Letters From Everest Read online

  First seen by a non-native in 1849, the earliest attempt to climb Everest followed over seventy years later. The successful 1953 expedition was the ninth attempt on the mountain, leaving aside three solo endeavours and an abortive, unofficial Russian venture. Up to the end of 2011, at a reasonable reckoning, there had been 5,640 successful ascents by 3,450 individual climbers. At the beginning of 1953 there had been none.

  Though we now rightly celebrate sixty years of endeavour since the first ascent by Hillary and Tenzing on 29 May 1953, this year is an extraordinary anniversary year in the story of Everest. It is fifty years since an American expedition made the epic first ascent of the West Ridge and also completed the first traverse of the mountain; twenty-five years since the first ascent of a route up the South Buttress on the eastern Kangshung Face; and thirty-five years since the first ascent without supplemental oxygen.

  Climbers from around the world still lift their eyes to this summit. If approached respectfully Everest will always offer even the most able of climbers a challenge fit for this queen of the mountains – and she remains an unpredictable, frequently deadly, adversary. Though some 223 people have now died in pursuit of its highest places, and the mountain itself is increasingly commercialised, the hunger for Everest seems to show no sign of abating.

  Yet, the mystery of possibility has gone now. As the finest alpinists have set their sights on new technical challenges in other far-flung ranges, Everest refuses to disappear. And why should it? It draws climbers like no other mountain. It stands apart from all others, a challenge to human curiosity, courage, and – dare we say it – to a little of the manageable madness that inhabits all true adventure. It takes a certain type of man, or woman, to want to climb there. The question is not so much can Everest be climbed now, but rather can you do it too? In old age, and no doubt frustrated at the same old questions, Ed Hillary responded gruffly when asked about Everest as an anniversary of his ascent approached: ‘It’s all bullshit on Everest these days.’ He could be forgiven his frustration. His heroes, as mine, have long since left the mountain.

  Back in 1953, climbing Everest was something that was truly newsworthy. Without satellites, the Internet and other modern tools of communication, the expedition was to some extent left to its own devices to get on with the job. And yet, as we learn in George’s letters, fierce competition amongst hacks to scoop the latest news reached frenzied heights. The Times was so concerned to protect its copyright on dispatches from the expedition, as the major sponsor, it even sent its own Special Correspondent to the mountain to ensure fair play and first news.

  And when required, news really could travel fast. Once word of the summit success reached Advance Base Camp on 30 May, as the weary climbers returned, journalist James Morris hurtled down through the Icefall without delay. Early the following morning, he handed a brief message to a waiting runner who carried it almost twenty miles to a little radio outpost in the nearest village. The Indian Vice-Consul forwarded the coded message to the British Ambassador in Kathmandu who then sent a confidential cipher to England, transmitting the news some 4,500 miles and five hours back in time to the Foreign Office in London. The Office informed The Times, where the news was received in Fleet Street at around tea-time on 1 June. The Queen was given word on the eve of her Coronation and it was in all the newspapers the next day.

  It was a triumph for humankind and yet the timing was such that it was a very British achievement. ‘The ascent of Everest by a British expedition is a new, timely and brilliant jewel in the Queen’s diadem’, ran one English newspaper. ‘It called for a combination of mountaineering skill, resolution, scientific study and logistic planning, such as no comparable enterprise has received. The credit of the two climbers who actually reached the summit – Hillary and Tenzing – is only in the final stage a personal one. It is much more the flowering of a collective effort in which all have shared, not forgetting the members of previous expeditions, for each team that goes to Everest stands on the shoulders of the one before it.’

  A true sentiment, yet that same newspaper, The Guardian, also concluded that the mountain ‘is in its nature a terminal point; it is like one of those great peaks that stand a little aside from the main chain of the range. It is doubtful whether anyone will ever try to climb Everest again now that it has been done’. How wrong they were. The ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786 didn’t put an end to interest in Alpine mountaineering, after all, and Everest was the biggest of all the Himalaya. Their success sparked a brief golden age of mountaineering. Of the fourteen mountains above 8,000 m only Annapurna had been scaled when Hillary and Tenzing stood on top of Everest. Just five weeks later, the world’s ninth highest peak, Nanga Parbat, was topped and by the end of that decade only Shishapangma, which lay off-limits in Chinese occupied Tibet, remained unconquered.

