Personal Matters
Expense.
The cost of a climbing expedition in the Himalaya entirely depends on the scale of preparation. If guides are taken, their fares, outfit and pay will be a heavy item—not less than £250 each. It is obvious that the further English stores have to be transported the more they will cost by the time the mountains are reached. It is cheaper in the end to get most of the stores at the last hill station, and to pay a little more for them. The equipment for the high bivouacs, however, must be brought out from home. This will cost, say £50. A first-class return by P. & O., plus fare to the end of the railway transport, may be put at £100.
If the expedition is on a modest scale, and the climber has some knowledge of the language and customs of the country, and can limit himself and his servants to a dozen loads, the actual expense of travel in the hills is not great. Twenty pounds a month is a liberal estimate for each European. This includes everything: food, servants and coolies’ wages. Two amateurs, contributing £500 in all between them, and with four months to spare, ought to be able to put in ten weeks in the hills without any difficulty. In Kashmir, with the same allowance of time and money, they would only get eight or nine weeks in the mountains, and in the Karakoram not more than a month. (All estimates are pre-war.)
Obviously a big expedition with guides must cost a great deal more than this, but the amount can be calculated on the basis of the figures given above. For a large party it would be advisable to bring out all the supplies for the mountains packed in numbered Vanesta cases. A number must be put on every side of each package, and lists of contents to correspond prepared. These cases also serve as good substitutes for chairs and tables.
Outfit.
The days or weeks of travel to the foot of the Snows require an outfit distinct from that required for high mountaineering. The extent of the travelling outfit depends primarily upon the time and money at the disposal of the individual. A camp-bed and an 80-lb. Kabul tent, ordered beforehand from the Elgin Mills at Cawnpore or through the A. & N. Stores at Bombay, is worth serious consideration. Personally, I prefer a Whymper tent, with an extra fly to keep the sun off and with the floor-cloth sewn in. A Whymper tent can also be used by the cook and followers, without the double fly and with a loose floor-cloth; if this is sewn in, it is apt to get burned when fires are lighted inside the tent on wet evenings.
On all railway journeys, in most bungalows—public and private—and even in some hotels, bedding must be carried. A very thin cork or hair mattress is a luxury; the sleeping-bag does nearly as well. Two Jaeger sheets, two Jaeger blankets, a pillow and a couple of pillow-cases, aided by a bath towel, really suffice. The whole is wrapped up and strapped in a strong ground sheet laced down the middle, or in a more complicated valise sold in India. This bundle constitutes the bistra, one coolie-load; it should be as rain- and vermin-proof as possible.
A folding X-table and chair are almost necessary concessions to caste. A spare chair should be available if natives of chair rank are likely to be met. An india-rubber or canvas bath is also necessary for other purposes. When bathing in the open, as before said, drawers at least should always be worn out of respect for native sentiment. Toilet kit is carried in an enamelled iron basin with a leather cover, called a chilamchi.
Cooking vessels (degchis) should be of aluminium, but cups and plates and teapot may be enamel-ware. Either hurricane lanterns (kerosene), or candle-lanterns that can stand on a table, are necessary in camp. All these should be obtained from the A. & N. or other stores in India.
Food.
As to food, the necessary tinned butter, biscuits, jam and other groceries can be bought at the last hill station. In most places in the hills sheep or goats can be bought as required. Farther on you must bring your own live stock along with you; this should ensure milk of sorts. Chickens and eggs, rice and native flour (ata), can be purchased in most villages.
On the glaciers, cocoa, chocolate or tea, with plasmon, are needed for breakfast, and, for the evening, maggi (vegetable) soups with rice. At the highest camps by far the best drink is some sort of dried malted milk preparation, like Horlick’s or Allen & Hanbury’s diet. The above must be brought out from England, unless it is found to be obtainable from the A. & N. Stores in Bombay.
The High Camp Outfit.
