White Mountain

by Robert Twigger

  After all, what would have happened without it? A bit more vagueness for a little longer, but eventually astronomical measures would have solved most of the survey problems. But such lackadaisical progress would not have served the symbolic process of binding up India. Just as the Pyramids are the great monuments of Pharaonic times, so map-making is the great British enterprise; an abstract, yet hugely ambitious project, the Great Survey of India took much longer than the Taj Mahal to be completed.

  Without the utter accuracy of the arc of the meridian it would be impossible to judge with certainty the heights of the mountains of the Himalayas. Not that the survey men like Everest and Lambton and Waugh really cared that much about the heights of mountains. This was mere frippery compared to the utter seriousness of mapping the rest of India. But by 1856 it was becoming at last apparent that a certain Peak ‘b’ might actually be a very high mountain. Not a capital ‘B’, though, which showed the perverse lack of drama so beloved by men on a serious project in those days.

  The real drama was happening elsewhere. In 1857 the Indian Mutiny began with a group of soldiers who would not obey their British masters. The British, who had begun by admiring and being respectful of Indian culture, had, with the acquisition of technology superior at last to other nations, begun the long descent into despising their fellows. Lambton, when he started the survey, had no arguments with any Indians; Everest, though, had used guns to enforce his will. India woke up and finally realised, all too late, that the Bloody British had, using a purely abstract series of chains and bars . . . enchained them and debarred them from their whole country. The year that technology discovered Mount Everest – something abstract in its own way, an abstract inheritance of the abstract art of map-making – there was another inheritance implicit in that arrogant undertaking: a mutiny of people who would rather rule themselves.

  * Sir Clements Markham, Royal Geographical Society

  5

  Just Which One Is the Highest Mountain?

  He’s looking for the donkey even while he is riding it.

  Afghan proverb

  For many years Nanda Devi, with its proximity to northern India and Delhi making it easier of access, was considered the world’s highest mountain at 7,766 metres. In 1847, just forty miles from Darjeeling, Kanchenjunga was measured and took the prize at 8,588 metres. But was the dull-sounding Peak ‘b’ on the Tibet/ Nepal border higher? Peak ‘a’ hid it from clear view. Peak ‘a’ was the mountain now known as Makalu, so just how high was Peak ‘b’?

  Standing on a hotel roof in December in Darjeeling is the best time for making observations. The air is clear and the cloud is at its thinnest. Kanchenjunga is easily seen, and, with some difficulty, so is Peak ‘b’, 120 miles away on the Nepal-Tibet border. Andrew Waugh, the successor to George Everest, made his measurements of the distant peak he named ‘gamma’ in the winter of 1847. At the same time, another surveyor, John Armstrong, working from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, also took angles of elevation and direction for a certain summit he listed as Peak ‘b’. He thought it 8,778 metres high. Waugh distrusted both his own and Armstrong’s measurements. Peak ‘a’ was also of disputed height so the following season more sightings were taken. Again, nothing conclusive was noted, and the weather was so poor there had not been enough of a window to make fully detailed measurements.

  Another surveyor, James Nicholson, approaching from the ‘North East Longitudinal’ got closer to what he called ‘sharp peak “h”’. He realised it must have been the same as Peak ‘gamma’ and Peak ‘b’.

  But the Survey of India, though it brooked no obstacle in obtaining data, was always tardy in parting too soon with its findings. There were bureaucratic considerations, always, and Waugh asked that Himalayan peaks be given new designations. This time, Roman numerals. Peak ‘b’ became Peak XV.

  Back at the Calcutta Headquarters of the survey, where all the number-crunching took place, one of the top ‘computers’ – indeed, his title was ‘Chief Computer’ – was the Bengali genius Radhanath Sikdar. George Everest had been so impressed by the abilities of this maths wizard to work through vast amounts of data that he had poached him to work exclusively on the Great Arc. Sikdar’s calculations finally confirmed what many had suspected: Peak XV was the world’s highest mountain.

