The Assault On Mount Everest, 1922 - free ebook by C. G. Bruce

THE ASSAULT ONMOUNT EVEREST,1922

The Second Climbing Party descending from their record climb. LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD &amp; C o....

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PREFACE

The Mount Everest Committee desire to take this opportunity of thanking General Bruce, Mr. Mallory, Captain Finch, Mr. Somervell and Dr. Longstaff for having, in addition to their labours in the field, made the following contributions to the story of an expedition whose chief result has been to strengthen our confidence that the summit of the highest mountain in the world can be attained by man....

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INTRODUCTION

Colonel Howard-Bury and the members of the Expedition of 1921 had effected the object with which they had been despatched. They were not sent out to climb Mount Everest. It would be impossible to reach the summit in a single effort. They were sent to reconnoitre the mountain from every direction and discover what was for certain the easiest way up. For it was quite certain that only by the easiest way possible—and only if there were an easy way—would the summit ever be reached. In the Alps, nowa

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CHAPTER I TO THE BASE CAMP

The precursor of the present volume, The Reconnaissance of Mount Everest in 1921 , sets forth fully the successful and strenuous work which was accomplished in that year and which has rendered possible the Expedition of the present year. The whole of our work lying in country which had never previously been explored by Europeans, it was rendered absolutely necessary for a full examination of the whole country to be made before an attempt to climb Mount Everest could possibly be carried out. We h

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CHAPTER II THE ASSAULT ON THE MOUNTAIN

Now began in earnest our race against the monsoon. I have often been asked since my return, whether we should not have done better if we had started sooner. I think none of us would have cared to have arrived at our Upper Rongbuk camp a fortnight earlier in the year, nor, having done so, would any good purpose have been served. As it was, the temperature and the coldness of the wind was as much as any of us could keep up with and still keep our good health. This was to be our Base Camp at a heig

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CHAPTER III THE RETURN BY KHARTA

On June 14 we were cheered with the news that our transport was approaching, and I think a good many sighs of relief were uttered. We had quite made up our minds to cross over into the Kharta Valley, and, having had a sufficiency of rest, to explore the Kama Chu more completely than had been done in 1921, and, if possible, to examine the whole gorge of the Arun where it breaks through the great Himalayan range; but our first idea was to get down to a decent elevation where some rest could be obt

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I

It is very natural that mountaineers, particularly if they are members of the Alpine Club, should wish success to the Everest Expedition; for in a sense it is their own adventure. And yet their sympathies must often wobble. It is not always an undiluted pleasure to hear of new ascents in the Alps, or even in Great Britain; for half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience—visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible. By experience we learn that we may p

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II

When we think of a party of climbers struggling along the final ridge of Mount Everest, we are perhaps inclined to reject an obvious comparison of their endeavour with that of athletes in a long distance race. The climbers are not of course competing to reach the goal one before another; the aim is for all to reach it. But the climbers’ performance, like the runners’, will depend on two factors, endurance and pace; and the two have to be considered together. A climber must not only keep on movin

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III

I have said too much already about the early stage of acclimatisation: my excuse must be that much will depend upon this factor. The issue will depend no less on organisation and transport; and though this subject is General Bruce’s province, at all events so far as Camp III, I have a few words to add to what he has written. In the calculation of what will be required at various stages in order to reach the summit of Mount Everest it is necessary to begin at the highest; and the climber imagines

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IV

The situation of Camp III when we reached it early in the afternoon was not calculated to encourage me, though I suppose it might be found congenial by hardier men. We had turned the corner of the North Peak so that the steep slopes of its Eastern arm rose above us to North and West. Our tents were to be pitched on the stones that have rolled down these slopes on to the glacier, and just out of range of a stone fall from the rocks immediately above us. A shallow trough divided us from the main p

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V

For three days now we made no expedition of any consequence. The question arises, then, what did we? I have been searching the meagre entries in my journal for an answer, with no satisfactory result. The doctrine that men should be held accountable for their days, or even their hours, is one to which the very young often subscribe as a matter of course, seeing in front of them such a long way to go and so little time: the futility of exact accounts in this sort is apparent among mountains; the s

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VI

On May 16 Somervell and I spent the morning in camp with some hopes of welcoming sooner or later the arrival of stores, and sure enough about midday the first detachment of a large convoy reached our camp. With the porters, somewhat to our surprise, were Strutt, Morshead, and Norton. The whole party seemed rather tired, though not more than was to be expected, and when a little later Crawford, the responsible transport officer, came in, he told us he had been mountain-sick. We were delighted to

