by Wade Davis
A heavy snowstorm overnight confined them to camp the following day. But their performance had been so remarkable that Strutt, concerned about the fate of Mallory and his team, dispatched Finch and Bruce with oxygen on a rescue mission the morning of May 22. When the climbers were at last seen coming down the col, Finch and Bruce decided to head up anyway, both to resupply Camp IV and to conduct a second test of the apparatus. With them was Lance Corporal Tejbir Bura, in Finch’s opinion “the most promising of the Ghurkas,” whom Finch had recruited to the oxygen team. They met Mallory at the foot of the col around 11:00 a.m., and then moved up. Finch deviated from the established route, and with the new snow was obliged to do a “considerable amount of step-cutting,” which he did almost effortlessly. The effect of oxygen, he reported, was to transform a horrendous slog into a “brief Alpine ascent.” They readily outpaced the porters, who carried less weight, and reached Camp IV in but three hours. The descent was almost leisurely, fifty minutes altogether. En route they paused like tourists to take some thirty-six photographs, and arrived back at Camp III feeling “fit and fresh.”
They had each consumed three bottles of oxygen; the apparatus had performed flawlessly. The Tibetans finally understood why they had been asked to carry steel cylinders all the way from Darjeeling. It was the “English air” that made the British so powerful. Bruce agreed, and to make the point Finch released a stream of pure oxygen over the glow of his cigarette, which flared in brilliant white light, dazzling the porters. As Finch later wrote, “All possible doubts as to the great advantages of oxygen were now at an end.”
The following day the entire camp rested, save Finch, who continued to tinker with the oxygen equipment. There were metal joints to be soldered, gauges out of order, washers that had dried out and needed to be replaced. Wakefield dressed Morshead’s wounds and saw to Mallory’s frostbitten fingers before dispatching the two men, along with Norton, Somervell, and Strutt, down the mountain to base camp. Strutt was especially keen to convey news of the climb to General Bruce, who would in turn pass it on by dak runners to the telegraph at Phari to be wired to Hinks and the Everest Committee in London. All were delighted that the previous record, set by the Duke of Abruzzi in 1909 on Chogolisa in the Karakoram, had been broken without the use of supplemental gas. “Nothing pleased us more,” Hinks would write Somervell, “than the exciting news which arrived on June 8 and was published the following day than the two words ‘without oxygen,’ reached 26,800.” Hinks’s triumph would be short-lived.
On May 24, Empire Day, George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce, along with Noel and Tejbir Bura, all using oxygen, headed back up the North Col. Tejbir and Bruce knew each other well, having served in the same regiment, 2nd Battalion, 6th Gurkha Rifles, on the North-West Frontier. They had survived many a bloody skirmish, but this was an altogether new adventure for both of them. Neither man had any climbing experience whatsoever, and both were about to attempt the highest mountain in the world. Bruce stood five foot ten and a half inches and weighed 165 pounds, shorter and slightly heavier than Finch, who, at half an inch over six feet and 159 pounds, was rail thin. Tejbir, short and squat, ferociously strong, appeared almost as wide at the shoulder as he was tall. Finch had selected him for a simple reason: “The man who grins the most is usually the one who goes farthest in the mountains.” Noel, who planned to go no farther than the North Col, was along to document their departure and stand watch for their return. He had become, as Finch later wrote, “a new convert to the true faith,” which was oxygen.
They passed an uncomfortable but uneventful night at Camp IV and woke to strong winds and a clear morning. Such was Finch’s confidence in the effectiveness of oxygen that he sent his twelve porters on ahead, certain that he, Bruce, and Tejbir would readily catch up. At 8:00 a.m. the Tibetans, carrying gas cylinders, tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, and provisions for one day, began the long traverse of the snowfields leading to the Northeast Shoulder of Everest. Finch and his party left fully ninety minutes later, and though each carried a thirty-pound apparatus, more than the average load of the porters, they readily overtook them at 24,500 feet, some 1,500 feet above the North Col. “They greeted our arrival with their usual cheery, broad grins,” Finch later recalled, “but no longer did they regard oxygen as a foolish man’s whim.” As Finch and the gas party pushed up the mountain, leaving the porters in their wake, more than one of the Tibetans called out for a small sample of the “English air.”
