. There, perhaps, it had both drifted more deeply and remained more free and powdery, and the weight of this snow was probably sufficient to push the other down the slope once its surface had been disturbed. More experience, more knowledge might perhaps have warned us not to go there. One never can know enough about snow. But looking up the corridor again after the event, I wondered how I ever could be certain not to be deceived by appearances so innocent.

The regret of all members of the Expedition for the loss of our seven porters will have been elsewhere expressed. It is my part only to add this: the work of carrying up our camps on Mount Everest is beyond the range of a simple contract measured in terms of money; the porters had come to have a share in our enterprise, and these men died in an act of voluntary service freely rendered and faithfully performed.

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CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSIONS

It might be supposed that, from the experience of two expeditions to Mount Everest, it would be possible to deduce an estimate of the dangers and difficulties involved and to formulate a plan for overcoming the obstacles which would meet with universal approval among mountaineers. But, in fact, though many deductions could hardly be denied, I should be surprised to find, even among us of the second party, anything like complete agreement either in our judgment of events or in our ideas for the future. Accordingly, I must be understood as expressing only my personal opinions. The reader, no doubt, will judge the book more interesting if he finds the joint authors disagreeing among themselves.

The story of the first attempt to climb the mountain in 1922 will have no doubts on one point. The final camp was too low. However strong a party may be brought to the assault, their aim, unless they are provided with oxygen, must be to establish a camp considerably higher than our camp at 25,000 feet. The whole performance of the porters encourages us to believe that this can be done. Some of them went to a height of 25,000 feet and more, not once only, but thrice; and they accomplished this feat with strength to spare. It is reasonable to suppose that these same men, or others of their type, could carry loads up to 27,000 feet. But it would be equally unreasonable to suppose that they could reach this height in one day from the camp on Chang La at 23,000 feet. No one would be so foolish as to organise an attempt on this assumption. Two camps instead of one must be placed above the Chang La; another stage must be added to the structure before the climbing party sets forth to reach the summit.

But how exactly is this to be done? It is to this question that one would wish to deduce an answer from the experience of 1922. It is very unlikely that any future party will find itself in the position to carry out any ideal plan of organisation. Ideally, they ought to start by considering what previous performances might help or hinder the aim of bringing the party of attack in the fittest possible condition to the last camp. What ought they to have done or not to have done, having regard to acclimatisation? It is still impossible to lay down the law on this head. After the first Expedition, I supposed that the limit of acclimatisation must be somewhere about 21,000 feet. It now seems probable that it is higher. One of the physiologists who has been most deeply concerned with this problem of acclimatisation considers that it would probably be desirable, from the physiological point of view, to stay four or five days at 25,000 feet before proceeding to attempt the two last stages on consecutive days. Those of us who slept at Camp V for the first attempt would certainly be agreed in our attitude towards this counsel. The desire to continue the advance and spend another night at a higher elevation, if it persisted at all for so long a time at 25,000 feet, would be chilled to tepidity, and the increasing desire to get away from Camp V might lead to retreat instead of advance. The conditions must be altogether more comfortable if the climbers are to derive any advantage from their rustication at this altitude. It would not be impossible, perhaps, if every effort were concentrated on this end, to make a happy home where the aspiring mountaineers might pass a long week-end in enjoyment of the simplest life at 25,000 feet; it would not be practicable, having regard to other ends to be served by the system of transport. But it might be well to spend a similar period for acclimatisation 2,000 feet lower on the Chang La. There a very comfortable camp, with perfect shelter from the prevailing wind and good snow to lie on, can easily be established. Noel actually spent three successive nights there in 1922, and apparently was the better rather than the worse for the experience.

No less important in this connection is the effect of exertions at high altitudes on a man’s subsequent performance. We have to take into account the condition of the climbing parties when they returned to the Base Camp after reaching approximately 27,000 feet. With one exception, all the climbers were affected in various degrees by their exertions, to the prejudice of future efforts. It would seem, therefore, that they cannot have had much strength to spare for the final stage to the summit. But there was a general agreement among the climbers that it was not so much the normal exertion of climbing upwards that was in itself unduly exhausting, but the addition of anything that might be considered abnormal, such as cutting steps, contending with wind, pushing on for a particular reason at a faster pace, and the many little things that had to be done in camp. It is difficult from a normal elevation to appreciate how great is the difference between establishing a camp on the one hand and merely ascending to one already established on the other. If ever it proves possible to organise an advanced party whose business it would be to establish at 25,000 feet a much more comfortable camp than ours in 1922, and if, in addition, a man could be spared to undertake the preparation of meals, the climbers detailed for the highest section of all would both be spared a considerable fatigue and would have a better chance of real rest and sleep.

The peculiar dangers of climbing at great altitudes were illustrated by the experience of 1922. The difficulty of maintaining the standard of sound and accurate mountaineering among a party all more or less affected by the conditions, and the delays and misfortunes that may arise from the exhaustion of one of the party, are dangers which might be minimised by a supporting party. Two men remaining at the final camp and two men near Camp V watching the progress of the unit of assault along the final ridge, and prepared to come to their assistance, might serve to produce vital stimulants, hot tea or merely water, at the critical moment, and to protect the descent. It is a counsel of perfection to suggest providing against contingencies on this lavish scale; but it is well to bear in mind the ideal. And there is, besides, a precaution which surely can and will be taken: to take a supply of oxygen for restorative purposes. The value of oxygen for restoring exhausted and warming cold men was sufficiently well illustrated during the second attempt in 1922.

Chang La and North-east Shoulder of Mount Everest

The question as to whether the use of oxygen will otherwise help or hinder climbers is one about which opinions may be expected to disagree. Anyone who thinks that it is impossible to get up without oxygen can claim that nothing has shown it to be impossible to get up with its aid. For my part, I don’t think it impossible to get up without oxygen. The difference of atmospheric pressure between 27,000 feet and the summit is small, and it is safe to conclude that men who have exerted themselves at 27,000 feet could live without difficulty for a number of hours on the summit. As to whether their power of progress would give out before reaching 29,000 feet, it is impossible to dogmatise. I can only say that nothing in the experience of the first attempt has led me to suppose that those last 2,000 feet cannot be climbed in a day. I am not competent to sift and weigh all the evidence as to whether, how much, and with what consumption of gas it was easier to proceed up the slopes of Mount Everest with oxygen so far as Finch and Bruce went on that memorable day. But I do venture to combat the suggestion that it is necessarily easier to reach the top in that manner. I think no one will dispute the statement that the final camp for the second attempt was too low, as it had been for the first, to enable the oxygen party to reach the summit. With the same apparatus it will be necessary in this case also to provide a second camp above the North Col. And the question for the moment will ultimately be, is it possible to add to that immense burden of transport to 27,000 feet the weight of the oxygen cylinders required?

