by Wade Davis
At base camp, Wakefield and the general continued to worry about the health of the expedition. The advance reconnaissance party, returning just after lunch on Tuesday, May 9, brought word that Longstaff had managed to walk down as far as Camp I but was unable to go farther. That very morning Geoffrey Bruce, Morris, and a dozen porters had headed up with supplies, including flags, wooden stakes, and rope to mark the upper route through the ice pinnacles. Strutt reported to the general that Morris, too, was down, last seen vomiting, and severely depleted from “mountain lassitude.”
On the morning of May 10 General Bruce ordered Wakefield to lead a stretcher party to Camp I to evacuate Longstaff. It was a bright morning, with five degrees of frost. The porters rushed ahead. Wakefield moved deliberately to the rescue, and after two and a half hours he met the Tibetan porters coming down the trail with the invalid. At base camp, Somervell gave up his place in Wakefield’s tent so that Longstaff might have constant attention. It was a peculiar outcome: Somervell, the brilliant military surgeon, avoiding sick parade duties at all cost; Longstaff, the expedition’s medical officer, now the patient; and Wakefield, the forgotten physician, moving reflexively into the breach.
Longstaff spent the next three days in bed, emerging only on the afternoon of May 13, voiceless and still very weak. Though the most experienced mountaineer, he never fully recovered and was essentially lost to the expedition. “A great heart in a frail body,” a shaken Mallory wrote. “It is very distressing.” Morshead feared “another Kellas case, unless the General insists on his staying down at base. It’s a pity that people cannot learn that Himalayan mountaineering is a young man’s game.” In truth, Longstaff ought never to have been allowed to go to Tibet. His Harley Street medical exam, conducted by Dr. Anderson on December 20, 1921, had concluded that he “was not robust enough to stand severe strains.” That Longstaff had been permitted to join the expedition, and appointed to the critical role of medical officer, suggests how much the British still had to learn about the challenges and perils of Everest.
Even before learning of Longstaff’s collapse, General Bruce had been concerned about morale. An “epidemic” of influenza and diarrhea had swept through the porters. Many had simply “cleared off,” as Finch recorded in his diary, “scared of the devils that haunt the snows.” The news from home was bleak. Three bags of mail had arrived on May 6, with the last letters posted from England on March 29. One of them brought word to Wakefield that his wife, Madge, had suffered a severe infection in the mastoid cavity of her skull, a potentially lethal condition in the era before antibiotics. In their absence Mallory’s wife, Ruth, had also been gravely ill. Morris, alone at Camp I, summed up the frustrations of idleness and isolation. There was little to occupy the long evenings. In bed by 5:00 p.m. after a dinner of lukewarm stew, the air so cold it was impossible to read a book for more than a few minutes, sleeping in fits and starts. “I should like to be able to say,” he later recalled, “that on these occasions my thoughts were concerned with the nature of the universe, but they were not; the only thing I thought about was food.”
When in doubt, the general always chose action. Even as Wakefield moved to the rescue of Longstaff on the morning of May 10, Bruce impulsively set in motion a new plan, ordering Mallory and Somervell, with all available porters, to head up that very afternoon, with the goal of establishing Camp IV on the crest of the North Col within two days. From there, as Mallory wrote Ruth, they would get “as high up the mountain as we can.” It would be a “tremendous undertaking at this stage,” Mallory noted, even as he hastily tore pages from his diary to send to her in lieu of a proper letter, which he had no time to write.
In retrospect, this was a critical moment, a hinge of fate that ultimately determined the outcome of the expedition. The general had always intended that Mallory and Somervell, climbing without oxygen, would have the first go at the mountain; Hinks and the Everest Committee back in London had virtually demanded as much. But even as Mallory and Somervell scrambled to organize their gear and grab a bit of lunch before their departure, George Finch was still under the impression that he and Norton would climb together with oxygen. “Mallory and Somervell start this afternoon upwards,” he wrote in his diary on the morning of May 10. “In a few days time Norton and I start for the same thing with oxygen.” Finch’s main concern was how to get the apparatus and supplies up to Camp III with the “35 odd coolies we have of our own.” As far as getting up the mountain, he wrote, “Personally I am quite optimistic (that is as far as the oxygen party is concerned), though I don’t give Mallory and Somervell a foot above 25,000 feet.”