  When so many Himalayan climbs in the intervening years have been attempted out of national jingoism, commercial opportunism, or personal egotism and misadventure, there is still something reassuring in the thought that most of the men who went to Everest became climbers simply for the joy that the mountains bring, and were drawn there in 1953 purely for the physical and mental challenge of this remarkable place. In working together on his mountain memoirs, The Conquest of Everest, George offered this elegant summary:

  For me, Everest was never really about the superlatives, conquering a mountain, or about an idea of man battling with nature to win some gallant and great fight. I let others use that language back in 1953, and they were free to do so. For me, it was simply about wanting to be there. The deep desire that I had to go and try – making the most of the opportunity to be part of something significant and to give my very best. I could do nothing more.

  George recalls Ed Hillary’s well-known comment, ‘It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.’ All the men who went there were much changed by the Everest experience and that is why it was such a special time in their lives. As George explained recently:

  From the top of the Khumbu Icefall, where George took this shot, mighty Everest towers over everything.

  When Ed Hillary took this photograph on 29 May just four men had seen this final ridge to the summit of Everest – and none had set foot there.

  We were a group of people that had gathered together from all corners of the world, yet we nonetheless quickly became a team of friends – it was an expedition that has become a life-long meeting of friends. It has rewarded me in ways that are impossible to sum up. I will forever be grateful for Everest and for my other journeys in the Himalaya. To me the mountains are not a place for competition. The mountains are just where you want to be. Before we arrived Everest was still a dream. It was available for doubt and uncertainty. It still remained that way after we left. As Wilf Noyce so beautifully wrote, ‘Men we descend, Conquerors never’. Within days the drifting snows had covered our footprints.

  So, let us now join George – as the young New Zealander, just twenty-nine years old – at the beginning of a great adventure that would shape the rest of his life. He has arrived in India and the work of the 1953 Everest expedition is just beginning. What follows are his remarkable words, written with delight as these historic events unfold. This is his story.

  * * *

  Members of the 1953 Everest expedition on the first day of the approach march. Back row, from left to right: Stobart, Pugh, Noyce and Evans. Middle row: Band, Ward, Hillary, Bourdillon and Westmacott. Front row: Gregory, Lowe, Hunt, Tenzing and Wylie.

  THE 1953 BRITISH

  MOUNT EVEREST EXPEDITION

  John Hunt (1910-1998), aged 42 on Everest, expedition leader

  Charles Evans (1918-1995), 33, deputy leader, climbing party

  Charles Wylie (1921-2007), 32, organising secretary, climbing party

  Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986), 39, sirdar, climbing party

  Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), 33, climbing party

  George Lowe (1924- ), 29, climbing party

  Wilfrid Noyce (1917-1962), 35, clim
bing party

  George Band (1929-2011), 24, climbing party

  Alfred Gregory (1913-2010), 39, climbing party

  Tom Bourdillon (1924-1956), 28, climbing party

  Michael Westmacott (1925-2012), 28, climbing party

  Michael Ward (1925-2005), 27, doctor

  Griffith Pugh (1909-1994), 43, physiologist

  Tom Stobart (1914-1980), 38, cameraman

  James Morris (1926- ), 26, The Times correspondent

  CHAPTER ONE

  Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay

  20th February 1953

  Dear Betty,

  Yesterday morning I stepped ashore at Bombay and work began. A local business man met me and with his car and efficiency I saw to several matters. Bombay is not too hot at present and the day was very pleasant. Today his car is calling at 11 a.m. and then I’ll be off on the rounds of people and offices.

