by Wade Davis
Norton, for his part, was desperately concerned about the weather. They were but a week shy of the date in 1922 when the monsoon broke in full fury, and there was every indication that the season might already be upon them. There were, of course, no meteorological records and no precedent save what the two previous expeditions had observed. The mountaineers had no way of knowing that the conditions they had experienced, so unusual for the early weeks of May, had nothing to do with the annual monsoon. In 1924 a trough of low pressure, a depression in western Afghanistan, flung a series of powerful storms across the length of northern India, bringing cold and severe weather to the entire Himalaya. This information, even had it been available, would have brought little comfort to the men. It explained why they had suffered, but it also implied they had yet to confront the monsoon and, with it, the full wrath of Everest.
The council of May 26, which began at midday, stretched into the evening, with all of them—Norton, Mallory, Somervell, Irvine, Bruce, and Hingston—dining together in Irvine’s tent. “The scheme has to be recast,” Hingston wrote that night. “The original intention was to have a camp seven; at best only six can be established now. It is possible that the use of oxygen will have to be abandoned. Different schemes were discussed and opinions taken; but the definite decision is postponed till the morning. Certainly another attempt will be made, that is if the weather at all permits. But it will have to be an attempt on a more slender scale; and this, of course, both increases risks and diminishes the chance of success.”
This rather casual journal entry, written with the calm detachment that made Hingston such a valuable member of the expedition, in fact suggests a most fateful turning point. Until May 26 the very strength of the endeavor had been the discipline imposed by a plan based on two sound and fundamental convictions. Finch’s dramatic results in 1922, and everything that had been learned since, had left little doubt that oxygen would play an essential role, if the summit were to be reached and the climbers safely return. Mallory, though a late convert to gas, had come so far as to believe that any attempt without oxygen would be little more than a gesture, an act of nostalgia. Second, the experience of 1922 had left Mallory, in particular, convinced that only a second and properly supplied camp above the col, established at least as high as 27,300 feet, would allow a climber a chance to get up and back in a day. This was key, an essential element of his scheme, his “brain-wave” that Norton and the others had enthusiastically endorsed at Shegar Dzong. To abandon both oxygen and the scaffolding that might realistically position a summit attempt implied a loss of both focus and reason, and the embrace of desperation. But on May 27, as Norton ordered Odell, Shebbeare, and John Noel down from Camp II to join in the deliberations, this is precisely what the expedition elected to do.
“We decided,” Norton later wrote, “to scrap oxygen altogether.” They would rest and regroup for two or three days, and then six climbers and all available Sherpas would reposition to Camp III. On two successive days, two teams of two men would set out from Camp IV. The first would establish a Camp V at 25,500 feet, and then the following day continue to a higher Camp VI at 27,200 feet—in the circumstances essentially a light bivouac—and from there set out for the summit. The second team, quite independent of the first, would try to do the same, should the first attempt fail. A third team of two would be held in reserve at Camp IV.
As for the configuration of the climbing parties, it was a simple determination. Shebbeare, thinking of Geoffrey Bruce in 1922, volunteered, but “Norton put his foot down very firmly on this suggestion.” Beetham, of course, was out, still suffering from sciatica. Hazard, having lost the confidence of the men, would remain at Camp III. Irvine was strong but young, and thus would form the reserve with Odell, who, despite his considerable experience, “apparently suffers much from the altitude,” noted Hingston’s medical report of May 26. Thus the lead climbers would be, as if by process of elimination, Geoffrey Bruce and Mallory, Somervell and Norton.
Mallory recognized the scheme for what it was: less a plan than an act of folly and compulsion. Three days before, on the eve of abandoning Camp III for the second time, he had written to Ruth, expressing his sympathy for Norton’s dilemma: “Poor old Norton was very hard hit altogether, hating the thoughts of such a bad muddle.” Now, on the eve of their return to Camp III, he wrote bitterly to his old friend from Cambridge, David Pye: “We are on the point of moving up again, and the adventure appears more desperate than ever … All sound plans are now abandoned for two consecutive dashes without gas. Geoffrey Bruce and I in the first party provided I’m fit, and Norton and Somervell in the second, old gangers first, but in fact nothing but a consideration of what is likely to succeed has come in. If the monsoon lets us start from Camp IV, it will almost certainly catch us on one of the three days from there. Bright prospects!”
