Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine

by Julie Summers

  The successful completion of Mark V and a musical accompaniment at breakfast the following morning left Sandy feeling very cheerful for the march to Shekar Dzong. ‘The tunes were quite the pleasantest I’ve heard yet, and they kept time with their little diabolo shaped drums very well. After breakfast the local George Roby gave a performance for Noel’s cinema.’ This beggar musician, with his gnarled hands and toothless smile, posed for a photograph for Sandy and the result is a delightful portrait of the cheerful old man. Sandy took a number of photographs on trek of the Tibetans and was particularly interested in the dress the women wore. He made a beautiful study of one woman, a curvaceous middle-aged lady in full costume and with a magnificent head-dress which he described in his usual somewhat irreverent manner to one of his Oxford tutors, Geoffrey Mure. ‘I like the Tibetan women’s permanent head dress – a great kind of frame – specially constructed so that they only ever lie on their backs! The men must be weaklings if they can’t look after their own interest without such artificial devices!’

  Tibetan musician photographed by Sandy

  The trek to Shekar Dzong was short and uneventful. They arrived below the village at midday to find that a camping place in a walled garden had been acquired for them by MacDonald. That afternoon, whilst busy working on the oxygen apparatus, Sandy realized he had become something of a local attraction and found himself surrounded by Tibetans staring at him. He jumped up and chased them ‘with a loudly hissing cylinder of oxygen. I’ve never seen men run so fast – they must have thought it was the devil coming out!’ Thereafter Norton arranged for a sentry at the entrance to the garden to ensure the privacy of the party from prying locals, which could at times become a considerable burden.

  Sandy with his Mark V oxygen apparatus at Shekar Dzong

  The latest oxygen apparatus design was tested on the rocks below the Dzong by Mallory, Somervell, Odell and Sandy and seemed to be an improvement on previous trials. ‘They all seemed very pleased with it and there is nothing to go wrong and nothing to hamper climbing or to break if you slip’, Sandy wrote to Lilian. Norton reported on the trials in his dispatch to the Times

  After the usual checking of stores and routine work, we finished with a trial trip of the oxygen apparatus on the steep rocks of a fine pyramid, on which stands the Dzong and the monastery. This was intended to test the relative merits of the apparatus as originally constructed and sent from England and an adaptation designed by the fertile genius of Mr. Irvine. The adaptation, besides eliminating certain leaks and mechanical defects which had developed during the transit from home, lightens and simplifies the apparatus, and, most important of all, does away with the vulnerable portions carried on the climber’s chest, and so frees him to tackle rocks with less Agag-like delicacy than formerly. Even so, at the elevation of Shekar Dzong (14,500 ft.) we found the rocks were much more easily climbed without the apparatus.

  Shekar Dzong

  The fortress of Shekar was prized by Tibetan travellers of the past as a sort of wonder of the world. The Dzong, as the fort is called, is a large secular building that towers above the monastery of Shekar and is joined to it by a perilously steep wall. The buildings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but in 1924 they were still standing and their magnificence did not fail to impress expedition members. From the very top of the Dzong it was possible to gain a view of Everest, rising inexorably above the neighbouring peaks. Here the Tibetans brought incense and other offerings to Chomolungma, as ‘she stretches out her white arms on both sides, a goddess in the form of stone and ice’. Sandy and Shebbeare spent the following morning climbing to the top of the fortress to get a view of the mountain. After that they visited the monastery and presented the Chief Lama with two polished half-oxygen cylinders. ‘They made two fine gongs of different tones. We also told him there was a devil inside whose breath would kindle a spark – we showed him on incense.’ Despite the introduction of a devil into his monastery, the Chief Lama made them very welcome and allowed them to spend as much time as they wanted in the temple. Sandy’s interest in the temple was genuine and he was deeply impressed by the statues, the hangings and the devotional offerings. He was also amused by the meeting of different cultures, as he related to Lilian a few days later.