The climbers had hoped to camp at close to 26,000 feet, but soon after 1:00 p.m., some 500 feet in elevation shy of that goal, the weather turned and it began to snow heavily. Finch sensed the danger of the coming storm, and for the sake of the porters, who had to get back down to Camp IV, on the North Col, he ordered an immediate halt. With the wind growing stronger, they struggled to find anything resembling level ground for their one Mummery tent. They were on the spine of the Northeast Shoulder. The windward side, exposed to the full force of the storm, was out of the question. Yet to the east, in the lee of the height of land, there was nothing but steep, exposed slopes and jumbles of rock. They had no choice but to level off a small platform on the very backbone of the shoulder, pitching the tent at the edge of precipices that fell away 4,000 feet to the main Rongbuk Glacier on one side, and on the other to the head of the East Rongbuk and their advanced base at Camp III.
When the last of the porters had scurried down the slope, Finch checked the ropes holding down the tent and then crawled in to join Bruce and Tejbir as they waited out the storm. The air was bitterly cold, and the tent filled with small crystals of snow, which alighted on every surface. Wrapped in every bit of clothing they had, they huddled together for warmth. Using blocks of solid fuel, they managed to warm some stew. Hot drinks were out of the question. At such heights water boils at too low a temperature to make proper tea. Finch consoled himself with a cigarette, even as he assured his companions that the summit was theirs for the taking.
But as the sun went down, the storm raged, growing to hurricane force. Gusts tore at their tent with such ferocity, Finch later recalled, that the ground sheet with all three men on it lifted off the packed snow. They had to force their weight fully against the canvas, leaning with all their strength into the wind, lest the entire tent be blown off the mountain. And even as they struggled to hold it down, they feared that at any moment its fabric would be torn to ribbons. No one slept. It was too dangerous even to attempt to do so. “We fought for our lives,” Finch wrote, “realizing that once the wind got our little shelter into its ruthless grip, it must inevitably be hurled, with us inside it, down on to the East Rongbuk Glacier, thousands of feet below.”
By midnight every surface was coated in frost, and frozen spindrift had entered every bit of clothing, including the insides of their sleeping bags, which were soon dangerously damp. An hour later, the storm reached its peak. “The wild flapping of the canvas,” Finch noted, “made a noise like that of machine-gun fire. So deafening was it that we could scarcely hear each other speak.” At 2:00 a.m. there was a lull in the wind. Finch summoned the strength to go outside and managed to tie down the tent by passing an alpine rope over the ridge and poles and fastening both ends firmly to boulders. He returned to the tent utterly spent and chilled to the bone. With the rope in place, they managed a few moments of rest, though sleep eluded them all.
“Dawn broke bleak and chill,” Finch later wrote. “The snow had ceased to fall, but the wind continued with unabated violence.” Throughout a long morning, they took turns venturing outside, never for more than a few minutes at a time, to tighten the ropes and build a small wall of stones on the windward side, which gave some protection. Until the storm abated, they were completely trapped and at the mercy of the mountain. Even had they wanted to abandon the climb, retreat was not an option. Outwardly Bruce and Tejbir stood up well, without complaint. Still, Finch wondered, “How much longer could human beings stand the strain?” They prepared another meal, and the flames from the spirit sto
ve caused in Finch “an anxiety bordering on anguish lest the tent, a frail shelter between life and death, should catch fire.” At noon the storm “regained its strength and rose to unsurpassed fury.” A stone struck the side of the tent, leaving a great gash in the canvas. The situation was desperate, yet they had no choice but to endure. “No human being could survive more than a few minutes’ exposure to a gale of such fury coupled with so intense a cold,” Finch speculated.