Mallory concealed his private concerns in the last public pronouncement he would make, an uplifting quotation that went out in the May 26 dispatch to the Times, the final word to reach the British public as the fate of the expedition still hung in the balance: “Action is only suspended before the more intense action of the climax. The issue will shortly be decided. The third time we walk up East Rongbuk glacier will be the last, for better or worse. We have counted our wounded and know, roughly, how much to strike off the strength of our little army as we plan the next act of battle … We expect no mercy from Everest.”
His true feelings and deepest fears he saved for his beloved Ruth, in a letter written on the evening of May 27. “Dear Girl, this has been a bad time altogether—I look back on tremendous efforts and exhaustion … looking out of a tent door onto a world of snow and vanishing hopes … The physique of the whole party has gone down sadly … The only plum fit man is Geoffrey Bruce. Norton has made me responsible for choosing the parties of attack, [after] himself first choosing me into the first party if I like. But I’m quite doubtful if I shall be fit enough … We shall be going up again the day after tomorrow—six days to the top from this camp!”
As he lay in his sleeping bag, writing that letter destined to reach Ruth long after the issue had been decided, his thoughts turned to home and all the small things of family and life. He fretted that their car had been giving her such trouble, shared his delight to have received a lovely poem from their daughter Clare, passed along the happy news that his mother was well and in great spirits, on holiday in Aix-en-Provence. He asked in particular that Ruth send a note to David Pye, who had written from Pen y Pass, the mountain getaway in Wales where their lives had found such expression before the war. Then he ended what would be his last letter home, his final written words: “The candle is burning out and I must stop. Darling I wish you the best I can—that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this—with the best news, which will also be the quickest. It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet and do ourselves proud. Great love to you, Ever your loving, George.”
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Wednesday, May 28, dawned clear, but all was not well. Mallory looked ill and was spending much of his time alone resting in his tent. His strength seemed gone, according to John Noel. Their finest climber, as the filmmaker recalled, was “running on nerves.” Cautioned by Noel, Norton kept Mallory back for the day, along with Somervell and Geoffrey Bruce.
Sandy Irvine was dispatched forward to join Odell and Shebbeare, who had returned to Camp II. Their task over the next forty-eight hours would be the creation of a rope ladder that would solve the challenge of the ice chimney. It was Irvine’s idea and, naturally, his design. Every third rung would be a large wooden tent peg, with the rest of it being made of hemp rope, spliced by hand—an exacting and difficult challenge for hands numb from the cold. With Irvine, Norton sent up to Camp II the only Sherpas fit for the mountain, fifteen men altogether, each one of them a “Tiger.” The simple numbers—ten English, fifteen Sherpas—created a certain balance, an equilibrium that challenged two hundred years of British decorum in India.
The
British climbers admired the Sherpas, but made little effort to understand their world. Younghusband famously said that there were hundreds of Tibetans living at the base of Everest who could have reached the “summit any year they liked. Yet the fact remains they don’t. They have not even the desire to. They have not spirit.” Beetham believed, too, that there was something fundamentally missing in the Sherpa character. He stated, “It has been said that these men could easily reach the top if they themselves really wished to do so. I do not believe it for one moment … they have acclimatized bodies but lack the right mentality.”
Norton wrote that the Sherpas were “singularly like a childish edition of the British soldier. They have the same high spirit for a tough and dangerous job; the same ready response to quip and jest. As with the British soldier the rough character often comes out strongest when up against it in circumstances where the milder man fails.” From Norton this was high praise. He was not a nuanced man when it came to culture, but he recognized courage and authenticity when he saw it.