The weather in all probability will have something to say to this problem. The Expedition of 1922 was certainly not favoured by the weather. There was no continuous spell of calm fine days, and the summer snows began a week earlier than the most usual date. One wonders what sort of weather is to be expected with the most favourable conditions on Mount Everest. It is conceivable that a series of calm fine days sometimes precede the monsoon. But when we consider the perpetual winds of Tibet at all seasons, it seems unlikely that Mount Everest is often immune from this abominable visitation. It is far more likely that the calm day is a rare exception, and only to be expected when the north-westerly current is neutralised by the monsoon from the South-east. The ill-luck of 1922 may probably be computed as no more than those seven days by which the monsoon preceded expectation. With so short a time for preparations and advance, we were indeed unfortunate in meeting an early monsoon. And it is hardly possible considerably to extend the available time by starting earlier. There was only the barest trickle of water at the Base Camp on May 1, 1922, and the complications involved by the necessity of melting snow for water, both here and at all higher stages, for any considerable time, would be a severe handicap. But it must be remembered that the second attempt was made a week before the monsoon broke. Time appeared short on the mountain chiefly from the threat of bad weather and the signs showing that the majority of days were, to say the least, extremely disagreeable for climbing high on the mountain. If others are confronted by similar conditions, they too will probably feel that each fine day must be utilised and the attack must be pressed on; for the fine days past will not come back, and ahead is the uncertain monsoon.

A final question may now be asked: What advantages will another Expedition have which we did not have in 1922? In one small and in one large matter the next Expedition may be better equipped. It was disappointing, after so much time and thought had been expended upon the problem of foot-gear, that nothing was evolved in 1922 which succeeded in taking the place of Alpine boots of well-known patterns. The great disadvantage of these sorts of boot is that one cannot wear crampons with them at these high altitudes, for the strap bound tightly round the foot will almost certainly cause frostbite; either different boots or different spikes must be invented if the climbers are to have crampons or their equivalent. It is essential that they should be so equipped to avoid the labour of step-cutting, and the lack of this equipment might well rob them of victory on the steep final slopes below the summit. This matter of foot-gear is not so very small, after all. But a still more important one is the oxygen apparatus. It is conceivable, and I believe by no means unlikely, that a different type of cylinder may be used in the future, and capable of containing more oxygen, compared with the same weight, than those of 1922. A 50 per cent. improvement in this direction should alter the whole problem of using oxygen. With this advantage it might well be possible to go to the top and back with the four cylinders which a man may be expected to carry from a height of 25,000 feet or little higher. If a second camp above the North Col becomes unnecessary in this way, the whole effort required, and especially the effort of transport, will be reduced to the scale of what has already been accomplished, and can no doubt be accomplished again.

The further advantage of a future Expedition is simply that of experience. It amounts to something, one cannot say how much. In small ways a number of mistakes may be avoided. The provision of this and that may be more accurately calculated according to tried values. The whole organisation of life in high camps should be rather more efficient. Beyond all this, the experience of 1922 should help when the moment comes towards the making of a right plan; and a party which chooses rightly what to do and when to do it, and can so exclude other possibilities as to be certain that no better way could be chosen, has a great advantage. But, when all is said as to experience and equipment, it still remains true that success requires a quality. History repeats itself, perhaps, but in a vague and general fashion only where mountains are concerned. The problem of reaching the summit is every time a fresh one. The keen eye for a fair opportunity and resource in grave emergencies are no less necessary to the mountaineer everywhere, and not least upon Mount Everest, than determination to carry through the high project, the simple will to conquer in the struggle.

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NOTES

By

T. HOWARD SOMERVELL

on

ACCLIMATISATION AT HIGH

ALTITUDES

COLOUR IN TIBET

TIBETAN CULTURE

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CHAPTER XII
ACCLIMATISATION AT HIGH ALTITUDES

The Everest Expedition of 1922 had no preconceived programme of scientific investigation, and was first and foremost an attempt to get up the mountain; though, as I had been connected with physiological research for some years, I was naturally anxious to make observations on the effect of altitude on the human frame. These observations were rather subjective, and were unaccompanied by any accurate data—in other words, the reader will be relieved to hear that there are no tables of figures to be reproduced. Barcroft and others were in the course of their Expedition to the Andes, and I knew full well their results would supply more accurate information on the exact process of acclimatisation at high altitudes than anything we could do with our simpler apparatus. We left it to this other Expedition, therefore, to supply the figures, while our observations were exclusively on the practical side; that is to say, we observed the rapidity and effect of acclimatisation, while not investigating exactly how it is brought about.

The first effect of altitude, in such moderate degree as we encountered it on the plains of Tibet, was almost entirely a mere breathlessness, which limited our rate of walking, and increased the popularity of our uncomfortable Tibetan saddles when travelling uphill. A few of us had severe headaches from time to time; at the modest height of 17,000 feet I noticed Cheyne-Stokes respiration at night when lying down, though never when sitting or standing; and I remember being distinctly amused at the fact that one was unable to control it.[^[7]] A few of the party had a single attack of vomiting, but no permanent effect was noticed, and by the time we had lived on the Tibetan Plateau for a few weeks we had lost all ill effects save only breathlessness, which, of course, persisted to some extent until we reached comparatively low elevations. Further effect at these heights was not noticed save in the case of some of the older members of the party, who suffered from a considerable loss of appetite while at the Base Camp at 16,000 feet; this effect on appetite did not improve as time went on.

[7]. For the benefit of the non-medical reader, Cheyne-Stokes breathing is the gradual alternation of shallow and deep respirations: usually about ten shallow breaths are followed by respirations which get gradually deeper; then by three or four really deep ones, which become shallower until the cycle recommences.

It was when we began the more serious work on the mountain that we made the most interesting observations on acclimatisation, and proved both its rapidity (which was known before) and its persistence to great heights. Scientists of various schools had, before the start of the Expedition, predicted that acclimatisation would be impossible above the height of 20,000 feet. Why they had done so will always remain a mystery to me; but possibly they were misled by the fact that so many climbing expeditions in the past have failed somewhere in the region of 23,000 feet above sea-level. We were enabled, however, to prove conclusively that acclimatisation does go on to greater heights; in fact, I do not see a theoretical limit to it at any elevation below the top of Mount Everest. Our observations were largely subjective, but for that reason they are perhaps all the more to be appreciated by the general reader; and in view of their subjective nature I may perhaps be pardoned in substituting “feelings” for figures and putting information in the form of a personal experience.

