The Ascent of Rum Doodle
Page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Introduction
Foreword
1 The Team
2 The Plan
3 To the Rankling La
4 The Glacier
5 Base Camp
6 North Wall: the First Assault
7 The North Wall Conquered
8 Advanced Base to Camp 2
9 The Missing Camp
10 Higher than Everest
11 Higher Still
12 Not High Enough
13 It Goes!
14 Return of the Summit Party
15 Farewell to Rum Doodle
Copyright
About the Author
W.E. Bowman (1912-85) was a civil engineer who spent his free time hill-walking, painting and writing (unpublished) books on the Theory of Relativity. He was married with two children.
To George and Margot
No criticism of any mountaineering book or method, and no reference to any mountaineer past or present is intended.
THE ASCENT OF RUM DOODLE
W.E. Bowman
Introduction
by O. TOTTER
It is a pleasure and a privilege to associate oneself with this account of the ascent of the world’s highest mountain. The obstacles were tremendous. That they were overcome is due to the dogged perseverance, which each member of the team brought to the common cause. It is impossible to praise these men too highly. Every schoolboy should read this book twice, and so should everybody who honours courage and enterprise.
Foreword
by SIR HUGELEY HAVERING, AISC, MPL,
Chairman of the
Rum Doodle Committee
It is with pleasure as well as with a sense of privilege that I associate myself with this account of the climbing of the world’s highest mountain. The difficulties were many. They were overcome by the determination of each member of the expedition to give his best to the common cause. No praise is too high for these men. This is a book which should be read – and re-read – by every schoolboy and by all who value human endeavour and fortitude.
1
The Team
WHEN I WAS asked by the Rum Doodle committee to lead the assault on the mountain I was deeply conscious of the honour bestowed upon me. To climb Mont Blanc by the Grépon route is one thing; to climb Rum Doodle is, as Totter once said, quite another. I hesitated to accept so great a responsibility, and only the insistence of the committee, particularly of its chairman, Sir Hugeley Havering, persuaded me to change my mind.
I would like at the outset to record my deep appreciation of the selfless devotion and sound judgment with which the Rum Doodle committee – and particularly its chairman – did its job. In no way was that judgment more effective than in the choice of personnel. If I had it all to do over again I would choose those same companions who supported me with such wholehearted and unselfish enthusiasm. I venture to say that no leader has been better served.
Our success was due to two things: magnificent team work and the splendid efforts of the porters, without whom the expedition would have failed.
In advising the committee on the composition of the team I had in mind a principle which has served me well on many occasions: to make one thing fulfil two purposes. Each member of the team was selected to be responsible for a particular organizational or technical job, and each had in addition some special quality which made him valuable as a mountaineer and a companion.
How well this policy succeeded will be evident.
The team members were as follows: TOM BURLEY, Major in the RASC. In charge of the commissariat. Well known for his prodigious feats of endurance on many mountains, and chosen as our strong man. Had been high. Interrupted a mountaineering furlough in the Alps to join us.
CHRISTOPHER WISH, scientist to the expedition. Excellent on rock. Had been higher than most. Just returned from a successful first ascent in the Andes.
DONALD SHUTE, our photographer. Splendid on ice. Had been as high as most. Lately returned from the Rockies.
HUMPHREY JUNGLE, radio expert and route-finder. Had been nearly as high as most. Recalled from the Caucasus.
LANCELOT CONSTANT, diplomat and linguist. In charge of the porters. Chosen especially for his social tact and good-fellowship. Was expected to go high. Just back from the Atlas mountains.
RIDLEY PRONE, doctor to the expedition and our oxygen expert. Had been high enough. Barely returned from the Himalayas.
2
The Plan
AFTER THREE HECTIC months of preparation we met in London, on the eve of our departure, for a final review of our plans. Only Jungle, who was to have spoken on the use of the radio gear and his own methods of route-finding, was absent. He rang up to say that he had taken the wrong bus and was not quite certain of his whereabouts; but he had just caught sight of the North Star and expected to join us shortly.
Burley, although not at his best – he told me he was suffering from London lassitude – gave us a detailed picture of the transportation arrangements. The object of the expedition was to place two men on the summit of Rum Doodle. This necessitated the establishment of a camp at 39,000 feet stocked with a fortnight’s supplies for two, so that in the event of adverse weather conditions the party could wait in comfort for an improvement. The equipment for this camp had to be carried from the railhead at Chaikhosi, a distance of 500 miles. Five porters would be needed for this. Two porters would be needed to carry the food for these five, and another would carry the food for these two. His food would be carried by a boy. The boy would carry his own food. The first supporting party would be established at 38,000 feet, also with a fortnight’s supplies, which necessitated another eight porters and a boy. In all, to transport tents and equipment, food, radio, scientific and photographic gear, personal effects, and so on, 3,000 porters and 375 boys would be required.
At this point the telephone bell rang. It was Jungle, who seemed in the best of spirits. He had, he said, definitely identified his whereabouts as Cockfosters. We congratulated him and said we would expect him shortly.