Of all the men, it was the good doctor Hingston who came closest to sensing something sublime in the Tibetan way of being. Even as Sandy Irvine and the Sherpas made their way up the corridor of the East Rongbuk for the final assault, Hingston, back at base camp, had a remarkable encounter. He recalled in his journal on the evening of May 28:
This morning I explored a narrow gorge in which a hermit had taken up his abode. I did not approach his cell too closely; but it appeared to consist of a natural cave partially closed in by a stone wall. He was literally buried in the mountains, surrounded only by cliffs and stones and a frozen torrent, which rushed through the gorge. He has been in his cell for three years and intends to stay there for another two. Once a month food supplies are sent him from the monastery; but beyond this he never sees a human being. It is a genuine and I imagine a miserable hermitage in cold and barren mountains at 17,000 feet. Of course he will earn great merit by it and will be considered an especially saintly lama when he returns to monastic life. No doubt he regards our attempt to climb Mount Everest in much the same light as we look on his incarceration. Each to the other must seem futile and ridiculous; yet each in its own way earns merit, and each is no doubt of equal value, the gain being purely moral and spiritual and of little, if any, practical use.
THE FOLLOWING morning, Ascension Day, May 29, Mallory, Somervell, Norton, and Geoffrey Bruce made their way to Camp II, arriving just in time for a light midday meal. Beetham and Noel were already there, along with Irvine, Odell, and Shebbeare. Hazard began the day at base camp, but had orders to go to Camp III. “A third attempt is to be launched tomorrow,” Hingston noted. “Two parties will attempt to reach the summit. Mallory and Bruce are the first party; Norton and Somervell compose the second. It is not altogether a forlorn hope, but it will be the last attempt. There is a chance if the weather holds, but the difficulties are indeed great.” At Camp II they all enjoyed a “beautiful evening and a great deal of noise on the glacier all night.”
Friday was a perfect day, and spirits rose as the climbers made for Camp III. Mallory and Irvine went together, arriving well ahead of Bruce and Norton, Somervell and Odell. To the astonishment of all, Beetham, having defied Hingston, hobbled into camp in the early afternoon. He had apparently told the doctor to go to hell, that after his efforts he was not about to miss all the action. Norton considered it an act of mutiny and promptly ordered Beetham back to base camp, with instructions to dispatch Hingston up the mountain. His medical skills, Norton suggested, would be needed. That afternoon the weather broke completely in their favor, though there were signs of clouds by nightfall. Irvine had never felt stronger. “Feel very fit tonight. I wish I was in the first party instead of a bloody reserve.” He was not alone with this sentiment. Mallory clearly would have preferred Irvine to Bruce, but the die was cast.
May 31, Saturday, and the stars faded to a turquoise dawn. Hazard left Shebbeare at Camp II and headed up to Camp III. Mallory and Bruce, with Odell and Irvine in support, left Camp III at 8:45 a.m. with nine porters. A sharp crust of over two feet of snow made the going difficult, and they traded off the lead, even as the Sherpas trudged behind, burdened by especially heavy loads. When they reached the ice chimney, Mallory and Odell went ahead, fixing the rope ladder, which made all the difference. The porters climbed readily, without having to shed their loads. Above the chimney young Irvine led, and as they approached the shelf, Odell cut the final steps. To the extent possible, they tried to spare Mallory and Bruce for the challenge that surely awaited them above the col. By 3:00 p.m. they were all secure at Camp IV. Irvine made a “fine meal of cocoa, pea soup and tongue.” Mallory’s eye had been touched somewhat by the sun; it was irritated, slightly raw, but not a serious concern. The night bode well, with all the heavens illuminated by the silence of the stars. “Lovely calm evening,” Odell wrote. “Magnificent situation.” Only one of the porters had collapsed.