  This was not quite enough for the men of the survey, wedded as they were to complete and utter accuracy. Four more years needed to pass until tidal observations in Karachi could be made. Refraction coefficients needed to be checked (the amount the light bent travelling through different densities of air – obviously less the higher you go). Its height, calculated from the data of six base stations of the Great Arc and corrected, was reckoned to be 8,840 metres. Waugh sent for old records of the first surveyors just to check one last time. And even then, though the revelations about the world’s highest mountain which were contained in official ‘letter 29B’ might be ‘made use of’, it was not for publication. Waugh wrote fourteen numbered paragraphs about Peak XV:

  We have for some years known that this mountain is higher than any hitherto measured in India and most probably it is the highest in the whole world.

  I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor Colonel Sir Geo. Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation . . . but here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover . . . in conformity with what I believe to be the wish of all the members of the scientific department over which I have the honour to preside, and to perpetuate the memory of that illustrious master of accurate geographical research, I have determined to name this noble peak of the Himalayas Mont Everest.

  Later Waugh changed it to Mount Everest.

  In 1856 surveying in the Karakoram revealed that Everest might have a competitor. This was K2, which despite attempts to name it Mount Waugh, Mount Albert (not surprised that didn’t stick), Mount Montgomerie (the man who discovered it), or Mount Godwin-Austen (the surveyor who headed the team in the Karakoram), has steadfastly retained its original survey designation. High mountains don’t always have local names – or names that locals can agree upon. Often the name covers a group of peaks rather than one. Everest is often rendered as Chomolungma, but that actually refers in Tibetan to the whole mountainous region where Everest is to be found. And, depending on where you stand, Everest does not always look the highest of its sibling peaks. It makes sense that only in the age of measurement should we care about making such fine distinctions about each summit on a broad massif.

  The first attempt to fix Everest’s height involved using ideas about the correction for refraction extant at the time – which have since altered. Nevertheless, as we’ve seen, the figure of 8,840 metres was calculated. In 1906, Sir Sidney Burrard applied everything new that had been learned about refraction and gravitational deviation and the exact position of the geoid. His revised figure was 8,882 metres above the spheroid but he remained unconvinced that his figure was any more transitional than the earlier one. In 1922 the height of 8,882 was found for the height above the spheroid, with the geoid probably being 21 metres higher, which meant the real height of Everest was set at 8,863 metres.

  You can see the problem – height above what? Height above sea level – but where the sea level is inland depends on how spherical or otherwise the land is – hence the need to work out the geoidal difference. As we know from the effect of the moon on the tides, gravity also affects sea level, so the mean sea level in the Himalayas is affected by their bulk, which provides another nice complication.

  In 1949 Nepal opened up to foreigners and the Survey of India was allowed to measure Everest from much closer base stations. This enabled a truer value to be obtained for the height of the geoid. It was found to be a considerable 33 metres, which brought the old figures for Everest’s height down to 8,849 and 8,851 metres respectively. One last wrinkle is the depth of the snow cap on Everest, which was more difficult to calculate from a distance. Observation
s in Nepal made between March and December then determined what the minimum thickness of the snow cap was, and from this the Indian Director of the Geodetic Branch of the Survey calculated a new height of 8,848 metres. During the monsoon, Everest gets higher – maybe 3-4.5 metres, it is hard to really know. But the figure of 8,848 seems to have stood the test of time.

  Kanchenjunga was calculated at 8,579 originally, and this made it the third-highest mountain after K2 in the Karakoram at 8,611. But later calculations of the geoid height plus better refraction knowledge placed Kanchenjunga at 8,603 metres. K2 for a while was thought to stand on a lower part of the geoid – something still debated – which puts it in real danger of being demoted to the third-highest mountain – which would please India and annoy Pakistan no end.