For all of Finch’s quirks of character, the petty antagonisms, the ridicule that greeted his drills and experiments, there was still, as of May 10, the full intention of giving the oxygen party a fair and equal shot at the mountain. For precisely this reason General Bruce, despite his reservations about Finch and the entire gas initiative, had assigned Norton, a climber of considerable experience and strength, to Finch’s team. Then, disastrously, on the evening of May 10, Finch suffered a relapse of dysentery so severe that for five days he could barely move from his tent, incapable of even writing a note in his diary. When finally his stomach trouble passed, the entire momentum of the expedition had shifted. Norton and Morshead had gone up the mountain to join Mallory and Somervell. Finch had been relegated, if not to a secondary role, at least to a place of such handicap that success would demand almost miraculous exertions. “Hitherto I had been sanguine in the extreme about getting to the top,” he later recalled, “but when I saw the last mountaineers of the expedition leave the Base Camp, my hopes fell low. Any attempt I could now make upon Mount Everest would have to be carried out with untrained climbers.”
MALLORY AND SOMERVELL had set off from base camp with forty porters just after 1:00 p.m., crossing paths with Wakefield and the rescue party just below Camp I as they brought Longstaff down off the mountain. Without incident they reached Camp III on May 12, a Friday, whereupon they immediately sent all but two porters and a cook back to Camp I to fetch more loads. The following morning, accompanied by a single porter, Mallory and Somervell, with one Mummery tent, 400 feet of rope, and a bundle of wooden ice pegs, set out to establish a route up the North Col. Their challenge was not simply to reach the height of the col, as had been the case in 1921, but to lay down a line that could be repeatedly climbed by porters laden with supplies for the higher camps. Not unexpectedly, as Mallory soon recognized, the conditions and alignment of the snow had changed dramatically. The lower part of the previous year’s approach now glittered in blue ice. Even had it been possible or practical to cut steps, the exposure would have been too severe and the footing too precarious for Tibetans with no mountaineering experience.
Mallory instead chose a route that led to the left and rose over firm snow to a steep slope, unchanged since 1921, that ultimately reached the shelf just below the summit crest. It was hard work, and they arrived exhausted at midday. The wind was moderate compared to the previous year’s gale, but still strong. Fearful of the gusts, Mallory and Somervell roped up as they moved across the broad ledge of snow toward the lowest point of the col. They soon found their way blocked by a crevasse too wide to be jumped, and beyond it another obstacle insurmountable without a ladder. For a moment Mallory despaired that these single impediments might be, as he later recalled, the broken links in the chain that had carried them so far and brought them so close to the mountain.
Regrouping, he and Somervell backtracked along the shelf to where they had left their Tibetan companion Dasno resting out of the wind. They paused for a bit of food, mint cake and sweet biscuits. The snow cliffs above them were impassable, but Mallory discerned a gap marked by a great pinnacle of ice where a steep slope came down from Changtse, the North Peak. This carried them up to the ridge and onto the col. As they made their way over the snow, heading toward the Northeast Shoulder, each step opened wider the stunning view to the west: the North Face of Everest and the vall
ey of Rongbuk at its base. At one point, having leapt across two serious crevasses, they simply stopped and stared in wonder. “For a time,” Mallory recalled, “we completely forgot our quest.”
But then, even as the wind grew, they could see the spindrift high on the Northeast Ridge. Everest seemed both near and impossibly distant. Dropping back to the shelf, they set up the Mummery tent, almost as an afterthought, though in doing so they established the highest camp in mountaineering history. Too exhausted for reflection, they returned silently to Camp III, pausing on their descent only long enough to fix ropes on two of the steepest pitches. They were in their sleeping bags by 5:30 p.m., each tormented by a headache and incapable of eating. But they slept with the satisfaction that a route had been found.
