Camp II.
Facing page 294.
However, it was arranged that, after Mallory and Somervell had made their attack, a second attempt should be carried out by Norton and myself. But a few days later, on May 14, Strutt, Morshead and Norton left to join up with Mallory and Somervell to make an onslaught in force, but without oxygen. Hitherto, I had been sanguine in the extreme about getting to the top, but when I saw the last mountaineers of the expedition leave the Base Camp, my hopes fell low. Any attempt I could now make upon Mount Everest would have to be carried out with untrained climbers as my companions; for I felt certain that, before they could be fit for another assault, the men of the first party would require, not merely a few days, but weeks, to recuperate from the effects of their initial effort.
CHAPTER XX
MOUNT EVEREST
During my stay at the Base Camp my time was not really wasted. A study of Everest and of its meteorological conditions, photography, overhauling of equipment and experiments with oxygen kept me fully occupied.
I wonder why it is that so many mountain travellers seem to lose all sense of proportion when they behold for the first time hitherto unknown ranges and peaks. Perhaps it is that they do not happen to possess the critical faculty of abiding by facts, and tend to describe what they expect rather than what they see. Whatever the reason, the ugliest, sometimes even the most insignificant of sights, provided it be but strange or novel, induces their pen to trail along in a pæon of praise, and the new mountain vision is elevated to all that is awe-inspiring, magnificent, beautiful, far excelling any mountain hitherto known to man. Thus we find that earlier explorers of Mount Everest have enhanced its wonders out of all proportion to the reality. It is as if its quality of height, the mere fact that Mount Everest is over 29,000 feet in altitude and the highest mountain in the world, has prejudiced their judgment of its other qualities. A closer analysis of this very question of height may prove edifying. A mountain has two heights, absolute and relative. The former represents its altitude above sea-level, the latter its height above the immediate surroundings, and is really the only altitude with which the eye can be concerned. It is only when mountains rise from the sea, as they do in Corsica, that absolute and relative altitudes are one and the same thing. 29,002 feet is the accepted absolute altitude of Mount Everest; the relative altitude, that is, the actual height that presents itself to the eye of the beholder, is arrived at by deducting some 16,500 to 17,000 feet. The suggestion frequently made to me that the sight of Mount Everest must dwarf into insignificance anything I have ever seen in the Alps, has invariably met with my decided denial. When seen from the north—the only aspect of the mountain with which we of the recent expedition are acquainted—Mount Everest appears as an uncouth, well-nigh shapeless mass partially blocking the end of the Rongbuk Valley, itself surely one of the most formless and ugly of mountain valleys. The impression of the grand or the prodigious which the view of a mountain makes upon one depends largely on the height to which the summit rears itself above the lower limit of its glaciers or eternal snows. Mont Blanc is nearly 16,000 feet high, and its glaciers descend to within 4,000 feet of sea-level—a vertical zone of nearly 12,000 feet of perpetual ice and snow. On the north, Mount Everest rises to a height of 12,500 feet above the Base Camp, which was situated a little below the end of the Rongbuk Glacier—a vertical zone of 12,500 feet of perpetual ice and snow. From the point of view of extent to which it is glaciated, therefore, Mont Blanc suffers little when compared with Everest. But the distance between the observer and the object observed is a determining factor in the impression of size and grandeur which a mountain picture leaves on the mind. Mont Blanc can be seen in all its magnificence at a distance of some five to six miles. On its northern side, Mount Everest can most advantageously be seen from the Base Camp, eleven miles away. Thus, when no scale of absolute measurement is present, Mont Blanc appears nearly twice as huge to the eye as Mount Everest. So much for “prodigiousness” or “grandeur.” From the point of view of beauty, there can be no comparison between the two mountains. Mont Blanc, seen from the north, is a wonderful, glistening mass of snowy domes, piled one against the other in ever-increasing altitude to a beautifully-proportioned and well-balanced whole. No beauty or symmetry of form can be read out of the ponderous, ungainly, ill-proportioned lump whose horizontal stratification lines produce an appearance of almost comical squatness and which carries, as if by accident, on its western extremity a little carelessly truncated cone to serve as a summit. For such is Mount Everest as seen from the Base Camp. This infelicity of form is further forced upon the eye by the fact that it is far from being shared by all the other mountains surrounding the head of the Rongbuk Valley. One of these, indeed, though only about 21,000 feet in height, presented its snowy northern flank to the gaze of the observer at the Base Camp; and in the delicately moulded flutings and folds of its tremendously abrupt snow slopes was contained such beauty, such magnificence, and such dainty grace of symmetry and poise as I have seldom, if ever, seen in a mountain.