When Mallory and I arrived at Camp III and established it on the site chosen by the reconnaissance party, our first concern was the preparation of another camp at the North Col. I shall never forget our first ascent up that accursed slope of snow and ice, each step a hardship, every foot a fight; until at last we lay almost exhausted on the top. After a day or two at Camp III below, we went up again to the col, this time with Strutt and Morshead, and I think Norton. The ascent of the col this time was hard work, but not more than that; and after the col had been reached Morshead and I were sufficiently cheerful to explore the way leading up to Everest. A day or two later we again ascended the North Col, and never really noticed more discomfort than was occasioned by breathlessness. Though not possessing the scientific data which explained this change in our condition, yet in those few days of life at 21,000 feet we had become acclimatised to our altitude to a very remarkable degree; what had previously been a hard struggle had now become a comparatively easy job. By this rapid change in our constitution we had not only proved the predictions of scientists to be wrong, but had gained the physical power which took us without artificial oxygen supply to 27,000 feet, and we had determined that acclimatisation is not only possible but is also quite rapid at these high altitudes.

Thus, by sojourn and exercise for a week above 20,000 feet, we obtained the physiological equipment necessary for an attempt on the mountain, and at this point some personal experiences may be of interest, though possibly of no great importance. We found that, as we ascended, we fell into an automatic rate of breathing; Mallory preferred to breathe slowly and deeply, while rapid and shallower respirations appealed to me; but we all walked upwards at almost exactly the same rate at any given height. Below the North Col, I took three breaths to a step, while at 26,000 feet I was taking five complete respirations; but as long as I was walking slowly enough I experienced no distress or discomfort. If one hurried for a short distance, one was forced to rest for a few seconds—a rest was imperative, and one felt it were impossible to do without it; but as long as an even pace was kept up, one had no desire to stop, nor to make one’s admiration of the landscape an excuse for delaying one’s comrades. At the height of 26,000 feet, I took my pulse (which was 180) and my respirations (which were 50 to 55 to the minute); but withal one felt perfectly comfortable even though these abnormal physiological conditions were present. No doubt the heart must be young to stand this rate of beating for many hours; yet not too young, or it will easily become enlarged and permanently damaged.

In view of our experiences it seems justifiable to predict that acclimatisation at 23,000 feet will be sufficient for the attainment of the summit of Mount Everest, if indeed a sojourn at 21,000 feet is insufficient—which is to my mind more than doubtful. The other important practical observation we made is less encouraging: namely, that we all varied in our rate of acclimatisation, and in fact some of our number (especially the older ones among us) actually seemed to deteriorate in condition while staying at a great height. But I think we proved that it is possible to climb to the summit of Everest without the use of oxygen, though the selection of men who are able to do so is very difficult until those heights are actually reached at which acclimatisation becomes established. Personally I felt perfectly well at 27,000 feet, and my condition seemed no different at that height from what it had been at 25,000 feet, or even lower; and I have no doubt there are many people, if only they can be found, who can get to the top of Everest unaided save by their own physiological reaction to a life at 21,000 feet for a few days. If a number of such people were allowed to live at a height corresponding to our Camp III for a fortnight or so, making perhaps a few minor excursions to 23,000 or 24,000 feet, then I have no doubt from the physiological point of view that they will be able to climb Mount Everest, provided the weather is fine and the wind not too violent. Without allowing time for acclimatisation to take place, it is probable that nobody—that is, unless some lusus naturæ exists—will reach the summit; if artificially supplied oxygen be used, the acclimatisation may not be necessary; but the danger of an attempt by non-acclimatised men with oxygen apparatus is that a breakdown of the apparatus might lead to serious consequences, while a fully acclimatised man is probably just as capable of standing a height of 29,000 feet, unaided, as you or I would be able to stand the height of Mount Blanc to-morrow. When the Expedition of 1922 started I was personally of opinion that nobody could exist at a height about 25,000 or 26,000 feet without oxygen; but since we have proved that this can be done, it seems that the chances of climbing the mountain are probably greater if oxygen be not used. For the apparatus, and the spare cylinders required, necessitate the use of a large number of coolies; while in an attempt without oxygen only three or four coolies are required for the camping equipment and the food at the highest camp. Therefore it seems that the best chance of getting to the top of Mount Everest lies in the sending out of some nine or ten climbers, who can remain at a high camp, become thoroughly acclimatised, and then make a series of expeditions up the mountain, three or so at a time, as continuously as weather conditions will allow. By adopting these tactics the number of possible attempts up the mountain can be increased; and it seems to me that the chances of climbing to the summit lie in the multiplicity of possible attempts rather than in any other direction. It were better to prepare for a number of attempts each by a small but acclimatised party, rather than to stake all on one or two highly organised endeavours, in which oxygen, and a large number of coolies, are used. It is only a small proportion of coolies who can get up to the heights of 25,000 or 27,000 feet, and they should be used for any one attempt as sparingly as possible. During the war we all had our ideas of how it should be run, and they were generally wrong; the above plan is the writer’s idea of how to climb Mount Everest, and may or may not be right, but is enunciated for what it is worth.

Among subsidiary effects of extreme altitudes, were those upon appetite, temper, and mental condition generally. Most of us will admit a good deal of peevishness and irritability while at a level of 22,000 feet and more; for the altitude undoubtedly makes one lose to some extent one’s mental balance, and the first way in which this appears on the surface is by a ruffling of the temper. In addition, one has a certain lack of determination, and when at a height approaching 27,000 feet I remember distinctly that I cared very little whether we reached the top of Everest or not. A good instance of this altered attitude of mind is provided by the fact that Finch and Bruce took a camera with them on their ascent, and forgot to take any photographs of their last day’s climbing.

I have mentioned the deleterious effect of altitude on the appetite of some of our older members; but the same was to some extent true of us all. I have the most vivid recollection of distaste for food during our first few days at Camp III, and especially of the way one had almost to push a prune down one’s throat on the way up to the North Col; but with the majority of us this distaste for food (especially for meat and the slowly-digested foods) diminished during our sojourn at great heights, though our appetites never became quite normal until we reached one of the lower camps. Those who had oxygen reported that they had large appetites above the North Col; and there is no doubt that it is the rarefaction of the air that causes this alteration of the appetite. One may perhaps be justified in assuming that the secretion of gastric juice is diminished while air that is poor in oxygen is inhaled, though it is rather hard to understand how this is brought about.