  Sir George Everest made no comment about the matter of his mountain. He obviously didn’t object, but it would have been unseemly to lobby for his own name to be applied to the world’s highest mountain. Especially as he had no interest in mountains really, and had never seen Mount Everest.

  He retired to Leicestershire and surprised many by marrying, at fifty-five, a woman almost thirty years younger than him. She was devoted to her husband, a freemason and a firm believer who began each day with morning prayers, who seems to have lightened up in old age. His wife bore him six children over the next decade. He rode for many years with the local hunt and liked to teach his children trigonometry and learning ‘something about logarithms’. He died at seventy-six and is buried near Hove in Sussex.

  6

  Younghusband: the First Mountaineer

  He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

  Lepcha proverb

  Maps cause wars. Maps define territorial ambition. The golden age of exploration is really the age in which accurate maps of the world began to be made of remote places. The British Empire produced without doubt the greatest number of explorers (if we include the humble soldiers, surveyors and administrators of its far provinces) per head of population of any nation on earth. Its attempt at subjugation was far more insidious than the simple oppression of a bullying invader; it sought, through creating a parallel imagined reality in maps, to replace the native reality with another: their own attenuated two-dimensional version that can be folded up and stored on a shelf.

  To map is to be. It is a substitute for experience of another kind; it is the most curious form of abstraction. The map-maker seeks to control the world through recreating it in an abstract form. That the map has many obvious uses is just an alibi, or a number of alibis. In fact, as various countries who map little or not at all, attest, super-accurate mapping is not really necessary. France and Spain are poorly mapped in many areas when compared to Britain and British-mapped areas of the Himalayas.

  To travel without maps is to make a more human journey; paradoxically, the map-making pioneer is the most reliant of all on local guides – he needs them for local names and other off-piste information. Yet his map makes future use of such helpful people redundant. The map-maker empowers future travellers at the expense of locals. Whatever his alibi, the map-maker is involved in power games and as such should be treated warily: like the cheery scientist making bombs, he makes toys that soon control their users.

  Did Younghusband know this? His name is suggestive – a young man, yet one already joined to the feminine; Younghusband was a pushy young officer, ‘a thruster’, who kept well hidden his spiritually alert dreamer side until he had achieved such ‘big yang’ exploits as crossing for the first time the Mustagh Pass. He was an explorer, a map-maker, a land-grabber for Britain in terms of power and influence; he was a great believer in the British Empire and its ability to change the world for the better.

  Younghusband came from an ancient English family that traced its roots back to Saxon freeholders in Northumberland. His father had been a general in the Indian army in which his four uncles had also served.

  Younghusband in quizzical old age

  He went to Clifton College, a redoubtable nineteenth-century public school; no scholarship factory, it turned out public servants needed to run Britain’s Imperial franchises. The poet Henry Newbolt was a contemporary and wrote: ‘And hold no longer Clifton even great / Save as she schooled our wills to serve the state.’ By nature inclined towards the kind of patrol work performed by cavalry – far ahead of the main force, on reconnaissance, one step ahead – Younghusband joined the King’s Dragoon Guards in Meerut. He had no money for polo and was unhappy at first in his failure to keep up with the smart set. He made amends by working hard and being loyal and was made adjutant at twenty-one. In 1884 came his first break: he was sent to reconnoitre the Kohat frontier. Two years later he received six months leave to go to Manchuria. He returned by making a remarkable journey alone through Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, Kashmir and the Mustagh Pass. He was twenty-five and famous.