  Grandfather will never own me as a grandson again because I bowed down before a colossal Buddha about 20 ft high with an altar covered with most brilliant jewels. I had to make great pretence to worship in order to get a photograph from a camera concealed in my coat as I had to give a 70 sec. exposure in the very dim light of the holy of holies – my devotions had to be very prolonged!! Some of the hangings in the temple were perfectly beautiful & the ornaments & offering bowls spotlessly clean – the only clean things in the whole of Tibet. I enjoyed myself enormously in the monastery at Shekar. I think they rather regarded us as Buddha or devils.

  The photographs he took did indeed come out and they were among the collection sent back to Evelyn and which came to light in May 2000.

  After visiting the temple he spent a good hour watching some novices in the monastery turning a prayer wheel. His absence from camp had been noticed and after he had been ‘missing’ for over two hours Somervell and Noel went off to see if they could find him. They spotted him standing some distance away, with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, studying the monks at the prayer wheel with great concentration. ‘What is Irvine doing?’ asked Noel. ‘I expect he’s trying to work out how to mechanize it for them,’ was Somervell’s response.

  From Shekar Dzong they had a five-day trek to the site of their Base Camp at the foot of Everest. This final leg of the march was a bit of a struggle for Sandy. The wind was vicious and carried tiny stones and sand from the plain which cut his badly sunburned face and caused him considerable pain. In addition, he had been feeling unwell since leaving Shekar Dzong. He complained of feeling ‘seedy’ which was the description he used when he was not 100 per cent fit. On this occasion he attributed it predominantly to the fact that he had been up until midnight or 2 a.m. most nights working on the oxygen apparatus and then rising each morning at 6.30 a.m. and trekking twelve to fifteen miles each day, mostly on foot. When he was not feeling well his temper was short and his diary entries betrayed his frustrations: ‘my blasted pony trod on my walking stick and broke it’ he wrote two days after leaving Shekar Dzong. Despite this, he still kept up his usual cheerful outward appearance and no one appeared to be aware of anything untoward. When he arrived in camp in Tashi Dzong he put himself straight to bed in his tent, only to be woken an hour later by Mallory with a box of crampons. ‘I spent until dinner time fitting crampons to Mallory and my boots and trying to fix them without having a strap across the toes which is likely to stop the circulation. Inside feels all wrong but still have a good appetite.’ Like his father, Sandy had learned how to dose himself up with a variety of medicaments to cure his problems. This time he took four castor oil tablets but noted they had the opposite of the desired effect.

  The next day he was feeling no better as they trekked from Chodzong to Rongbuk. The monastery at Rongbuk was the last outpost of civilization before they reached Everest Base Camp. The monastery, or the ruins of it today, to be precise, stands half way down the Rongbuk valley, about eleven miles from the site of the 1924 base camp. The valley is some eighteen miles long and rising only 5000 feet is overwhelmed at its head by the mass of Everest, dominating the view with its huge bulk and dramatic pyramid, from which, so often, there flows a stream of snow. The name Rongbuk means Monastery of the Snows. Long before the first European expeditions came to the Himalaya, the great peaks were places of pilgrimage. It would never have occurred to the Tibetans to climb the mountain, for they represented the domain of the gods. But the pilgrims came to worship and meditate, and the monastery at Rongbuk was the place the pilgrims visiting Chomolungma would stay. The monks were supplied with food by the pilgrims who came to worship, bringing with them presents of flour, yak butter, warm materials and other gi
fts.

  When the expedition arrived at Rongbuk on 28 April the Holy Lama, ngag-dwang-batem-hdsin-norbu, was unable to see them as he was ill. This was something of a disappointment as they had hoped to be able to receive a blessing from the lama before they began their approach to the mountain. Such a blessing was held in particularly high regard by the porters who understood that the lama would be able to pray for their safety from the demons of the mountain. He became a friend to all the Everest expeditions of the 1920s and 1930s and this was in no small part due to his meeting with General Bruce in 1922, with whom he established a rapport. Bruce had explained to the lama that ‘his climbers were from a British mountain-worshipping sect on a pilgrimage to the highest mountain in the world’. He had sought to convey to him that the motives the expedition had for climbing the mountain were not in any way for material gain but were entirely spiritual. As the lama was indisposed Norton had to content himself with making gifts and exchanging greetings with the other monks and promising to return if the Holy Lama, when better, would grant them an audience and bless the expedition. The lama let it be known that he would give them an audience on 15 May.