Although acclimatisation is not entirely connected with the actual increase in the number of blood corpuscles (as has been proved by Barcroft in 1922), yet this is still recognised as one of the important factors in its production. But this increase in the concentration of the blood must be associated with a great increase in its viscosity, and when that is combined with intense cold with its accompanying constriction of all the smaller blood-vessels, there are present all the conditions necessary for the production of frostbite. Therefore acclimatisation with all its benefits probably increases the risk of frostbite; hence one who is acclimatised must be especially careful of feet and hands and their coverings. It is hard to put on too many clothes at a great altitude, and very easy to put on too few.

The chief point still remaining to be mentioned concerns the after-effects of the climbing of Everest; but these varied so much that they give us little or no scientific information. Some of us were tired for twenty-four hours only, some for many days; some were reported to have enlarged hearts, while in some the heart was normal; some were incapacitated by frostbite, though their general physical condition was very probably good. One therefore cannot generalise about after-effects, but as a medical man I felt strongly (by observation on myself and my companions on the Expedition) that if one is to “live to fight another day” and to require the minimum recuperation period after an attempt on the mountain, it is essential during the attempt to keep oneself well within one’s powers. One is tempted to go too hard, and to exert one’s strength to its limits; but it is just the last few ounces of strength which call forth the greatest effort and make the maximum demands on one’s resources; and if these resources are to be used to their full extent they should be continuously conserved by an avoidance of definite hurry. Personally I am of opinion that exercise before the climbing begins is of great value. Mallory and I were the only ones whom Longstaff allowed to make two attempts on Everest; and we were probably rendered fit in this way by the subsidiary expeditions we had made on the way to Mount Everest and by our preliminary work in getting the camp ready on the North Col. It is, however, hard to generalise on a point like this, but each man knows the idiosyncrasies of his own constitution, and it should be left to individuals to a great extent to see that their condition on arrival at the foot of the mountain is the best that is possible.

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CHAPTER XIII
COLOUR IN TIBET

In order to bring before the reader a vivid picture of Tibet, and especially of the region around Mount Everest, a comparison between Tibet and other better-known countries is almost inevitable. The Expedition of 1922 took with them no official artist, or no doubt he would have been deputed to write this section of the book; there were, however, two people who tried to paint pictures of the country, Major Norton and myself; and though I realise how inadequate our efforts were, perhaps those of an official artist might have been almost as bad. However, as one who looks on the world with an eye for its beauty, although lacking the ability to transfer that beauty to canvas, one may perhaps be pardoned for endeavouring to describe certain general impressions of the scenery encountered by the Expedition.

In the course of our journey we passed through a great variety of landscape; in Sikkim, for instance, we found a land of steep slopes and dense forests, while Tibet is almost a desert country. We experienced the clear air of the winter, and the mists and storm-clouds of the monsoon. While we were on the rolling plains of the Tibetan Plateau, only a few miles away were the snow-covered summits of the highest mountains in the world.

Sikkim is a country of deep valleys and of luxurious vegetation; the air is generally damp and the skies cloudy, and there is often a beautiful blue haze that gives atmosphere to the distance. Sikkim is not unlike the Italian side of the Alps, in many ways. True, its scale is larger, and it possesses some of the most beautiful and impressive peaks in the world (for no Alpine peak can vie with Siniolchum or Pandim for sheer beauty of form and surface), but on the whole the scenery of Sikkim is of the same general build as the valleys and peaks of Northern Italy. In this sense Sikkim did not offer to the new-comer anything entirely different from what he had seen before. But Tibet and Everest certainly did; and the difference between Sikkim and Tibet is twofold—first, Tibet is almost uniformly over 13,000 feet above sea-level, and therefore bears no trees at all; second, Tibet is almost free from rainfall and is, in consequence, a desert country. One’s eye travelled, for mile after mile, over red-brown sand and red-brown limestone hills, finally to rest on the blue and white of the distant snows. The air, before the monsoon commences, is almost always clear—clear to an extent unimagined by a European, clearer even than the air of an Alpine winter. So peaks and ridges 30 or 40 miles away are often almost in the same visual plane as the foreground of the landscape. In some extensive views, such as we had from the hills above Tinki Dzong, one came to look upon hills 30 miles away as the middle distance of one’s picture, while the background was formed of mountains a hundred miles from the point of view. It is this lack of atmosphere which makes pictorial representation of these Tibetan scenes so very difficult; the pictures I made on the course of the Expedition have all had one criticism from many different people—“there is no atmosphere.” Many as are the demerits of these pictures, this is the one merit they have; and if they had an “atmosphere” they would cease to be truthful. In the Alps one has often seen mountains with extreme clearness at a great distance, but I never remember having viewed an Alpine landscape in which there was practically no effect of distance, and practicably no blueness of the more distant shadows. Yet that is precisely what obtains in Tibet before the month of June. And then, with startling suddenness, comes the monsoon, with its damp air; for some months the landscape is entirely altered, and also much beautified. The blue haze of the monsoon converts the distant shadows from their crude purple-brown to the most magnificent and sometimes brilliant blue. Once or twice one looked in vain on one’s palette for a blue of sufficient brilliance and intensity to reproduce the colour of the shadows 20 or 30 miles away. Then the monsoon brings clouds and rain-storms, all of which tend to give variety to the scene, and to endue the distant peaks with that effect of mystery which renders them so alluring and so beautiful.

As far as the scenery among the higher mountains is concerned, the comparison of photographs of the Everest group of peaks with those of the Alps will give one more idea of the differences between the two districts than can a mere verbal description, save in the matter of scale and colour. In colour, the Alps are more varied and the rock is, as a rule, a darker brown; the snow-shadows are more blue and the outlines less clear; while Alpine foregrounds so often contain trees which are totally absent from the foregrounds of Tibet. There both rocks and stones, scree and valley-bed are of a light reddish-brown, almost uniform in tone from near foreground to extreme distance; Makalu, for example, is a colossal rock-pyramid of quite a light ochre colour; the rocks of Everest are of a light amber brown relieved in the neighbourhood of 27,000 feet by a lighter yellowish band of quartzite. The snow of the range on its northern side resembles that of Alpine peaks, but on the southern face the festoons and grooves of ice, so well known to many from photographs of Himalayan mountains, decorate the much steeper and more uncompromising slopes. Most of the higher peaks are swept by continual gusts of wind which whirl clouds of snow from the topmost ridges into the sky.

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CHAPTER XIV
TIBETAN CULTURE

The Tibetans are a very simple folk, though not without a very definite civilisation of their own. Art and music exist in all nations, if the art be merely the fashioning of utensils, and the music be the crudest of rhythms played on a tom-tom. Yet in Tibet the rudimentary music and art associated with so many Eastern races is carried a stage farther, and what is in wilder people merely natural instinct has become in Tibet a definite culture. For I presume that culture is merely organised art, and certainly on that criterion the Tibetan is to some extent cultured.

