We left Shekar Dzong on April 27, and two days later crossed the Pangla Pass, about 17,000 feet in height, whence we obtained a good view of Mount Everest and the neighbouring peaks. Everest towered head and shoulders above its surroundings, a dark, irregular, forbidding-looking rocky pyramid. I have never seen the mountain to better advantage. On the 30th we pitched camp in the Rongbuk Valley, at the head of which Everest stands. Hard by the camp was a large monastery presided over by a very venerable old abbot who received us in audience. He was of a lively and intelligent curiosity and asked many questions. Why were we so eager to get to the summit of Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of Snows? For so the Tibetans beautifully name this highest of mountains. Why spend so much money, endure hardships, and face the dangers he was sure had to be faced, merely for the sake of standing on the top of this loftiest of great peaks? General Bruce, as usual, rose to the occasion and explained with quite undeniable logic that, as the summit of Everest is the highest point on earth, so is it the nearest point on earth to heaven; and was it not meet that we should desire to approach as closely as possible to heaven during our lifetime? This explanation, which contains much more than a germ of the truth, satisfied the reverend old gentleman completely. Henceforward he did everything within his very wide powers to further the interests of the expedition.
The next day’s march was destined to be our last towards the Base Camp, the position of which was determined by its being the point beyond which we could make no further progress with animal transport. A short distance below the end of the Rongbuk Glacier which flows down from Mount Everest into the valley, our tents were pitched (May 1) on a little level patch of ground close under the steep slopes of a moraine. We had fondly hoped that this moraine would shelter our camp from the wind. But later, bitter experience was to teach us that the wind blows not only up and down and across the Rongbuk Valley, but in any and all other directions that perversity can make possible. I have always felt rather sorry for the General, who spent the next seven weeks of his existence at the Base Camp. He, indeed, knew something about wind by the time his stay had come to an end.
No time was to be lost on arriving at the Base Camp, for the East Rongbuk Glacier, over which the North Col, the real starting-point of the climb on Everest itself, was to be approached, had not yet been explored. On May 2, Colonel Strutt, Norton and I went up into this valley and, quite close to the end of the glacier, selected a suitable site for a first advanced camp. This first brief reconnaissance was followed by a lengthier one carried out by Longstaff, Morshead and Norton under the leadership of Colonel Strutt. This party successfully explored the hitherto unknown regions of the East Rongbuk Glacier for a suitable way up into the great bay that lies at the head of the glacier and is enclosed by Mount Everest, the North Col and the North Peak. They also selected suitable sites for the more advanced camps. It was found necessary to pitch three such camps between the Base and the North Col. They were known as Camp I (17,500 ft.), Camp II (19,500 ft.), and Camp III (21,000 ft.), and soon the transport officers with the porters were busy establishing and provisioning them.
For the time being I remained at the Base. A mild form of dysentery, which had at one time or another claimed as its victims most of the other members of the expedition, now took hold of me, and I was some days in shaking off its effects. By May 10, the work on the advanced camps had progressed so well that Mallory and Somervell were able to leave the Base in order to establish a camp on the North Col, and to make an attempt to climb Everest without the use of oxygen.
It may be wondered why, in view of our instructions, oxygen was not to be employed. One body of scientific opinion was most emphatic in its view that without the assistance of a supply of oxygen carried by the climbers it would be impossible to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Scientists, however, do not always agree amongst themselves. An almost equally strong body of scientific opinion declared that the weight of any useful supply of oxygen carried by the climbers would be so great as to counterbalance any advantages that might accrue from the oxygen itself, and that, therefore, oxygen would not only not be of assistance, but would actually be a grave hindrance to the climber. Perhaps I may anticipate here by stating that the second attempt on Everest in 1922 disproved beyond all shadow of doubt the tenets of the second body of opinion, and, what is more important, proved no less conclusively that Everest can positively be climbed by men carrying a suitable supply of oxygen. So far we have no like positive confirmation, either from climbing experience or scientific research, of the possibility of attaining the summit of Everest without oxygen. Personally I feel certain it never will be climbed without oxygen. But there existed another force of oxygen antagonists, largely unscientific, who were willing enough to admit that oxygen might, indeed, have its uses, but condemned it on the ground that its employment was unsporting and, therefore, un-British. The line of reasoning of these anti-oxygenists is somewhat hard to follow, and is inconsistent with their adoption of other scientific measures which render mountaineering less exacting to the human frame. For instance, they do not hesitate to conserve their animal heat by wearing specially warm clothing; they do not deny the “legitimacy,” from the mountaineering point of view, of the thermos flask; they fear no adverse criticism when they doctor up their insides with special heat and energy-giving foods and stimulants; from the sun’s ultra-violet rays and the wind’s bitter cold they do not scruple to protect their eyes by wearing Crookes’ anti-glare glasses; even the use of caffeïne to supply a little more “buck” to a worn-out body is not cavilled at. In fine, it may justly be supposed that if science could only provide oxygen in the form of tablets, the words “artificial,” “illegitimate,” “unsportsmanlike,” or “un-British” would no longer be applicable to its use as an aid to climbing Everest. It was written on high authority, and I read a copy of the article in question at the Base Camp, that “this (the possible failure of the climbers to tolerate the restraint of the oxygen apparatus) would be a good thing, because it seems to us quite as important to discover how high a man can climb without oxygen as to get to a specified point, even the highest summit of the world, in conditions so artificial that they can never become ‘legitimate’ mountaineering.” This sentence may be taken as indicative of the change in objective which was now becoming apparent amongst the members of the expedition. Instead of the aim being to climb Mount Everest with every resource at our disposal, the opponents of oxygen, of whom the writer of the above quotation presumably is, or was, one, had so successfully worked upon the minds of the members of the expedition as to induce them to entertain a fresh objective, namely to see how far they could climb without the aid of oxygen. It were pleasant to think that the writer who could thus acclaim possible failure and, in advocating a new objective, destroy the singleness of purpose of the expedition, was not a mountaineer. And so it came about that, by the time we reached the Base Camp, I found myself almost alone in my faith in oxygen. It is true that I had had the advantage of personal teaching from Professor Dreyer who had demonstrated, by experiments carried out upon myself, what a powerful weapon oxygen could be when rightly used. This faith in the lessons of my genial master was fully justified by later events. But “faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers”; in the mountains, the tragedy is that the odds are generally on the “unfaith.” It has been suggested that a keen sense of rivalry existed between the exponents of climbing with and without oxygen. As far as I am aware, this was not so. Despite conflicting ideas on this subject, complete harmony of feeling prevailed amongst us—too valuable a thing to be disturbed by the friction into which, under the circumstances, a sense of rivalry might well have degenerated.
Mount Everest and the Base Camp.