  Norton was very pleased to see at Rongbuk the Shika, or head man, from Kharta with whom he and others on the 1922 expedition had formed good relations. The Shika was paying his respects to the Head Lama when they met this year and Norton was able to tell him that they had already sent him greetings and presents from Shekar Dzong three days earlier. The Shika, in return, promised to send them a consignment of fresh green vegetables and luxuries. This was very welcome news to Norton and the others for such things were otherwise unobtainable in this inhospitable district.

  As Norton was paying his respects at the monastery and arranging for the audience with the Holy Lama, Sandy was once again huddled in his tent mending things. This time it was Beetham’s camera, Mallory’s saddle and his own sleeping bag. His health and mood did not improve the next day when they finally arrived at the place below the mountain where they were to put up their Base Camp – their ‘refuge’ for the next two months. ‘Bloody morning, light driving snow, very cold and felt rather rotten …Walked all the way from Rongbuk monastery to the base camp 1¾ hours over frozen river and very rough terrain. The Base Camp looked a very uninviting place.’

  Irvine is the star of the new members. He is a very fine fellow, has been doing excellently up to date & should prove a splendid companion on the mountain. I should think the Birkenhead News ought to have something to say if he and I reach the top together.

  G. L. Mallory to his mother, 26 May 1924

  Situated eleven miles from the Rongbuk monastery, at the foot of the Rongbuk glacier, Everest Base Camp was a bleak place. No sign of vegetation, dominated by the bulk of Everest and frequently in shadow, its rocky, rough terrain was uninviting at best. It was, however, to be home to the expedition party for the next six weeks and it became a veritable little village of tents with comings and goings of porters, tradesmen, interpreters, messengers and the all-important postal service.

  The expedition at Base Camp, photographed by Captain John Noel

  Back row l-r Sandy Irvine, George Mallory, Edward Norton, Noel Odell, John MacDonald

  Seated l-r John Hazard, Geoffrey Bruce, Howard Somervell, Benthley Beetham

  Norton described the approach in a Times dispatch on the day they arrived. ‘Today, April 29, finds us again in the 1922 Base Camp and a cold welcome we have received. We walked over five rough miles of tumbled moraine and a frozen watercourse to the camp just under the snout of the Rongbuk glacier, in the teeth of a bitter wind. Here, indeed, it is winter.’ Despite the inhospitable conditions they encountered and the ever-present wind that whistled down the Rongbuk Valley off the glacier in the afternoons leaving the temperature at Base Camp well below freezing, there was a feeling of great optimism in camp. Everyone was busy with his allotted task of sorting, checking, repairing the stores. Mallory and Beetham were in charge of the high altitude Alpine equipment to be sent to the upper camps; Shebbeare and Hazard were occupied with labeling the boxes of stores which had been dumped unceremoniously off the transport animals the day before; Somervell was busy with the medical and scientific stores and Sandy and Odell were locked in their usual, daily battle with the oxygen apparatus. And a battle it had indeed become. Working at Base Camp was hard and the climbers all felt the lack of oxygen at 17,800 feet. Even taking off their boots and climbing into their sleeping bags left them breathless. Sandy wrote in his diary: ‘felt rather exhausted with the altitude. A simply perfect day, everyone working like mad sorting stores. I spent an hour or so on Beetham’s camera and the whole of the rest of the damn day on oxygen apparatus.’ The next day he was hard at it again: ‘completed the repair of Beetham’s camera and spent the whole of the day struggling with the infernal apparatus.’ By 6.30 p.m. that day he had his first perfect set which he put outside his tent to see if the solder would crystallize in the freezing air. The struggle was made all the more difficult by the fact that he was having to work inside his tent with the doors closed. ‘Another full day at the ox app with an incredible number of reverses. Sweating in the HP tubes is a difficult job at the best of times, but cramped in a tent (too windy outside) it was a perfect devil – on every possible occasion the solder would flow and break the HP tube which meant reheating at the risk of the pressure gauge and blowing the tube clear. By 6pm tonight I had 6 done and all sound except one which leaked in the HP tube itself.’ I sense from these three diary entries that he had lapsed into a state of rising panic about the oxygen apparatus. The conditions under which he was working were far from ideal and his tool kit was at best basic. Furthermore he knew that the oxygen apparatus would be required soon and should be ready to be carried up to the higher camps quickly. He was also aware that work was taking him out of the picture as far as the other climbers were concerned and was clearly worried that if he did not complete the work he would get behind in the climbing schedule.