He is a fine architect, and many of his houses have a simple stateliness which raises them in artistic value high above the average dwelling-house of most other Oriental countries, to say nothing of our own garden suburbs. The Monasteries of Tibet are still more imposing, and some of them are real objects of beauty, for the dignified simplicity of the buildings themselves is combined with an elaborate and often beautiful decoration of windows and cornices. The Tibetans have learned the true principles of decoration—they do not cover the surfaces of their buildings with unnecessary ornament, but reserve the wooden parts alone for elaboration. The cornices are often intricate in workmanship, but throughout the great principle of design is carried to perfection—the principle that all ornament should be founded on utility. Thus economy in the use of scrolls is combined with the multiplication of brackets, supports, and rafter-ends, so that the whole is satisfying to the eye as being beautiful, rather than useless. Considerable Chinese influence is shown in their decorative art, but the Tibetans have a personal, or rather national, touch which distinguishes their work in all branches of art from the Chinese. In painting, too, the influence of China, and very occasionally of India, is felt: though through it all the refined austerity of the better-class Tibetan shines unmistakably. The older pictures, nearly always of sacred subjects, are drawn with consummate skill, coloured with great taste, and in the matter of design rank much higher than the contemporary art of India. But, alas! the story of painting in Tibet is the same as it is everywhere in this commercial world of ours; the modern Tibetan picture is worthless, careless and meretricious. No doubt the demand for “native art” at the bazaars of Darjeeling and other places around has caused this deterioration of what was once a fine and noble art; pictures which used to be the life-work of devoted lamas and conscientious hermits are now “dashed off” to satisfy the capacious maw of the tasteless traveller. Though Tibet is still in measure “The Forbidden Land,” yet the tentacles of commercialism cannot but penetrate between its bars, and the same thing is now happening to Tibet as happened to Europe last century and produced oleographs and official artists. It seems almost as if man by nature does bad work only when he is working for reward.

Religious Banners in Shekar Monastery.

This is a mere flashlight sketch of the art of Tibet, for details of which other books must be consulted; but the music of Tibet will be described more fully, for two reasons—first, that no accurate record of it has to my knowledge been obtained until now, and second, that the writer is himself particularly fond of music, which he believes to be the highest of the arts.

Just as in Europe to-day we have both the traditional folk-song and the highly organised orchestral music, so in Tibet both these forms of the art exist. The two are also more or less interdependent in Tibet, while in Western nations each often goes its own way without the other.

The airs sung by the Tibetan people are usually simple, short, and oft-repeated. They are nearly always in the pentatonic scale, represented best to the general reader by the black notes of the piano. Most isolated races evolve this scale at some time during their history, and the tunes of the Highlands of Scotland, the Forests of Central Africa, the Appalachians of America, and the Tibetans are all in this scale.[^[8]]

[8]. Sir Walford Davies has pointed out that, starting (on the black notes) from A flat, and using only the perfect fifth, this scale is very soon developed. From A flat one gets E flat and D flat, each a fifth away; from D flat one obtains G flat, a fifth down, and from E flat a fifth upwards gives us B flat. Thus we get the five notes of the scale by a simple series of fifths, the fifth being the most perfect interval in music, and the one which will appeal most readily to a primitive people.

A typical well-known pentatonic tune is “Over the Sea to Skye.” Those who know, for instance, the songs of the Western Highlands, will be able to appreciate the cheerful and non-Oriental character of the tunes of Tibet, which are more akin to those of Russia and Eastern Europe than to the music of China or India. This general spirit of the music which the Tibetans play or sing points to a common origin of the folk-tunes of Tibet and Russia. It seems probable that in Turkestan was the real origin of this music, which very likely spread eastwards into Tibet and westwards into Russia; or if Turkestan is not the country of origin of the music, it may be the musical link between Russia and Tibet. The tunes of Nepal, as sung by our coolies, are many of them of a similar nature to those of Tibet, though more often the whole major or minor scale is used, giving them often a strangely European sound; some of the Nepalese airs have a jolly lilt and swing; others in the minor key have quite a haunting beauty; and they too are quite unlike the music of the plains of India with its rather pointless wailing characteristics.[^[9]]

[9]. A more technical article on the subject of Tibetan Music, with musical quotations, will be found in the Musical Times for February 1, 1923.

In Tibet, then, the folk-tunes are simple, short, and emphatically not such “good tunes” as the airs of Nepal. But, in addition to the songs of the peasants and beggars, there is the more highly-organised and orchestrated music of the monasteries. This is usually played with three groups of instruments—first and foremost the percussion; drums of all sizes from those made of a human skull to others 3 and 4 feet in diameter, and cymbals of great resonance and good tone, coming often from China. The cymbals are taken very seriously, and each different way of clashing them has a special name and a special religious significance. The hard-worked percussion department keeps up a continuous rhythm throughout the performance of a devil-dance or other musical festival; and to its strenuous and often sinister efforts are added from time to time the sounds of the two groups of wind instruments. The first of these, playing airs which often possess great charm, are the double-reed oboes, about twice as long as our European oboe, and very often provided with equidistant holes, rendering them incapable of playing save in the scale of whole tones (or a close approximation to it). The second and larger wind instrument is the long straight trumpet, 8 to 12 feet long, of which the fundamental note is almost continuously blown. Most monasteries have two of these, about one tone apart in pitch; but as the longer of the two is blown so as to play its first overtone, while the fundamental note is played on the other, a drone bass of a minor seventh is the resulting sound. This adds to the sinister impressiveness of the music, and provides an effective accompaniment to the quaint tunes of the oboe-like instruments. At a devil-dance performance, the orchestra plays for a whole day, or perhaps two, almost without rest either for itself or for its listeners.

In addition to these instruments, a fairly civilised violin is used in Tibet, especially by wandering beggar minstrels. This is about two-thirds as long as our violin, and has four strings, tuned A,D,A,D, in that order. The bow has two hanks of hair, one of which passes between the first and second strings, while the other goes between the third and fourth. Thus, by pressing the bow in one direction the two A strings are sounded, producing a reinforced note (i.e. two notes in unison); by pressing the bow in the other direction the sound of the D strings is obtained. The strings converge towards the top of the instrument, so that they can all be fingered at once. The Tibetans become very agile with their fingers, and I have heard very skilful performances of rapid, jolly dance-tunes by wandering minstrels; these tunes, like the songs of the peasants, are usually in the pentatonic scale.