Finally, close to 1:00 p.m., the wind broke and the worst of the storm passed. Sensible men would have returned to the North Col and continued down to the safety of Camp III. Finch wanted to stay another night and have a go at the summit the next day. He tentatively raised the question with Bruce, quite prepared to follow his lead. Bruce wanted nothing of retreat. Speaking Punjabi, he shared their thoughts with Tejbir, whose only response was to “broaden his already expansive grin.”
The moment’s elation was soon quelled by their circumstances. With the last of their fuel they had a meager meal, eating the last of their food, as well. If they were to climb Everest, it would be on empty stomachs. They were huddling in what remained of their tent when unexpectedly, around 6:00 p.m., they heard voices outside. Six Sherpas, led by the “indomitable Tergio,” had on their own accord left the North Col that afternoon as soon as the storm passed. John Noel, in his concern, had sent thermos flasks of hot Bovril and tea. Finch thanked them for their efforts, but with the hour so late he sent them immediately back down the mountain, with instructions to return the following day at noon. He watched them scamper away, wondering how far they would get before darkness fell. They had left the North Col at 4:00 p.m., clearly risking their lives to bring comfort to the climbers. On the way down they would become lost, and not reach the shelter of Camp IV for five hours. Only a miracle kept them from death.
Unaware of the plight of Tergio and his men, the climbers settled in for another miserable night. Exhausted, on starvation rations, deadened by the cold, they wore the strain on their faces. In the moment Everest was forgotten. The challenge was to survive the night. They were all, Finch observed, “ravenously hungry, even, I think, to the point of cannibalism.” The one thing they did have was tobacco. Finch loved to smoke, and he seriously believed that it had a “most beneficial effect on respiration at high altitudes.” He was fully capable of sometimes glossing in technical language the most ridiculous of ideas. “Something in the smoke took the place of the carbon dioxide in which the blood is deficient, and acted as a nerve stimulant,” he maintained. “The beneficial effect of a cigarette lasted as much as three hours. As luck would have it, we had with us a fair supply.” A tent thick with cigarette smoke surely was not the best space for men already weak, hungry, and queasy from the altitude.
At their lowest ebb, Finch had an inspired idea. He hauled one of the oxygen sets into the tent and insisted that all take a shot of the gas. Tejbir resisted, but as soon as he relented, his face brightened. The effect on Bruce was also immediate and profound. Finch, after one inhalation, felt the “tingling sensation of returning life and warmth to my limbs.” Here was the key to sleeping at extreme elevation. Finch was positively joyous as he rigged the tanks to allow each of them to breathe a small amount of oxygen throughout the night. The effect was miraculous. Not only could they rest, they slept well and remained warm. Finch later wrote that oxygen alone saved their lives.
They woke before dawn, feeling much stronger than they had the previous morning. Finch had slept with his boots on. The others had not, and it took a full hour with burning candles to thaw the leather. With nothing for breakfast, they set out at 6:30 a.m. as the first sunlight fell on their camp. Bruce and Finch, with water bottles, cameras, warm gear, and the apparatus itself, each carried forty pounds. Tejbir, with two extra cylinders of gas, shouldered nearly fifty. The plan was to have Tejbir accompany the climbers only as far as the junction of the Northeast Shoulder and the Northeast Ridge. Taking on fresh cylinders, Finch and Bruce would then continue, while Tejbir would head back down to await their return at the high camp.
They had not gone more than a few hundred feet from camp when it became clear that the tough old Gurkha soldier simply did not have it in him. Bruce exhorted him for the sake of the honor of the regiment to keep going. Shame lifted him to 26,000 feet, but then Tejbir completely collapsed, falling face-first into the rocks, and smashing the delicate glass instruments of his oxygen apparatus. Finch, more concerned about the equipment than the man, was furious. Bruce again challenged Tejbir’s pride, but the Gurkha was beyond the end of his tether. After reviving him with oxygen, they directed him down the mountain, with orders to remain in the high camp, which could be readily seen some distance below.