It goes without saying that the weather was a thing most anxiously inquired into by all members of the expedition. During my fifteen days at the Base, I lost no opportunity of studying its vagaries and attempting to assign meanings to the different portents. During the entire month of May, there were only two fine days, and those were separated from each other by a wide interval of time. Both succeeded heavy snowstorms which had whitened the rocks of Mount Everest. In applying the term “fine weather” in the case of these mountain regions, it is necessary to be somewhat more critical than one would ordinarily be in the Alps, where cloudless sky almost invariably means favourable weather. In the case of Mount Everest, it is essential not only that the sky be more or less cloudless, but that the force of the wind be so small as to be insufficient to blow up and tear away streamers of snow dust from the ridges. These streamers betoken the presence of a wind of such strength that it cannot but seriously handicap the climber.
On the last stage of the journey, from Shekar Dzong to the Base Camp, the developing of the photographs I had taken en route had fallen into arrears, and I now endeavoured to make these good. In spite of the simple methods adopted, developing was not always an easy matter. During development of the films, the solutions contained in the tanks had to be maintained at the proper temperature. Often the only way to accomplish this was to retire into one’s sleeping-bag with the tin or tins, as the case might be, as bed-fellows. The washing of the fixed and developed films was a simple matter. The Rongbuk stream ran close by. It is true that, in the biting winds which swept through the valley, frequent dipping of the hands into ice-cold water was far from pleasant. The most difficult part of the whole process of the production of the negative was the drying of the washed films. This had to be done at a temperature above the freezing-point of water, owing to the fact that, if the films once froze, frost marks formed in the emulsion. However, by the simple expedient of closing the tent as hermetically as possible, and remaining inside it with two or three candles burning during the drying process, the temperature could be kept above freezing.
At last the day came when I was able to think of advancing. Time there was none to lose. The weather outlook was by no means improving. Indeed, there was every indication of the monsoon breaking sooner than we had expected. Although there were no more climbers left at the Base Camp, the whole climbing strength of the expedition, with the exception of myself, being in the first party, my choice of climbing companions was easy enough. First of all, there was Captain Geoffrey Bruce. Tall, of athletic build, strong, endowed with a great fund of mental energy—an invaluable asset on ventures of this kind—and cheerful in any situation, he was, in spite of the fact that he had never indulged in mountaineering, an ideal companion. Believing two to be too weak a party to carry out the cut-and-dried plan of campaign that I had already formulated at the back of my mind, a third member was selected in the person of Lance-Corporal Tejbir, the most promising of the Ghurka non-commissioned officers attached to the expedition. He was a splendid specimen of humanity, standing fully six feet in his stockings, broad-shouldered, deep-chested and altogether well-knit. Above all things, the slightest provocation brought a wide grin to Tejbir’s pleasant face, even in the depths of adversity. Like Geoffrey Bruce, he had never climbed before; but I have noticed in the course of my experience that the man who grins most, is usually the one who goes farthest in the mountains—and perhaps also elsewhere. What porters we could, Geoffrey Bruce and I selected at the Base Camp. The remainder of those who were to assist in pitching and provisioning our highest camps were selected later, on the way up to and at Camp III.