  The Taj Mahal Hotel is the largest and best known in Bombay – a huge place with a thousand servants and great gardens. I have ‘a room’ at 35 rupees per day (with all meals – 35 rupees = £3 approximately), which consists of lavatory, shower, bathroom, writing room with two lounge chairs and a fan, a bedroom with twin beds, built-in lighting, an electric clock, another fan, and a marble inlaid floor! (charged to the Expedition.)

  I’m fit and well – I shall be glad when these 8 days are ended. The work is tedious and Bombay is quite a lonely place. I’m looking forward to seeing the other boys.

  I hope all is well at home. Love to all the family.

  More anon, George.

  British Everest Expedition

  c/o U.K. High Commissioner, New Delhi

  24th February 1953

  Dear Betty,

  Phew it’s hot! – at least it was, but I have my tie off and am writing this in an air-conditioned Bombay office. The Himalayan Club Secretary is a big business man here and he has looked after me with free use of his home, car and chauffeur, his clubs and meals, his office and its facilities and his knowledge of the influential people of Bombay; and, too, I have been included in tennis parties and dinner parties. All in all he has been a heaven-sent aid in a hell-hole of heat and government red tape.

  I am fit and well, eating ravenously and despite heat and office work I’m becoming fatter – if not fitter. There have been many more things to attend to now that I have been in Bombay for a few days and the most tedious are the cancellations of air bookings and rebooking fresh ones, adding 20 gallons of kerosene to the lot which has already gone forward – there are no suitable jerry cans in Bombay. The packing of the wireless gear, walkie-talkie sets and receiver sets is quite fun – all have to be tested.

  The customs officers have to be seen regularly and we are arguing about the expedition food. They claim that we should pay customs duty on that food which is consumed in India. We argue that the food will be consumed in Nepal, a separate country, and they cannot charge us customs on that. It will take a day or two to clear this up. The railways will not so far attach a special waggon carrying out 8 tons of equipment onto the fast express by which we intend travelling from Bombay. We think the chance of theft and pilfering is too high to risk having it sent by goods train. This argument will take a few days and may not be settled completely to our advantage.

  Tomorrow I am going to Poona by the ‘Deccan Queen’ (an express train) to stay for a day with Professor Finch, the director of National Chemical Laboratories, to discuss oxygen and also to see a Dr. Roy about the formalities to be observed in receiving broadcasts of meteorological reports over the All India radio. These are special bulletins for the Everest party and trace the arrival and speed of onset for the year’s monsoon. On Friday 27th I will be motoring back to Bombay with Prof. Finch who would like to meet the Everest Party, who arrive on the ‘Stratheden’ on the 28th Feb. The local big-shots of Bombay have organised a big reception party for the Everest team and the officers of the H.M.S. Ceylon – a cruiser which has just arrived here with a rear-admiral aboard – and this party is to take place at a fashionable home in Bombay hills next Saturday night. Bags of whisky and soda, pot-bellies, bon homies and walrus moustaches – you can imagine the picnic. “Hello old man, I met you in Poona in ’38, ah jolly good show, what!” and speeches and toasts. I’m looking forward to it and will report in detail if I get time.

  Last weekend I went to A.H. Leyden’s home at the fashionable residential quarter called Pali Hill, 12 miles from the centre of the city. I have been staying there ever since in luxury and good fellowship. He is German born but has a British nationalized Swiss wife. They have a beautiful garden, an equally beautiful home and a passion for great big greyhounds which live in the house and are fussed over, preened over and fed like fighting cocks. Leyden is a talented artist and his oil paintings of the mountains and villages in the Himalaya are the most striking and attractive that I have ever seen. Usually oils are dull paintings but his are full of sunshine and dramatic lighting effects that I find quite exciting.

  Last Saturday I played tennis at Pali Hill and then dressed in my best bib and tucker (dinner suit) and after a lavish buffet dinner we moved next door to a dance which was held on the terraced lawns of the neighbour’s garden, chairs and tables and whisky provided. The place was flood-lit and a good gramaphone and amplifier supplied the noise for dancing. A powdered tarpaulin was used to dance on and with the moon and stars, the flowers in bloom and the gushing talk of the overdressed wives it was like the films. Sunday I swam at the Juhu beach and played more tennis. Monday and today back to office duties.