For three days they waited in the cold for the rest of the expedition. To pass the time they played cards or read aloud. Mallory had two books with him, a volume of Shakespeare’s plays and a copy of Robert Bridges’s wartime anthology, The Spirit of Man, a collection of poetry and short prose pieces compiled by the poet laureate in 1915 to buck up the morale of the nation and the soldiers at the front. Mallory considered Somervell his closest confidant on the expedition. He did not share Somervell’s religious convictions, but he admired his friend’s lack of dogma and open mind, his true and evident desire to serve God and love men. “The trouble with Christianity,” Somervell told Mallory between readings of King Lear and Hamlet, “is that it has never been tried.” Somervell later recalled these short days and long nights at Camp III: “I forget the details of George Mallory’s views on most of the many subjects we discussed but in general he took always the big and liberal view … He hated anything that savoured of hypocrisy or humbug, but cherished all that is really good and sound.”
While Mallory and Somervell waited in the snow at 21,000 feet, the rest of the expedition marshaled for the first assault on the mountain. On May 12 Crawford, recovered from influenza but still weak, headed up to Camp I. The following day Wakefield escorted nineteen porters to join him, returning to base camp the same day. On May 14 Strutt, Morshead, Norton, and Crawford, with a large convoy of porters, went up to Camp II, and then continued for the higher camp. Mallory and Somervell had that same day crossed the wide snow basin at the head of the East Rongbuk to take the measure of the approaching monsoon from the Rapiu La, a pass two miles due south of the Lhakpa La that looked down into the Kama Valley and beyond to Makalu. So far, so good, they reported to Strutt when the colonel arrived to take command of Camp III just after midday on May 16.
Over lunch, as the climbers huddled together, each with a spoon eating from a common saucepan of spaghetti, a habit that horrified Strutt, they made plans for the attack. Mallory, naturally, wanted as strong a party as possible. Crawford, the transport officer, knew that men were needed below. In a compromise they agreed that eight of Crawford’s porters would remain at Camp III, giving the climbing party a total of ten, along with the cook. Crawford, himself weak with mountain sickness, would escort the remainder down the mountain to continue the work of provisioning the higher camps and moving up the oxygen equipment. Given the exertions of the morning and the demands of the North Col, it was also decided to rest the ten porters destined for the mountain for the remainder of the day, allowing time for loads to be broken down and reassembled in lots of no more than thirty pounds, each to be weighed with a spring balance.
Strutt, to whom General Bruce had delegated final authority at Camp III, would determine not only the timing of the attack but also the final configuration of the climbing party. Once again the fate of the expedition hovered in the balance. Strutt shared the general’s concerns about the monsoon. Mallory’s assurances aside, he could see signs of ominous weather to the south. While the porters rested that afternoon, he and a number of the climbers, including Mallory, crossed the head of the East Rongbuk to have a second look into the Kama Valley from the heights of the Rapiu La. What they saw did not inspire confidence. “The clouds,” Mallory later recalled, “boiling up from that vast and terrible cauldron were not gleaming white, but sadly grey. A glimpse down the valley showed under them the somber blue light that forebodes mischief, and Makalu, seen through the rift, looked cold and grim. The evidence of trouble in store for us was not confined to the Kama Valley.” As they moved off the divide, he noted, “The bitterest even of Tibetan winds poured violently over the pass at our backs. We wondered as we turned to meet it how long a respite was to be allowed us.”
Strutt returned to Camp III convinced that it was now or perhaps never. Norton and Morshead, keen to have a go at the mountain, welcomed his sense of urgency. Mallory maintained that a party of four would have a greater chance of success than a team of two. He admired Norton, had confidence in Somervell, and had limitless respect for Morshead. In the pressure of the moment Strutt, who had no personal illusions of reaching any higher than the crest of the North Col, authorized Norton and Morshead to join forces with Mallory and Somervell. That this decision would leave Finch alone, stripping his oxygen party of any experienced climbing support, did not register as a serious concern.
On the morning of May 17, they set out to provision Camp IV, with ten porters carrying among them some three hundred pounds of gear and supplies, and the five British without loads but quite prepared to pitch in should any of the Tibetans falter. The wind, which had blown at gale force during the night, had quieted with the dawn, and the bright cerulean sky promised heat and glare on the ice. Mallory wore two felt hats. Strutt and Somervell both had their solar topees. Norton and Morshead foolishly went without protection from the sun, and would regret it. The porters trudged up the long slopes without complaint, but “more silent than usual.” Mallory marveled that a destination that had been the climax of the entire effort in 1921 was now just another link in a logistical chain as they moved toward their higher goal.