  Each camp had its own diary in which the climbers all made entries about a variety of matters, from the state of stores to accounts of their climbing experiences. In the Base Camp diary there was the plan of campaign neatly written out so that each climber knew exactly where he was expected to be at any one time and, more importantly, where on the mountain his colleagues were to be. From the outset the two climbing teams, Norton and Somervell, and Mallory and Sandy, were scheduled to make their acclimatization trips prior to the summit assault together. Sandy and Mallory were to be the first team to set off and occupy the higher camps where they would be overtaken on 15 May by Norton and Somervell who would be setting two camps (V and VII) on 15 and 16 May. The other two would be resting on the 15 at Camp IV and pushing to an intermediate camp, No. VI, on the 16, so that both would be making the summit attempt on the 17, but from different camps. This would give them three camps to retreat to on the way down if necessary and provide oxygen support if the non-oxygen party, Norton and Somervell, got into difficulties.

  May 2 was Sandy’s last day in Base Camp and he spent it working flat out on the apparatus. In his lengthy diary entry for that day he goes into great detail about the repairs, alterations, modifications he made but I sense a great feeling of relief that, in the end, he had been able to make it work to his satisfaction. As an encore that afternoon he repaired a roarer cooker which had been brought to his workshop tent two days earlier and shortened Mallory’s crampons by half an inch: ‘in so doing I spiked one hand and burnt the other in 2 places so was glad Nima didn’t understand my French accent! I reduced the tool box as much as I dared to send up to Camp III’. He was ready on time, scheduled to leave the following day with Mallory, Odell and Hazard to climb past Camps I and II to III. ‘I hope to put up a good show when the altitude gets a bit trying. I should acclimatize well at III the time we will spend there.’

  Geoffrey Bruce was the man charged by Norton with the responsibility of stocking the first two camps above Base Camp, Camp I at the foot of the East
Rongbuk glacier, at 17,800 feet, three miles from Base and Camp II, three miles further up the glacier at 19,800 feet. These camps were to be set up by the Gurkha NCOs in order to conserve, as far as possible, the energy of the climbers by keeping them at Base Camp and not requiring them to haul loads at this stage. The actual portering to Camps I and II was done by 150 Tibetans whom Bruce had recruited in Shekar Dzong with permission from the Dzong Pen. The condition of their employment was that they would be given some rations and paid four tankas a day (about 1s or 5 pence, nowadays worth about £1.50) and that they would not be employed on snow or ice. The Dzong Pen had asked that they be quickly released after their work was done as they were needed to sow crops and attend to their fields on their return. The Tibetans undertook to look after themselves in all other respects, which meant that they were quite happy to sleep out in the open at 18,000 feet with neither tents nor blankets. ‘Had they been of a less hardy race, their maintenance in such country would have been well nigh impossible.’ Geoffrey Bruce admitted later.

  Bruce arranged for loads of up to 40 lb to be handed out to the Tibetan men, women and boys who had been employed to carry. He made an effort to ensure that the women and boys had lighter loads, but to no avail. ‘I had to resort to the only plan that ensures swift allotment and complete satisfaction in Tibet. Tibetans all wear prettily woven garters of distinct colouring round the tops of their boots, and immediately recognize their own colours. The best method of distributing loads consists in collecting a garter from each person, shuffling them well, and throwing one on to each load. The owner of the garter then claims his or her load, and carries it all day without further complaint.’ Norton was amazed that the porters were adopting a pace that he would imagine a fit climber in the Alps would only manage if he were carrying a load of 25 lb or less. Not only were these men, women and boys rugged, often barefooted but they were cheerful as they walked up the valley towards the East Rongbuk glacier, singing and joking as they went. A few of the women were carrying babies on top of their loads and one woman and her baby actually spent a night in the open at Camp II.