One more instrument must be mentioned—the trumpet made from a human thigh-bone. This is not very commonly used in the larger monasteries, but occasionally sounds a note in the ritual of the worship of smaller villages.

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NATURAL HISTORY

By

T. G. LONGSTAFF, M.D.

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CHAPTER XV
NATURAL HISTORY

Previous experience of the conditions of Tibetan travel had taught me that collection and observation was a task requiring complete immunity from other duties; but to the doctor of such an Expedition this condition was not attainable. In the collection of specimens we were, however, fortunate in obtaining the assistance of several other members of the Expedition. But it is especially to Major Norton that the thanks of the Everest Committee are due, for in addition to his other duties, he took over the whole of the botanical work and worked equally with myself in all other branches of Zoology. His gift of painting was particularly valuable in leading to the certain identification of birds in districts where collecting was prohibited. At the time of writing he is on duty at Chanak, and the following notes lose half their value through lack of his promised collaboration, which I had anticipated with particular pleasure.

In his absence I must omit all reference to botany, for personally, owing to the wintry conditions during our outward march and to the speed of my journey back with the invalids, I saw nothing that has not been already better described by Wollaston. But Norton, with our Lepcha collector Rumoo, obtained some 350 flowering plants in Kharta, and we also sent back samples of agricultural seeds.

It must be remembered that it was the constant aim of General Bruce to render it easier for any subsequent party to pass through the country. The objection of the Tibetans to the taking of any wild life is almost universal amongst the clerics and is devoutly shared by the lay population in certain localities. These considerations unfortunately applied particularly to the districts of Tengkye, Shelkar Dzong and Rombuk, where the killing of even domestic animals is prohibited.

There are, however, other parts of Tibet where the same restraint is unnecessary, and even where hunting is habitually practised by the semi-nomadic population. This immunity in our case applied especially to the Chumbi Valley and the country round Phari, and in consequence we have been able to bring back some material which it is hoped will add to the value of the larger collections brought back last year by Dr. Wollaston.

That portion of Tibet visited by the Expedition, and indeed it is typical of most of its provinces, is a region of bare uplands and naked mountains. Such physical conditions combine with a violent type of radiation in the thin dry air to evolve a daily strife of winds, ceaselessly seeking to rectify the balance of atmospheric stability; this continual wind is indeed the foundation of the traveller’s discomfort and the worst enemy of the mountaineer.

Romoo, the Lepcha Collector, who assisted
Dr. Longstaff and Major Norton.

Karma Paul, the Expedition’s Interpreter.

Owing to its aridity, due to the intervention of the rain-catching Himalaya, the country is practically treeless. Distant open views prevail over vast landscapes, lit by strong lights in an atmosphere devoid of fogs or softening mist effects. Usually nothing can move without being visible from a great distance. Hence, though it is not a region particularly rich in life, yet those forms which do prevail are not easily overlooked. Concealment is only to be obtained by burrowing underground, or by immobility combined with protective coloration.

Nowhere is this more obtrusively shown than on the great stony uplands, at an altitude of from 14,000 to 17,000 feet East and South of Khamba Dzong. Here we were in constant sight of bands of wild asses, gazelle, and sheep: from a distance of a couple of miles a prowling wolf was easily discerned. The ground is nowhere here covered by a continuous carpet of grass or herbs, but each plant is several yards from the next. Hence even a small herd of game will cover the ground with innumerable tracks, suggesting to the uninitiated a far greater number of individuals than really exist. To watch a flock of Tibetan sheep or goats grazing seems like watching a migration, for the herd moves at a smart walk, often breaking into a run, each individual racing for the next mouthful a few yards ahead. They move on a wide front, with the shepherd and his wolf-dog well in evidence. On one occasion we came on a wolf devouring a lamb: 50 yards away lay the guardian dog, waiting apparently for any scraps the robber might leave.

It might be supposed that as in the Arctic the birds and animals would turn white in winter. But two sufficient reasons against this necessity have already been indicated. Firstly, the snow line is so high, probably between 19,000 and 20,000 feet, that vegetation does not extend up to it: even the predatory beasts are dependent on vegetation for the pasture of their prey. Secondly, evaporation is so rapid that the country is never snow-clad for long even during the winter season.

But some modification of habit to meet the hostility of winter, under conditions of life already so severe, is to be looked for. Of Marmots we saw nothing during the journey to Everest; probably they were still hibernating. Norton found them later in Kharta and obtained a welcome specimen. Yet Hares were very common at 16,000 to 17,000 feet, several haunting the old moraines of the Rongbuk Glacier even above our Base Camp. Here also, at 17,000 feet, was a small herd of Bharel, or Blue Sheep, which having some familiarity with the hermit monks permitted a fairly close approach.

More interesting are the Mouse-hares, or Pikas, of several varieties, small friendly creatures which live in colonies, mainly (Ochotona curzoniæ) on the open plains, where even their small burrows sometimes undermine considerable areas so that one must ride with care. They are quick and lively in their movements, darting from hole to hole with extreme rapidity, and peeping from their burrows at the stranger with obvious amusement. They are often first seen sitting up on their hind-legs. They lay in stores of grass for winter use, though the evidence all goes to prove that they do not regularly hibernate. They frequently utter a nearly inaudible high-pitched whispering call, a sort of subdued whistle, from which no doubt comes the (Shoka) Bhotia name of shippi, “The Whisperer,” which I obtained in Gnari Khorsum in 1905. Certain birds, as will be subsequently noted, live in association with these small rodents, and add a further note to the charm of their colonies. It appears impossible to trap them, and as their skulls are usually damaged by shooting, a good series of skins, in both summer and winter pelage, of the different species, is still much wanted for study in our museums.

The collection of small mammals is always difficult, and under the circumstances already detailed our collection of skins was necessarily a very small one. Geoffrey Bruce, however, obtained a perfect specimen of the Panda (Ailurus fulgens) from the forests on the Chumbi side of the Jelep La. This curiously aberrant animal, sometimes called the Bear-Cat, is about the size of a fox, and has rich thick fur of a chestnut colour on the back, black below, and with a thick bushy ring-marked tail; in appearance it resembles somewhat the badgers, the bears, and the cats. Its relative, the Great Panda of Tibet, is one of the rarest of large mammals, owing to its very circumscribed distribution.

A Hamster and a few Pikas of three varieties were caught at night in our tents. A Weasel (M. temon) shot in Sikkim, with another Weasel and a Marmot from Kharta, complete our list of mammal skins. We are much disappointed at our failure to see or obtain any specimens from 20,000 feet, where Wollaston’s Pika was actually handled last year—the greatest known altitude for resident mammals.