Both he and Somervell were surprised by the relative ease with which they made this second ascent of the col. The strength and fitness of the porters, who readily carried their loads to 23,000 feet, higher than any laden man had ever reached, boded well for the coming trial on the mountain. When Colonel Strutt, gasping for wind, finally crested the height of the North Col, his first impulse was to curse photographer Noel for his absence. “I wish that cinema were here,” he exclaimed in a rare spark of humor. “If I look anything like what I feel, I ought to be immortalized for the British public.” As the porters dropped their loads and headed back down to Camp III, soon to be followed by the climbers, a bemused Mallory, taking in Strutt’s “grease smeared, yellow ashen face,” noted that they all looked like hell, wind-whipped and blackened by the sun. “And what do we do it for, anyway?” he asked.
JOHN NOEL was in fact on his way up the mountain, having spent the night of May 15 at Camp I with Morris. The next day, a Tuesday, Wakefield, Geoffrey Bruce, and Finch, with the last of the oxygen equipment, made their move, leaving only Longstaff and General Bruce at base camp. Chongay, among the most respected of the Tibetans, had assured the general that the weather would moderate after May 17, when the ritual at Rongbuk ended. And indeed it did. Wakefield in his diary recalled the beauty of the next day, the stillness in the air, the warmth of the sun by midmorning. The general proclaimed rather optimistically that the change might well be the beginning of the three weeks of fine conditions that typically precede the onset of the monsoon. Longstaff had his doubts.
Finch, by now fully recovered, rested his porters on May 17, even as he and Geoffrey Bruce busied themselves with the oxygen cylinders. All had kept their pressure; none showed less than 110 atmospheres, an excellent sign. On Thursday, May 18, while Mallory and his team took a slack day at Camp III in anticipation of their push up the mountain on May 19, Finch, Wakefield, and Geoffrey Bruce moved up to Camp II. En route Finch gave “G. Bruce, one goorka [sic] and two picked coolies a stiff lesson in the use of climbing irons so that no time need be lost when we arrive at Camp III.”
Finch was not about to give up. L
eaving Camp II just after 8:00 a.m. on May 19, he led his convoy of porters in four and a half hours to Camp III, arriving at 12:30 p.m. Only Strutt and the cook were there. Mallory, Norton, Morshead, and Somervell, along with nine porters, had left at 8:45 that morning with the last of the supplies for Camp IV. Their plan was to sleep that night on the col and strike out the following day for the higher flanks of Everest. They would establish a small camp at 26,000 feet, spend one night, and then have a go for the summit. At the very least they expected to climb higher than humans had ever been.
For Finch, these new plans—both the allocation of men and support and the configuration of the climbing party—must have come as a terrible blow. After months of prodigious effort, he had delivered the last of the oxygen equipment to 21,000 feet on the very flank of Everest. The apparatus had flaws, and after an overland journey across Tibet there was some damage. But the cylinders of gas were sound, and Finch had all the tools required to make the necessary repairs. His every instinct as a scientist told him that only with supplemental gas would climbers have a chance at the summit. He was equally certain that each man would be capable of just one attempt; the rigors of exposure and altitude would preclude a second effort. Not four hours before his arrival at Camp III, Strutt had effectively placed all of the expedition’s eggs in one basket by sending every experienced and fit mountaineer, aside from Finch himself, up to the North Col to attempt Everest without oxygen. Why had not even one of the climbers been held back, as per the original plan? Why deplete four of the best men before giving gas a chance?
Finch, to his credit, did not view Strutt’s decision as anything more than what it was: a lapse in judgment and leadership that squandered an opportunity and severely compromised their chances of achieving the ultimate goal. Finch saw it not as conspiracy so much as idiocy, but it left him angry and even more determined. The suggestion that Wakefield might qualify to join him as a climber was the final insult. His scratched notes that evening reflected his mood: “Wakefield has come up with us. I don’t know what good he expects to do. He can barely crawl along, is always fussing and making a nuisance of himself. Generally speaking he is a busy old woman and good for nothing.” Finch’s focus instead was on young Geoffrey Bruce. He had forty-eight hours to transform the general’s nephew into a mountaineer, a climber both physically and mentally prepared to take on the challenge of Everest.