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CHAPTER VI THE HIGHEST POINT

My first recollection of the morning of May 20 is of shivering outside the porters’ tents. It is not an enviable task at 23,000 feet, this of rousing men from the snugness of their sleeping-bags between 5 and 6 a.m. One may listen in vain for a note of alertness in their response; the heard notes will not echo the smallest zest for any enterprise. On this occasion the replies made to my tender inquiries and encouragements were so profoundly disappointing that I decided to untie the fastenings of

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CHAPTER VII THE SECOND ATTEMPT

With the departure of the last of our companions on March 27, Crawford and I found ourselves left behind in Darjeeling impatiently awaiting the arrival of the oxygen equipment from Calcutta. A week elapsed before we were able to set out for Kalimpong, where we picked up the oxygen stores on April 4. On the evening of our second march out from Kalimpong, suspicious rattlings were heard in the cases containing the oxygen cylinders. On investigation, it transpired that they had been packed metal to

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CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSIONS

Geoffrey Bruce and I arrived back at the Base Camp early in the afternoon of May 29. The next few days were spent in resting, and I then underwent the same experience as the members of the first climbing party; that is, instead of recovering my strength rapidly during the first three or four days, if anything a further decline took place. However, as the weather appeared fine, and there seemed promise of a bright spell prior to the breaking of the monsoon, it was decided to make another attempt

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CHAPTER IX NOTES ON EQUIPMENT

Our recent experiences having shown that the greatest altitude at which acclimatisation takes place is about 22,000 feet above sea-level, it may be reasonably assumed that, from the climber’s point of view, high altitude on Mount Everest begins at that height. Incidentally, also, on approaching the North Col over the East Rongbuk Glacier, the snow and ice conditions met with up to this level approximate very closely to summer conditions in the Alps. Above 22,000 feet, however, such conditions, p

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CHAPTER X THE THIRD ATTEMPT

The project of making a third attempt this season was mooted immediately on the return of Finch and Geoffrey Bruce to the Base Camp. There in hours of idleness we had discussed their prospects and wondered what they would be doing as we gazed at the mountain to make out the weather on the great ridge. We were not surprised to learn when they came down that the summit was still unconquered, and we were not yet prepared to accept defeat. The difficulty was to find a party. Of the six who had been

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CHAPTER XI CONCLUSIONS

It might be supposed that, from the experience of two expeditions to Mount Everest, it would be possible to deduce an estimate of the dangers and difficulties involved and to formulate a plan for overcoming the obstacles which would meet with universal approval among mountaineers. But, in fact, though many deductions could hardly be denied, I should be surprised to find, even among us of the second party, anything like complete agreement either in our judgment of events or in our ideas for the f

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CHAPTER XII ACCLIMATISATION AT HIGH ALTITUDES

The Everest Expedition of 1922 had no preconceived programme of scientific investigation, and was first and foremost an attempt to get up the mountain; though, as I had been connected with physiological research for some years, I was naturally anxious to make observations on the effect of altitude on the human frame. These observations were rather subjective, and were unaccompanied by any accurate data—in other words, the reader will be relieved to hear that there are no tables of figures to be

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CHAPTER XIII COLOUR IN TIBET

In order to bring before the reader a vivid picture of Tibet, and especially of the region around Mount Everest, a comparison between Tibet and other better-known countries is almost inevitable. The Expedition of 1922 took with them no official artist, or no doubt he would have been deputed to write this section of the book; there were, however, two people who tried to paint pictures of the country, Major Norton and myself; and though I realise how inadequate our efforts were, perhaps those of a

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CHAPTER XIV TIBETAN CULTURE

The Tibetans are a very simple folk, though not without a very definite civilisation of their own. Art and music exist in all nations, if the art be merely the fashioning of utensils, and the music be the crudest of rhythms played on a tom-tom. Yet in Tibet the rudimentary music and art associated with so many Eastern races is carried a stage farther, and what is in wilder people merely natural instinct has become in Tibet a definite culture. For I presume that culture is merely organised art, a

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CHAPTER XV NATURAL HISTORY

Previous experience of the conditions of Tibetan travel had taught me that collection and observation was a task requiring complete immunity from other duties; but to the doctor of such an Expedition this condition was not attainable. In the collection of specimens we were, however, fortunate in obtaining the assistance of several other members of the Expedition. But it is especially to Major Norton that the thanks of the Everest Committee are due, for in addition to his other duties, he took ov

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