There were many to ask what was the use of such an enterprise, which would be costly, difficult, and certainly dangerous. The answer is that it was no earthly use, and that in that lay its supreme merit. The war had called forth the finest qualities of human nature, and with the advent of peace there seemed a risk of the world slipping back into a dull materialism. Men had begun to ask of everything its cash value, and to cherish, as if it were a virtue, a narrow utilitarian commonsense. To embark upon something which had no material value was a vindication of the essential idealism of the human spirit. In Sir Francis Younghusband's words, "The sight of climbers struggling upwards to the supreme pinnacle would have taught men to lift their eyes to the hills—to raise them off the ground and divert them, if only for a moment, to something pure and lofty and satisfying to that inner craving for the worthiest which all men have hidden in their souls. And when they see men thrown back at first, but returning again and again to the assault, till, with faltering footsteps and gasping breaths, they at last reach the summit, they will thrill with pride. They will no longer be obsessed with the thought of what mites they are in comparison with the mountains—how insignificant they are beside their material surroundings. They will have a proper pride in themselves, and a well-grounded faith in the capacity of spirit to dominate material."
These are almost the words of Theophile Gautier's defence of mountaineers: "Ils sont la volonté protestante contre l'obstacle aveugle, et ils plantent sur l'inaccessible le drapeau de l'intelligence humaine." If the climber wants a further statement of his creed let it be that of Mr. Belloc, when he first saw the Alps from the ridge of the Jura. "Up there, the sky above and below them, the great peaks made communion between that homing, creeping part of me which loves vineyards, and dances, and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in Heaven.... These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, these few fifty miles and these few thousand feet; there is something more. Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean humility, the fear of death, the terror of height or of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception, whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this constant and perpetual quarrel which feeds the spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man. Since I could now see such a wonder, and it could work such things in my mind, therefore some day I should be part of it. That is what I feel. That it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for I am afraid of slipping down."*
* The Path to Rome.
And now for the great mountain itself. First of all, it is a rock peak. All the upper part is a great pyramid of stone, with three main arêtes—the West, the South-West, and the North-East. It lies exactly on the frontier between Tibet and Nepal, and from the Nepalese side and the plains of India it is hard to get a good view of it, for only a wedge of white is seen peeping between and over other peaks. On the Tibetan side, however, it stands clear, and its pre-eminence over its neighbours is patent. Now, in all attacks upon a great peak the first question is how to get to it—a problem most difficult in the case of other Himalayan summits like K2, and of peaks like Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Robson in Canada. It is not only the question of the climbers getting there, but of transporting the food and tents and accessories required by a well-equipped expedition. Had the only route to Everest lain through the deep-cut gorges of Nepal, the transport problem might have been insuperable. But here came in the value of Tibet, which is a high plateau, averaging twelve or thirteen thousand feet. It was possible to take a large party, with baggage animals, up through the passes of Sikkim to the Kampa Dzong (Kampa Jong), and then westwards along the north side of the range to a base camp at Tingri Dzong, due north of the mountain. Everest itself would be forty or fifty miles from such a base camp, but there was a clear road to it by the upper glens and glaciers of the Arun, which flows north and east before it turns south and cuts its way through the Himalayan wall.
The problem of access to the base was, therefore, not a hard one. The problem of the ascent was two-fold—part physiological, part physical. Could human beings survive at an altitude of 29,000 feet—human beings who were forced to carry loads and to move their limbs? Aviators, of course, had risen to greater heights, but they had not been compelled to exert themselves. Could a man in action support life in that rarified air? Above 20,000 feet a cubic foot of air contains less than half the oxygen which it holds at sea-level. As the working of the body depends upon the oxygen supplied through the lungs, this fact was bound to lessen enormously man's physical energy. On the other hand, it had been found that the human frame could adapt itself to great altitudes by increasing the number of red blood corpuscles. Dr. Kellas had been able to climb 600 feet an hour above 21,000 feet, and Mr. Meade had camped in comparative comfort at 23,600 feet. Still, the highest altitude yet reached had been only 24,600 feet, and no one could say what difference the extra 4,500 feet might make. Clearly, before the final climbing began it would be necessary to acclimatize the party. In the last resort oxygen might be artificially supplied to the climbers. The physiological problem was of the kind which could only be solved in practice.
The second was the physical. A man might live and even move slowly above, say, 26,000 feet, but it was quite certain that no human being would be capable of the severe exertions required by difficult climbing. If the last stage of Everest proved to be like the last stages of many Himalayan mountains, then the thing was strictly impossible. The hope was that on the Tibetan side the arêtes might be easy going. It all depended upon finding an easy route, and being able to make an ultimate camp at some point like 26,000 feet. There was good hope that the first might be possible, judging from Rawling's survey at a distance of sixty miles and the known geographical features of the Tibetan side of the range. The other physical difficulties would be the gigantic scale of Himalayan obstacles, the hugeness of the ice-fields and glaciers, the immensity of the rock-falls and avalanches. Also at a great height there would be the bitter cold to lower vitality, and the likelihood of violent winds. Much would depend on the weather, which was still an unknown quantity. Indeed, all the physical factors were in the region of speculation; only a reconnaissance could determine them. It might be that the expedition would have to turn back at once, confessing its task impossible.
General Bruce, who was the chief living authority on Himalayan travelling, was unable to accompany the party, so Colonel Howard-Bury was selected as leader. An elaborate scientific equipment was prepared, and steps were taken to get the full scientific value out of the journey. But the primary object was mountaineering: first a reconnaissance, and then, if fortune favoured, an effort to reach the summit. The four climbers chosen were Mr. Harold Raeburn, who, in 1920, had done good work on the spurs of Kanchenjunga; Dr. Kellas, who had reached 23,400 feet on Kamet; and two younger men, Mr. George Leigh Mallory and Mr. Bullock, distinguished members of the Alpine Club, who had been together at Winchester. In India they were to be joined by Major Morshead and Major Wheeler, of the Indian Survey. Early in May 1921, the party assembled at Darjeeling.
II
The start from Darjeeling was on 18th May. The first stage through Sikkim, and by way of the Chumbi valley to the Tibetan plateau, was over familiar ground, which need not be described. There was a good deal of trouble with the mules, which had been badly chosen, but no incident of importance happened till Dochen was reached, the point where their road left the main road to Lhasa. At Kampa Dzong, Dr. Kellas died suddenly from heart failure—an irreparable loss to the expedition, for he had been one of the mountaineers from whom most was looked for, and he was the only member of the party qualified by his medical knowledge to carry out experiments in oxygen and blood pressure. There, too, Mr. Raeburn fell sick, and had to return to Sikkim.