  The Mustagh Pass is no easy walk between welcoming peaks. The fact is, since Younghusband traversed it in 1887, there have been only three repeats. This tells you a great deal. The first was by the Italian Ardito Desio in 1929 (he was later leader of the successful 1954 Italian K2 expedition), then another by a French team in 1990, the first to use skis, and then the last in 2004, also on skis, the team including David Hamilton, who wrote:

  Descending from the pass took an entire day, plus an extensive reconnaissance the previous afternoon. This was arguably the most difficult part of the journey, and certainly the most dangerous. We used over 250 m of fixed rope to prepare a route down steep slopes of snow and ice constantly threatened by massive overhanging ice cliffs above. The glacier below was strewn with thousands of tons of blue and green ice blocks that had fallen across our descent route in the previous days. I held my breath as one by one the rest of the team abseiled down the frighteningly dangerous slopes encumbered by 30 kg sleds dangling from their harnesses.

  The Mustagh Pass marks the riverine transition from Central Asia to India – it is the dividing line of the two watersheds. On one side rivers flow down to the Tarim Basin in China; on the other they head through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. It was never an easy pass to cross, though it lay on the main ancient trade route from Yarkand to Skardu. In the mid nineteenth century glacier movement began to shower the pass with huge falls of ice and it gradually ceased to be used. It had been impassable for thirty years or more when a new pass was sought and found 300 metres higher up and about 16 kilometres further on. This too was blocked by icefall by the time, in 1862, that Godwin-Austen – whose name was later attached to K2 but didn’t stick – turned back during his survey of the area.

  To the young, impetuous and ambitious Younghusband, the chance to pass over an impassable pass was too good a chance to miss.

  Younghusband had been gallivanting around Central Asia when his commanding officer Colonel Bell wrote to him: ‘Don’t fail to try the Mustagh, it is your shortest route and wants to be explored.’

  A few Baltis, the local Himalayan inhabitants, had made sporadic crossings of the pass in the 1870s and 80s, but no European had. Younghusband found a guide called Wali who claimed to know the way. He also engaged three servants and some pony men to carry their baggage and equipment. The leader of the small caravan was a Buddhist from Ladakh who later converted to Islam, taking the name of Mahmood Isa, though at this time he was called Drogpa. It is a measure of Younghusband’s ability to inspire others that Drogpa participated in most of Younghusband’s further exploits in the Himalayas over the next two decades.

  The equipment was basic but not inadequate: sheepskin coats, fur hats and leather boots lined with straw. They would subsist on tea, sugar, rice, ghee made from yak butter. Included for the ponies were handfuls of small horseshoes to replace those that would inevitably be struck off climbing the rock-laden way up to the pass. They carried more robes of the Turkoman style for warmth, a rope and ‘a pickaxe or two, to help us over the ice and bad ground’.

  Younghusband had equipped the whole effort on credit. Being English, at the time,
was literally worth its weight in gold. He would later claim: ‘I had only a scrap of paper to give them but that scrap of paper was worth hard cash to enable me to prosecute my journey because previous Englishmen had been honourable.’

  They followed at first the Yarkand River until it narrowed into a boiling torrent in a high-sided gorge. The way went left, over a tributary stream. Already the ponies were having trouble: it was ‘cruel work . . . they were constantly slipping and falling back, cutting their hocks and knees to pieces’.

  They then were able to follow a valley, climbing through the ever-shortening trees to the dwarf birches at 4,000 metres above sea level. He wrote, ‘One could almost see the cold stealing over the mountains – a cold grey creeps over them, the running streams become coated with ice.’ It reads like something by Tolkien. At night they bedded down under some large rocks. He added, ‘I recollect that evening as one of those in all my life in which I have felt in the keenest spirits. I thought to myself this is really living. Now I really am alive.’

  In an excellent biography of Younghusband, Patrick French discovered that Younghusband never mentioned any illness, disease or weakness that beset him – at least, not in his published works. On one occasion, a short while before crossing the Mustagh Pass, he trod on some open scissors that punctured an inch into his foot. One of his party mentioned later that he could not stand on the foot for a fortnight, yet nowhere does Younghusband mention this. French writes, ‘He seems to have regarded physical debility as somehow improper. The very idea of immobility or illness disturbed him, and throughout his life he remained extraordinarily healthy.’ He died aged seventy-nine in 1942.