Irvine was up at 4:30 a.m. to cook breakfast for the climbers. He found it, not surprisingly, a “very cold and disagreeable job. Thank God my profession is not to be a cook! Sun struck the camp about 5:10 a.m.” In a flush of optimism, Mallory and Bruce and eight porters managed to be off at 6:10, escorted as far as the surface of the col by Irvine and Odell, who led the way. Then they met the wind. Nothing like it had been experienced in 1922. It was a bitter return to 1921, when Wheeler, Bullock, and Mallory had nearly frozen to death, ghostlike in an instant. Odell and Irvine were not unhappy to retreat, even as Mallory, Bruce, and the porters leaned into the gusts; like mere shadows they were obliterated from view within moments by the spindrift rising off the snow.
The entire morning of June 1, as they struggled up the Northeast Shoulder along a track Mallory had come to know so well in 1922, they fought against the cold and the wind, with each step forcing the full weight of their bodies forward as they climbed a slope of forty-five degrees. Their brows were often lower than their knees, and yet the wind held them off the ground. At 25,000 feet, well below the goal for Camp V, four of the porters balked and dumped their loads. Like men waiting to die, they just sat, refusing to do more. Mallory, Bruce, and the four other porters, led by the indomitable Lobsang Sherpa, struggled up another 300 feet and cleared two pads for their tents. Bruce and Lobsang then returned to the miserable men below, shaming them by doing not one but two carries forward with the gear. The packs were light, a mere twenty pounds, but to scramble up and down that slope twice after climbing to 25,300 feet was a supreme effort, and one so wrenching that it dangerously strained Bruce’s heart, though he had no way of knowing at the time.
Mallory sent the five spent porters down to the North Col, keeping only the three he deemed fit to carry farther up the mountain to Camp VI—at 27,000 feet or more, the intended springboard for the summit attempt. That night, Mallory and Bruce shared one of the two light Meade tents; the three porters crammed into the other. These flimsy shelters—ten pounds of canvas and little more—were perched on the east flank of the ridge, partially sheltered from the wind but still dangerously exposed. Two hundred feet below them the tattered remnants of Mallory’s 1922 high camp lay scattered among the stones.
In the morning the weather held, a glorious day, but not the men. Not one of the porters stirred, and no amount of shame, including every cussword Bruce could harness, could bring them courage to do anything but retreat. Mallory, though furious with the Sherpas, at least according to Odell’s recollection, scratched out a note for Norton and sent it down with Dorjee Pasang. “Show’s crashed,” it read, “wind took the heart out of our porters yesterday.” He and Bruce would remain at Camp V just long enough to clear off a third tent site and then return to the col. With the porters down, the summit attempt was off.
It is curious that Mallory chose to abandon the mountain, rather than continuing higher with Bruce alone, if only to prepare a Camp VI for Somervell and Norton, who were on this very day on their way up from the col, precisely as planned. Mallory’s decision to
pull back may in fact have saved Bruce’s life, but as he knew nothing at the time of the younger man’s weakened heart, this was clearly not his motivation.
Mallory was not interested in Camp VI. His goal was the summit, and had there been a chance he would have happily gone on with Bruce. But once the porters were out, and the summit beyond reach, his only thought was to get down that he might live to have another go. Indeed, it is not clear that he ever put much faith into this attempt without oxygen. That he had abstained from assisting Lobsang and Bruce the previous afternoon as they heaved up the loads was quite unlike him, and it suggests that the moment he knew the game was off, the majority of the porters down, he deliberately marshaled his strength for a second assault, with oxygen and with Irvine, which had been his intention from the very beginning.
Even as Mallory awoke to desolation at their miserable bivouac at Camp V that morning, Irvine was down at Camp IV on the North Col making breakfast for Norton and Somervell, who had arrived the previous afternoon. Odell, meanwhile, had gone to Camp III for supplies, reaching there in ninety minutes, where he dined with Hazard and Noel and spent a delightful night in thirty-nine degrees of frost. No one noticed, but something mysterious was coming over Odell, a wave of newfound strength and endurance. The following morning, carrying a considerable load, he popped back up to Camp IV with Hazard.