Burley was congratulated on his masterly command of detail, although Wish expressed the opinion that the weight allowed for scientific equipment was scandalously small. He particularly wanted to take a mechanical glacier shovel and a three-ton pneumatic geologist’s hammer, but neither of these indispensable items was allowed for. Burley was quite short with him. He pointed out that shovelling ice on Rum Doodle was quite a different thing from shovelling ice on Mont Blanc, while the rarefied atmosphere obtaining on the mountain would probably render the pneumatic gear impracticable. Wish burst into tears and said that he might as well go home at once, as he did not seem to be appreciated. Constant, in his tactful way, said that he was sure that Burley had no intention of belittling Wish’s importance to the expedition; he had only meant that scientific gear was out of place on an expedition whose sole object was to place two men on the summit of Rum Doodle. This brought in Shute, who said he very much regretted the implication that scientific gear was a white elephant; one of the most important parts of our work would be the investigation of the effects of rarefied atmosphere upon three-dimensional colour television. Prone, who was suffering from a severe cold in the head, muttered something, which nobody quite understood, about ‘ibportant bedical baterial’ in a kind of enraged mumble.
Responsive, as a good leader should be, to human atmosphere, I sensed a hidden discord, and I quietly reminded all of the words of Totter: Mont Blanc might be climbed by a disunited party; Rum Doodle, never. This sobering thought had the desired effect, helped perhaps by the fact that Burley, overcome by London lassitude, ha
d fallen asleep. Wish, who was to share a tent with him, was much distressed to find that he snored heavily, but he was consoled by Shute who reminded him that owing to the attenuation of sound waves in a rarefied atmosphere the snores would be much less offensive at high altitudes.
Wish then outlined the scientific programme. In addition to investigations into the hypographical and topnological fossiferation of the area he hoped to collect new data on the effect of biochronical disastrification of the geneospherical pandiculae on the exegesis of Wharton’s warple. He also hoped to bring back a pair of each species of living creature found on the mountain in order to study the possibility of breeding mountaineers capable of living normal lives at high altitudes.
At this point Jungle rang again. It was not Cockfosters, he said, but Richmond. He had seen Cockfosters on a bus, but it turned out that the bus was going to Cockfosters. Owing to this he had, of course, set off in the wrong direction, but would be with us shortly.
After this, Shute described the photographic apparatus, the chief of which was a three-dimensional colour cinematographic camera. He hoped to obtain a film record of every aspect of the expedition’s work. Suitable love-interest and accident sequences would be added by the company who had supplied the apparatus, and, with a patriotic song incorporated and the original material cut down to a minimum, the film was to be marketed on a world-wide basis as an epic of British heroism. If the summit were reached the successful pair would, if photogenic and under sixty, be offered film contracts for a picture entitled ‘Tarzan and the Atrocious Snowmen’.
At this point a telegram was delivered. It read: SIGHTED BARKING CREEK NINETEEN THIRTY HOURS COURSE WEST NORTH WEST EXPECT SHORTLY WEATHER COLD BUT FINE JUNGLE. The postmark was Hounslow.
Burley awoke with a complicated gurgle and said that it was all wrong to clutter up a climbing expedition, the object of which was to place two men on the summit of Rum Doodle, with a lot of scientific rubbish. He expressed the opinion that a scientist on an expedition was even more of a nuisance than his gear, which was considerable. He told us about his friend Groag, who shared a tent with a scientist on the 1923 expedition to Turn Teedle. Like all scientists, this one was very absent-minded. One day he inadvertently made tea with copper-sulphate solution instead of water, with the result that he and Groag turned blue and were colour-blind for a fortnight, being unable to distinguish blue from white. One day this scientist stepped off the edge of a snowfield, thinking the blue sky beyond a continuation of the snow. He was saved only by great effort and devotion on the part of Burley, who had the misfortune to be roped to him. Burley said that any ordinary man would have left him to his fate.
Wish said that he did not believe one word of the story. He himself had drunk gallons of copper-sulphate tea with impunity. The blue effect was no doubt due to cardiosynthesis of the bloodstream due to the rarefied atmosphere. He strongly resented the statement that all scientists were absent-minded.
At this point a knock was heard on the door. It was a sergeant from the local police station. A policeman in Lewisham had discovered a furtive stranger loitering near the gas works. He had been found to be in possession of maps and navigating instruments and had been arrested as a spy. He has given his name as Forest and this address as a reference. We gave the necessary assurances and asked the sergeant to transmit a message to the effect that we expected to see Jungle shortly.
Constant then told us about Yogistan, the country through which we must travel to reach the mountain. The natives, he said, were sturdy, independent people, friendly and of imperturbable dignity and cheerfulness. Their language, of which he had made a special study, was a branch of the aneroid-megalithic tongue. It contained no verbs and was spoken entirely from the stomach.