The tent should be the Mummery pattern if carried by yourself, but may be Whymper pattern if coolies are still available. Ice-axes can be lengthened to serve as tent poles, if desired, by means of a piece of hollow bamboo 10 or 12 inches long which is slipped over the point. The bamboo must be bound round with wire at the end to prevent splitting. In bad weather a small ventilator to the tent is necessary, as it may be found impossible to open the door. Sleeping-bags can be made of any thickness and warmth of goose-down. Balloon-silk should be sewn underneath the bag, and brought up for at least 18 inches over the feet. At high altitudes only a primus stove, burning kerosene, will serve. Absolute alcohol should be carried to start the apparatus, and a flat strip of perforated brass as a wind-shield is necessary. The primus stove and reserve of kerosene, in old petrol tins, must not be carried in the same load with any food. This must be specially remembered during the whole of the expedition.
It is a good plan to camp not later than 3 p.m., and to start melting snow at once. The first melting will probably be drunk tepid. Then the evening meal, or rather drink, of soup or cocoa or malted milk must be taken; following this, while the stove is still alive, more snow should be melted and the morning’s drink prepared. If this is placed in large thermos-bottles inside the sleeping-bags it will last, if untouched, till the following afternoon.
It is worse than useless to invite frost-bite by a very early start. But in any case the time cannot be spared to melt snow in the morning.
Clothing.
So long as you wear a good ‘Cawnpore’ pith helmet (topi) nothing else matters much. Sunburn will prevent you wearing too little. Some people prefer a turban. This consists of the pugari or loonghi and the koolla or conical cap affected by Mohammedans and Europeans, and round which the pugaree is worn. On a cold morning the tail of the pugaree can be wrapped round the neck. It is easy to tie—in a fashion. It is in some ways better than a pith helmet, but does not protect the eyes from glare. Shorts are very cool for marching; but beware of blisters at the back of the knees. A spine pad is necessary in the valleys, and pleasant at even the greatest altitudes.
Footgear for high climbing is still a vexed problem. You must have very heavily nailed boots for the moraines. On snow I have worn a covering of raw cowhide, hair outside over the front half of the boot. The half sole is made of stoutest canvas. The whole may be garnished with a common pair of Swiss ice-claws. Boots should be large enough for two pairs of socks to be worn. Since putties will be invariably used, stockings will only be needed for a change in the evening. No doubt for very high work some Polar footgear would be better than climbing boots.[34] Possibly ski-boots may meet the difficulty. But a piece of blanket wrapped over the whole boot and held in place with a large pair of claws, or by the boot-nails as they wear through, ought to be an efficient substitute. Swiss snow-shoes are hardly worth carrying, but on easy slopes at high altitudes they can be very useful, and I have been glad of them. Ski are probably useless, for our purpose, owing to transport difficulties.
Smoked glasses are only better than nothing; the proper colour is something between yellow and green, such as Sinclair’s ‘N.W.V.’ glasses, or their like.
Instruments.
You cannot produce a good map without sacrificing much time and energy. But apart from this, it is useful to know the heights of camps, etc. For this purpose use at your camps a boiling-point thermometer (hypsometer), specially constructed for high altitudes: you must observe the air temperature with a swing thermometer at the same time.
Also take a large (4½ inch) Watkin mountain aneroid (J. Hicks, Hatton Garden), graduated from 31 to 10 inches. Keep it permanently out of action as soon as you go above 5000 feet, and only throw it into gear when taking a reading—allowing not more than a few minutes for it to settle. Put it out of gear as soon as the reading has been made.
A reading should be taken with the Watkin whenever the hypsometer is used, as a check on both instruments. When climbing, and at the highest camp, probably only the Watkin will be used, since, even with absolute alcohol, an hour may be spent over an hypsometer observation at great heights. The Watkin must be read both on leaving camp and on returning.
The air temperature ought to be taken at each observation; but this is a refinement.
All observations must be immediately entered in a special notebook with hour, date and place. These should be worked out by some one else on a return to civilization. The Indian Meteorological Department or the Survey at Dehra Dun or the Royal Geographical Society would be the natural referees.