Finch and Bruce lightened their loads by abandoning all but one of their ropes, even as they took on extra cylinders of gas from Tejbir’s pack. Moving over easy rocks, they continued up the shoulder, making good time to 26,500 feet. But now the wind returned, blowing with such force that Finch had no choice but to abandon the shoulder and seek protection in its lee. They began to work their way across the North Face of the mountain and soon found themselves on the great sandstone slabs of the Yellow Band, a sedimentary formation that sweeps across Everest. Though technically not difficult, the rocks slope out and steeply downward and can be slippery with snow, with treacherous exposures that transform the simplest of falls into fatal disasters. To save time Finch did not rope up, leaving Bruce to traverse the “steeply sloping, evilly smooth slabs” without protection, a daring achievement for a man who had never before been on a mountain.
As they moved across the North Face they came ever closer to their goal, though they gained little in height. It was all exhausting work, rendered possible by the oxygen on their backs. When a cylinder emptied, they took great delight in flinging it down the slope, lightening their load by five pounds, even as they listened to the sound of metal tumbling over rocks, “the good steel clanging like a church bell at each impact.” Finch paid close attention to his aneroid, measuring his advance, his challenge of Mallory. At 27,000 feet he had won, and all his thoughts turned to the summit. He abandoned the traverse and led Bruce upward, moving in a diagonal direction toward a point on the Northeast Ridge halfway between its junction with the Northeast Shoulder and the base of the summit pyramid of the mountain.
They had climbed perhaps 300 feet when suddenly Finch heard a cry from young Bruce: “I’m getting no oxygen!” Finch, perhaps 20 feet above, immediately raced down, reaching a desperate Bruce just in time to grab him by the shoulder as he was about to fall backward off the mountain. Finch dragged him forward, saving his life, even as he inserted his own breathing tube into Bruce’s mouth. At an elevation where most men can hardly think, Finch worked the problem. “Systematically I traced the connections from the cylinder in use down to the pressure gauge and flow-meter and found both in action, the latter recording a flow of 2.4 litres per minute.” The culprit was a broken glass T in the mask.
While Bruce regained his steadiness, Finch first modified his own apparatus that both men might breathe from the same cylinder. He then set about repairing Bruce’s set, replacing the glass part with a spare he had carried from Darjeeling precisely for this purpose. With both sets functioning properly, the crisis resolved, he consulted his aneroid. Their elevation was 27,300 feet—the highest that man had ever climbed. Finch, pilloried from the start as an Australian, dismissed as a scientific eccentric, marginalized as a colonial irritant, had done the impossible, and in doing so had changed mountaineering history. The Duke of Abruzzi’s record had stood for thirteen years until shattered by Mallory, who’d climbed 2,200 feet above the previous mark. Mallory’s record had endured for less than a week until broken by George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce, climbing with oxygen.
Finch naturally wanted to go higher, but he knew there was no point. The summit, still 1,700 feet above, could not possibly be reached with any chance of a safe return. To attempt even another 500 feet, he recognized, would be s
uicidal. Geoffrey Bruce, badly shaken by the incident, which had almost led to his death, was in no psychological state to continue. The young soldier had set a world height record on his very first mountain climb. What more could Finch possibly ask of him? They were within half a mile of the summit. Finch could clearly distinguish individual stones scattered across the snow just beneath the slope rising to the peak. He was so close and yet so far, with no ethical choice but to retreat. “The realization came like a blow,” he later reflected.
My emotions are eternally my own, and I will not put on paper a cold blooded, psychological analysis of the cataclysmic change they underwent, but will merely indicate the initial and final mental positions. Reasoned determination, confidence, faith in the possibility of achievement, hope—all had acquired cumulative force as we made our way higher and higher; the two nights’ struggle at our high camp had not dimmed our enthusiasm, nor had the collapse of Tejbir, rude shock and source of grave anxiety though it undoubtedly was. Never for a moment did I think we would fail; progress was steady, the summit was there before us; a little longer, and we should be on top. And then—suddenly, unexpectedly, the vision was gone.