Prone said this was nonsense; if they spoke entirely from their stomachs they would suffer from permanent gastritis. Constant said that this was, in fact, the national disease, being hypodermic in 95% of the population. Prone said that if this was the case he didn’t see how they could keep cheerful. Constant said that this was due to their strength of character. He said that he was not used to having his word doubted, and if Prone persisted in his present uncooperative attitude he, Constant, would have to issue an ultimatum.
Prone then spoke to us about the problem of maintaining the fitness which was so essential to our success. He urged us to follow rigidly the precautions which he had laid down, and handed each of us several pages of closely-typed manuscript. He said that if we followed his advice he could guarantee immunity from illness. Here he broke down with a fit of coughing and had to be thumped on the back. Constant did the thumping, and my impression was that he thumped a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. At any rate, Prone struck back at him, and a nasty incident might have ensued had not Prone been completely overcome by a fit of sneezing which made him quite incapable of defending himself.
I took this opportunity to thank all for their contributions, and remarked that I had no doubt that such little differences of opinion as might appear between us were evidence of the commendable frankness and openness with which we regarded one another, and that I had no reason to suppose that we would not make an efficient and united team. I reminded them of the words of Totter: In an expedition of this kind the desires of the individual must be subordinated to the common cause. Constant said Amen, and on this solemn note we woke Burley and set about making our preparations for the morrow’s departure.
*
Next day we sailed from Tilbury. As I stepped aboard two telegrams were handed to me. One read: BEST OF LUCK REMEMBER NOT CLIMBING MONT BLANC TOTTER. The other ran: STRANDED ABERCWMSOSPANFACH WILL FOLLOW BY PLANE SEND HUNDRED POUNDS JUNGLE.
3
To the Rankling La
THE VOYAGE WAS uneventful. My responsibilities as leader prevented me from spending as much time as I should have liked with the others, but I was gratified to see that the esprit-de-corps which is so important on expeditions such as ours was uniting our party into a closely-knit community. The importance of the team spirit cannot be overestimated. As Totter once said: When you are swinging helplessly at the end of a hundred-foot rope it is important to know that the man at the other end is a friend. It was this spirit, more than any other single factor, which brought success, and I was happy to see it growing during the voyage.
Humour was not lacking. Wish caused much amusement by turning up for dinner one evening with a black eye which he had sustained by walking into a davit, while on the same occasion Burley exhibited a bandaged hand injured during a game of deck tennis. Burley was down most of the voyage with sea lassitude, and it was a surprise to me that he had the energy for tennis. The others kept fit, except for Prone, who alone succumbed to sea-sickness.
Wish was kept busy with his apparatus. He tested our boiling-point thermometers and was able, by averaging the results of many readings, to fix the ship’s height as 153 feet above sea level. Burley said this was nonsense, but Wish pointed out that due to the earth’s not being a perfect sphere, but larger at the equator than at the poles, the result was quite in accordance with known facts.
Shute took many reels of film, but by an unfortunate oversight he exposed them to daylight, so that no record exists of this portion of the journey.
Constant, to his great delight, discovered a Yogistani family on the lower deck, and spent much time with them improving his knowledge of the language. The association came to a sudden end, however, in a rather strange way. One quiet Sunday afternoon, Constant came running up the stairway in a state of terror, closely followed by a small but powerful oriental person who was waving a knife. After being rescued Constant explained that he had made a trifling error in pronunciation. He had wished to express admiration for the poetry of Yogistan. Unfortunately, the Yogistani word for poetry is identical with the word for wife, except for a sort of gurgle at the end. Being unable, in the enthusiasm of the moment, to produce this gurgle, he had deeply offended his host, with the result we had witnessed. Constant ke
pt to his own deck for the rest of the voyage.
One day a whale was sighted on the starboard quarter. This was naturally an event of great interest to all, but particularly to myself as it enabled me to make up my mind on the very vital matter of the grouping of the assault party, to which I had given much thought. Our attack on the mountain was to be made by units of two men, who would climb together on the same rope and occupy the same tent. I considered it important that these partners be brought together as soon as possible, to enable them to rub off those rough corners which become irksome at close quarters. I had, however, been unable to reach a decision. Burley and Wish, I had decided long ago, were the ideal combination to fit into a cramped bivouac tent, one being large and the other small; and their personalities and interests were so different that there was little chance of professional jealousy or monotony arising. Shute and Jungle had each shown a lively and controversial interest in the other’s special subject, and I thought it would be a pity to part them. Moreover, Shute was a Cambridge man while Jungle had been to Oxford, which would broaden the horizons of both of them. This left Constant and Prone; and I was not at all happy about these two – both having the professional manner, which might prove somewhat stifling in a small tent. But they disagreed so heartily on so many subjects that I began to be reassured, and the incident of the whale put my mind finally at rest. While we were leaning over the rail watching the creature blowing Constant said he wondered whether there was any truth in the Jonah legend. Prone said that he was surprised at such a remark from an educated man, and became so interested in the subsequent discussion that he forgot to be sea-sick. They argued heatedly for the remainder of the voyage and were quite inseparable, which was a great relief to me.