As to the birds, we were fortunate in having been able to go over Dr. Wollaston’s collection with Mr. Norman B. Kinnear of the Natural History Museum, who provided us in addition with a series of careful notes by which we could identify those likely to be met with in localities where we could not shoot. It is hoped that our material will be found sufficient for Mr. Kinnear to publish a supplement to his recent paper in the Ibis on last year’s collection.

Dr. Percy R. Lowe, Keeper of Birds of the Natural History Museum, was particularly anxious for us to obtain for him a specimen of the Himalayan or Ibis-billed Curlew (Ibidorhynchus struthersi) in the flesh, for purposes of dissection, nothing being known of its anatomy up to the present. Luckily this bird haunts the Chumbi Valley, and Norton and I were able to spend a day in its pursuit. It is of the form of a small curlew, of a general french-grey hue with bold dark markings, and coral red beak and legs. There were several of these birds, not yet (April 3) paired, about Yatung in the Chumbi Valley, but they were very wary. They utter a high-pitched wader-like note not at all resembling our curlew. They always flew directly over the main river, whence we never could have retrieved them. The shores of this river are fringed by beaches of large round grey pebbles, and resting amongst these the birds were invisible. Eventually I lay up under the bank and Norton succeeded in driving a bird on to an island in mid-stream, where I shot it. With an outward display of truly scientific eagerness we divested ourselves of our nether garments and waded waist deep through the torrent. We came near quarrelling as to whether the water or the air was the coldest. But at any rate we retrieved our bird, and what is more brought it, duly preserved in spirits, through all the trials of travel and climate, safely back to Dr. Lowe.

In the Chumbi Valley also we obtained the Great or Solitary Snipe (Gallinago solitaria), an addition to last year’s list. But my favourite family, the Redstarts, were the most interesting. The beautiful White-capped Redstart (Chimarhornis leucocephalus), mostly widely distributed in the Himalaya, was still with us. The Plumbeous Redstart (Rhyacornis fuliginosus) and the Blue-fronted Redstart (Phœnicurus frontalis) we had already obtained in Sikkim. These also were present at the beginning of April in the Chumbi Valley. We obtained in addition the beautiful Blue-tail or Red-flanked Bush-Robin (Tarsiger rafiliatus). I understand that the three latter species have not been previously recorded from this locality. The Blue-tail frequents dense bushes over marshy spots and is very quiet and furtive in its habits, while the Redstarts are the most obtrusive of birds, as to me they are one of the most beautiful of families. At Phari I luckily obtained a specimen of what I thought was the Indian Redstart, but the bird in the hand proved again to be the Blue-fronted sort. At 17,000 feet, above the Base Camp over the snout of the main Rongbuk Glacier, I saw a cock-bird of Güldenstadt’s Redstart (Phœnicurus erythrogaster grandis), fortunately a very easily recognisable bird, and one I had previously seen in Nubra and the Karakoram country.

Although I had previously become somewhat familiar with bird-life in Tibet, I was not prepared to see the teeming flocks of finches, buntings, and larks which we met with on the bare stony uplands at every old camping ground or village we encountered. A portion of this swarming bird population appears to have been due to the spring migration being at its height. Of this we had evidence before and during our passage of the Jelep La, from Sikkim into the Chumbi Valley. At Phari and at Khamba Dzong especially, the birds appeared not yet to have dispersed in pairs to their breeding territory, but, though actually arrived at their destination, to be still collected in migration flocks. Yet this condition of things may be more apparent than real, for neither Norton nor I ever managed to find any evidence of nesting behaviour in such an extremely common bird as Brandt’s Ground Linnet. It is conceivable that the inimical climatic conditions of Tibet are such as to condemn a larger proportion than usual of the bird population to a celibate existence, a condition which is at least by no means rare even in the British Isles. A small piece of evidence is that the only four nests of larks and wagtails which I found contained only three eggs each, as if the altitude had reduced the number of eggs laid. It is to be noted that in each case the eggs were incubated, and so the clutches were presumably complete. But as an exception to this rule, at Chushar, on June 13, I found a nest of the Eastern Desert Wheatear with a normal clutch of five eggs.

In writing of nesting, it may be recorded that we obtained the eggs of the Tibetan Snow Cock (Tetraogallus tibetanus) from nearly 17,000 feet on the Pang La. At the Base Camp (16,500 feet), a Brown Accentor (Prunella f. fulvescens) commenced building its nest in a crevice between a stack of provision boxes in the middle of the camp on May 16. Laying did not commence till May 25—a long period of delay—and was completed with the third egg on the 27th. The hen commenced to sit at once, and no more eggs were laid. Norton observed Alpine Choughs and Rock Doves nesting in the cliffs above the Base Camp at an altitude of 17,000 feet. Besides the usual Ravens, and the species already named, the Base Camp was visited by Brandt’s Ground Linnet (Leucosticte brandti), a Sparrow, a Snow Finch, the Ground Chough (Podoces humilis), and the Shore Lark (Otocorys alpestris elwesi).

Noel, during his vigil on the Chang La (23,000 feet), saw a small bird fly above him, borne on the Westerly gale. But Wollaston’s Lammergeyer maintains still the first place in altitude with a record of over 24,000 feet.

At Trangso Chumbab, on June 11, I had the opportunity of observing the habits of Blandford’s Mountain-Finch (Chionospiza blandfordi). This bird seems to live in amity with the Pikas (Ochotona curzoniæ) in their burrows. I marked the birds bringing food to a Pika burrow, and wishing to see what the young in down were like, Finch and I commenced to dig out the hole. It proved, however, beyond our powers in the sun-baked ground, so I fell to watching again. We had laid open the burrow for about 2 feet. The hen-bird at once returned with food, but alighting at the spot where the burrow formerly commenced, began immediately to tunnel into the ground, quite oblivious of the true opening in full view only 2 feet away. What would our nature writers say to such a lapse of intellect? The bird burrowed with its beak, diving its head into the ground and boring with a very rapid jerky twist so that the sand was scattered in a small cloud. This was repeated several times and on several visits. I then filled up the trench, leaving the nesting hole open. On the next visit the bird flew down the hole, which I then stopped with loose earth. In the morning the burrow had been completely cleared and the birds were busily feeding their young again. This seems to point to the conclusion that these birds are naturally ground-dwellers, and are fully capable of making their own tunnels, but that the abundance of Pika burrows has induced lazy habits. Mandelle’s Snow-Finch (Montifringilla mandelli), not obtained by last year’s Expedition, was shot by us at Pika warrens at Phari (April 7), and seen, always associated with Pikas, on the following days.