  News hasn’t run out, the paper has.

  Love, George.

  British Everest Expedition

  c/o U.K. High Commissioner, New Delhi

  27th February 1953

  Dear Folks,

  I am having a very memorable time in India – in fact a more wonderful and eventful trip than I have ever had previously. I didn’t think that I would enjoy the time in Bombay so much. Actually I am now in Poona in Professor G.I. Finch’s spacious fan-cooled office. The temperature is 99°F. today, calm and clear with air like a furnace outside. My lips and face are dry and a bit sore from the change to such dry evaporating heat.

  Yesterday afternoon I came up to Poona, 2,000 ft and 150 miles inland on a table-land with the jagged teeth of the Western Ghats – a range of hills – showing along the horizon. At 5.10 p.m. I stepped aboad the ‘Deccan Queen’, a fast electric train to Poona and we streaked out of Bombay, whistling and whizzing through the suburban stations at quite exciting speeds. The sun sets early here at present and we slammed across the coastal plain as the sun went down behind the hills. It was hot, searing hot, the wind was like a flame-thrower through the window. I think that’s how my lips and skin became so dry and sore. With only two stops and a steep climb up the Western Ghats – travelling still at a high rate – we skidded to a halt in Poona after 2½ hours.

  The Professor and his wife met me at the station and whisked me off in the Zephyr Six to a dinner with two doctors and two brigadiers. Professor Finch is the director of National Chemical Laboratories – a huge central building with a whole colony of houses round about. Fundamental scientific experiment is their chosen task and I saw over the place today. There are researches into x-ray; x-ray of crystals to compare their atomic structure; artificial manufacture of blood plasma from sheep’s bones and gelatine; artificial manufacture of sapphires that are perfect crystals to be used as jewel bearings in intricate machinery, the culture of enzymes and bacteria for the growth of plants and the breaking down of coffee, and a thousand other possible purposes; another bloke is attempting to find a bacteria that will act on a compound to precipitate pure sulphur.

  … Bombay. Friday 27th.

  Life moves rapidly. I talked all afternoon with Finch mostly about oxygen and discussed with him the physiology of high altitude – he is lecturing to some people this evening with slides. I am going along and then joining him for dinner. In Poona for 2 hours we met the director of meteorology for
India and discussed and fixed with his department an arrangement to have the weather forecast broadcast to us over All India radio and the BBC (short wave) at 13.50 hours GMT. This will be a special service for us during May and the first week of June. They are to give the wind velocities in the altitudes of 25,000 to 30,000 feet and the warning of the approach of the real monsoon and the westerly disturbances (the “little monsoon”) which occur before the main onset. We intend to climb on during the westerly disturbances but retreat smartly when the real monsoon begins. They guarantee to give us four days notice.

  The Secretary of the English Alpine Club arrived in Poona – Basil Goodfellow is his name, and the name is very appropriate – and with he and Finch talking I learned a lot. The oxygen equipment this year is of three types. The main standby consists of a 10 lb. cylinder of oxygen with a valve and flow control and a rubber tube going straight into the mouth and held by the teeth. The climber trains himself to breathe in normally while the tube allows a 3 litre per minute (or more) flow into the lungs to augment the rarified air. In breathing out the user bites the tube and conserves the flow. The supply lasts approximately 4 hours at 3 litres per minute and the whole thing is then discarded and a new bottle picked up. As far as possible dumps will be made. This simple type is what Finch thinks is “the goods”. His theory is the simpler the better. With augmented breathing apparatus he claims we’ll breathe less rapidly and move more quickly. Weight, claustrophobia, irritation due to pure oxygen will be avoided and the chance of breakdown in supply is very slight. He is surprised that this method has not been tried since his experiment in 1922. (He reached 27,300 ft by this method in 1922 – on Everest.)