On June 11, also, we were witnesses to what must be a common tragedy. A family of small Brahminy ducklings—the Ruddy Sheldrake of Europe—were making their noisy way down from some nesting site on the steppe to the headwaters of the Arun—and safety. The parent birds may have taken fright at our camp, through which the ducklings scuttled fearlessly. The loathsome Ravens, gathered, as always, for carrion or camp refuse, swooped down and attacked the hapless family, bolting a whole duckling at each mouthful. Surely a gun would have done no harm here.

Norton made the interesting discovery that the Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cia godlewskii) breeds in the Kama Valley, thus extending its breeding range far to the South. It may, indeed, be expected that several species now believed to breed only in Siberia may in fact be found nesting on the Northern slopes of the Himalaya, and even in other highland regions of Tibet. For here altitude comes to the assistance of latitude to produce an arctic type of climate, flora, and fauna; though it must be admitted that the aridity of Tibet must produce very different climatic conditions to those obtaining in the far North. In Gnari Khorsum, 400 miles West of Everest, I had obtained specimens, with young in down, of the Large Eastern Sand Plover (Cirripedesmus mongolicus atrifrons), which previously was only known as a breeding species from much farther North; and again, the day we left Tibet, at 17,000 feet, on the Serpo La, I found another pair of these Dotterel, from their behaviour obviously nesting, so to speak, at the very gates of India, for 10 miles further on we had left everything Tibetan behind us—landscape, flowers, birds, beasts, and insects were all different. Nowhere else in the world can there be a sharper natural division than between the Tibetan Highlands and the true Himalayan Zone.

The physical and climatic conditions prevailing in this part of Tibet produces an environment hostile to reptilian and amphibian life. The single Toad obtained last year was quite new to science, and Norton’s capture of a second specimen is a great piece of luck. Miss Joan B. Procter, F.Z.S., of the Natural History Museum, has described and named it (Cophophryne alticola). It is remarkable by having the toes fully webbed. She also writes that the Toad, together with the Frog (Nanorana pleskei) and the Lizard (Phrynocephalus theobaldi), are all devoid of external ears, the tympanum itself being absent in the Toad. This unusual modification is attributed to the effect of altitude, but it has also been suggested that the absence of ears is due to inherited atrophy following generations of frost-bite—an interesting subject for the followers of Weissman!

The fish, rejoicing in the name of Schizopygopsis stoliczkæ, is stated by Mr. Norman never to have been previously obtained from such an altitude.

With the Molluscs we drew blank, in spite of Norton’s energetic dredging of tarns and pools at Kharta. Nor did any member of the Expedition produce a single snail-shell, though all were armed with pill-boxes and on the look out for them.

It is probably only among the various families of insects that any important biological results may be hoped for from this Expedition. Our collection from the Base Camp, greatly due to the assistance received from Morris, of more than 300 beetles of a dozen or more species, may be sufficient to show some evidence of the effect of environment. A number of them are new to science, and, with one or two exceptions, were not obtained last year. There are already described over 100,000 kinds of beetles, and under these circumstances it is obvious that even such a modest collection as ours will take some time to work out. Mr. K. G. Blair, of the Natural History Museum, has it in hand, and, with the assistance of Mr. H. E. Andrewes and Dr. G. A. K. Marshall, will certainly make the most of it. His preliminary note gives 160 specimens of four or perhaps five kinds of Ground Beetles (Carabidæ) belonging to genera of Palæarctic distribution. Of the Tenebrionids there are 140 specimens belong to six species, probably all new, but characteristic of the mountainous regions of Central Asia. Of the Weevils there are only seventeen specimens, but they appear to belong to seven new species. Two of these were kindly collected by Norton’s Toad.

Mr. B. P. Uvarov is working out the Orthoptera, and writes that our Stick-Insect (Phasmid) is of great interest because the family is essentially a sub-tropical group and has never been recorded from any such high altitude before. We were lucky, also, in getting three more specimens of Wollaston’s curious new Grasshopper (Hypernephia everesti, Uvarov). At the same time, my old specimens from Purang have been elevated into the type of a new species of a new genus (Hyphinomos fasciata). Future visitors are earnestly requested to collect every grasshopper-like insect they meet here, for the orthopterous fauna of High Asia is wholly unexplored.

It must be remembered that we constantly passed through localities in which it was inadvisable to show even a butterfly-net. When recrossing the Pang La (17,000 feet), I lagged behind and spent a laborious hour collecting disconcertingly quick-flying, woolly-bodied flies; these and others are being worked out by Major E. E. Austen, D.S.O.

There is also a Burrowing Bee (Ammophia sp.), the most interesting insect I met. It is of a repellent ant-like aspect, of an evil black and red pattern. It flies astonishingly fast, and can only be netted by careful stalking when it lands to burrow in the sand. It is preparing a tomb for a paralysed grub in which it will lay its own egg; on hatching, the bee grub will feed on the living corpse of its entertainer. I first observed it by noticing, as I rode along the banks of the Phung Chu, tiny jets of sand being shot violently upwards from the ground, the insect itself being quite invisible. My pony, a true Tibetan, loathed the sight of a butterfly-net; I had no companion to hold him, and the pursuit of science was attended by more than the usual trials.

A series of small Moths was obtained at the Base Camp, and Norton collected more in Kharta. These are being worked out by Mr. W. H. T. Tams, but in the case of Moths, identification is a particularly lengthy and laborious business.

The Butterflies are naturally few in such an environment; nor does the constant wind make their breathless capture any easier. Captain N. D. Riley is working them out, and tells me that in general they resemble our English butterflies, with other Alpine families. On a recent visit to the Museum, I was excusing the scantiness of our collection, explaining that, as a rule, I had only been able to collect while crossing high passes. Indicating a series of small dark brown “Ringlets,” rather the worse for wear, I said that that was all I saw above 16,000 feet. “Why that,” said Riley, “is a new species of a new genus!” So may our successors seize every opportunity that offers of collecting even the least and most inconspicuous-looking insects in the endeavour to assist our research workers in adding some particle to the sum of our knowledge of nature.

Sketch-map of Mount Everest and the Rongbuk Glaciers.
From surveys by Major Wheeler, with Route and Camps of the 1922 Expedition added by Colonel Strutt.
London: Edward Arnold & Co.

The Route of the
MOUNT EVEREST EXPEDITION 1922
CHUMBI to MT. EVEREST
Published by Edward Arnold & Co. for the Mount Everest Committee from maps prepared by the Royal Geographical Society.
(Click on map for larger version.)

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