by Michael Gill
The third assault was to have been by Noel Odell and Sandy Irvine, but by 6 June when the third and last attempt set out it consisted of Mallory and Irvine, names that were to become indissolubly linked. Odell was a geologist, educated at Brighton and the Royal School of Mines, and a member of the Alpine Club. He first met Irvine during a Merton College expedition to the Arctic island of Spitzbergen. He was so impressed with the 21-year-old engineering undergraduate (and rower for Oxford) that he suggested to the Himalayan Committee that Irvine should be a member of the 1924 expedition. The Committee agreed. Irvine was a fine athlete, was of sound family background, could turn his hand to fixing technical problems with the oxygen apparatus, and was of attractive appearance and personality. Having travelled together by boat to India, Mallory wrote that Irvine was ‘one to depend on for everything perhaps except conversation’, which was not required on the last thousand feet of Everest anyway.3 He might have added that Irvine had not actually done any mountaineering – but did it matter with Mallory in the lead?
Mallory had by now put together a strong plan. He and Irvine would be using oxygen all the way from Camp 3 at 21,000ft through to the summit four days later. Unlike the first and second assaults which had lacked the Sherpa numbers to carry oxygen, this time Camps 4, 5 and 6 would all be in place, and stocked with food, fuel and oxygen. Mallory had spoken dismissively of oxygen in the past but by June 1924 he was a convert, and he knew that Irvine could mend its pipes and valves.
Mallory had correctly identified the best route from below and its main problems. From Camp 6 at 27,000ft they would not cross into the Norton Couloir but rather would climb to the crest of the north ridge which they would follow to the First Step. This, he believed, could be bypassed on its right, taking them to the foot of the Second Step. This piece of rock looked altogether more difficult, an almost vertical, 100ft buttress with no obvious way of sidling around it – but it might be easier than it looked from a distance. Above the Second Step there was a small, benign-looking Third Step but no other apparent obstacles before the summit. The weather was fine and apart from intermittent cloud would remain so throughout their summit day.
The two men never returned to tell their story, but a part of what happened on 8 June has been pieced together from evidence accumulated over the years. As they settled into Camp 6, Mallory wrote two notes to be delivered by his returning Sherpas to those down at Camp 4. The first read:
Dear Odell, We’re awfully sorry to have left things in such a mess – our Unna cooker rolled down the slope at the last moment … To here on 90 atmospheres for the two days – so we’ll probably go on two cylinders – but it’s a bloody load for climbing. Perfect weather for the job.
Yours ever, G. Mallory
And to Captain Noel, the photographer watching from the North Col with his cine camera and telephoto lens, he gave some advice about when and where to catch their movements on film:
Dear Noel, We’ll probably start early tomorrow in order to have clear weather. It won’t be too early to start looking out for us either crossing the rock band under the pyramid or going up skyline at 8.0 pm. [sic: he means a.m.]
Yours ever, G. Mallory
Their oxygen sets carried two bottles each. At the set flow rate of 2.2 L/min (litres per minute), these would have lasted seven hours, which at a theoretical climbing rate of 300ft/hr would have got them to the summit, assuming they were not slowed by climbing difficulties of any sort.
One of their four discarded oxygen bottles was found at 27,800ft near the foot of the First Step, though with no indication whether the men were on their way up or down. In 1933, one of their ice-axes was found 200 metres from the foot of the First Step. It is hard to see why either climber would deliberately abandon an ice-axe and Wyn-Harris, who found it, believed the most likely explanation was that one of them had slipped and fallen here.
Dramatic proof that they had fallen came in 1999 when the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory’s body on the mountainside some 300 metres lower than the axe. The first clue had come from a report in 1979 that a Chinese climber called Wang had told a companion four years earlier that, while at the 1975 Chinese Camp 6, he had stumbled on the antique body of ‘English dead’. Adding to the mystery was that Wang was swept to his death in an avalanche the next day. In 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition located the site of this Camp 6. They found themselves on a terrace which was ‘a virtual graveyard of mangled, frozen bodies … a kind of collection zone for fallen climbers’.4 Those first examined wore modern clothes and equipment. But lower down, where the edge of the terrace dropped away, they saw ‘a patch of white that was whiter than the rock around it and whiter than the snow’.5 It was another body, but completely different from the others. This one was wearing the clothes of 1924: woollen cloth, hob-nailed boots, fur-lined leather helmet. A manila rope around his waist was frayed, showing it had snapped during a fall. The legs, one of them broken, revealed bare bone, as did the face, but the back, its skin bleached white, was miraculously preserved as if made of marble. The arms were extended, fingers clawing into the slope as if to arrest a fall. There was a hole punched in the skull. Labels on the clothes read G. Mallory. The evidence showed that he had been on his way down the mountain and not using oxygen when he fell.
So it was known now that they had fallen rather than died of cold and lack of oxygen. No one could know who had slipped first, but the inexperienced Irvine would have been more likely to choose a wrong foothold than highly experienced Mallory. You can almost see, and hear, them. Two exhausted men stumbling down, roped together, their oxygen at an end. Irvine misjudges a downward-sloping ledge and, in an instant, his feet have shot from under him and he is gathering speed down slabs greased with snow. Mallory braces himself but his footholds on rock cannot withstand the jerk that drags him off. Now they are both falling with sickening speed. The rope snags on a rock and snaps. Mallory comes to rest in the graveyard below; Irvine falls all the way down the North Face.
But had they reached the summit of Everest before their tragic end? The last and most enigmatic piece of evidence comes from Odell, and that was a sighting at 12.50 p.m. on the summit day of two dots he was sure were the figures of Mallory and Irvine.
Odell was the one-man support team who over three days, from 8–10 June, climbed twice, without oxygen and with apparent ease, the 4000ft between Camps 4 and 6.6 He was on his own except at Camp 4, and wrote of his experiences almost mystically. At Camp 5 he described the sunset:
The fact that I was quite alone certainly enhanced the impressiveness of the scene. To the westward was a savagely wild jumble of peaks … the brilliant opalescence of the far northern horizon of Central Tibet, above which the sharp-cut crests of distant peaks thrust their purple fangs … an ineffable transcendent experience that can never fade from memory.7
Of his last sighting of Mallory and Irvine, Odell wrote in his diary that night: ‘At 12.50 saw M&I on ridge nearing base of final pyramid.8 A few days later, he wrote a more detailed account for a press dispatch:
There was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere above me and the entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow-crest beneath a rock-step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in a cloud once more. There was but one explanation. It was Mallory and his companion moving, as I could see even at that great distance, with considerable alacrity …9
At this stage, Odell did not specify which rock step he was looking at, whether the easy First Step, the difficult Second Step, or the easy Third Step closer to the summit. In 1933, Smythe and Shipton, climbing towards Camp 6, deepened the uncertainty by suggesting that Odell had been looking at rocks, not men:
Shipton
suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘There go Wyn and Waggers on the second step,’ he exclaimed. Sure enough, there were two little dots on a steep snow-slope at the foot of the cliff. We stared hard at them and could have sworn they moved. Then simultaneously, we realized that they were rocks. And, strangely enough, there are two more rocks perched on a snow-slope immediately above the step; these again looked like men and appeared to move when stared at … Is it possible that Odell was similarly tricked by his eyes? His view was between shifting mists and lasted only a minute or two. The effects of altitude, tiredness, and the strain of the climbing combine to impair the efficiency of vision …10
Eventually Odell made a decision that indeed he had been looking at the Second Step, though the speed with which his two climbers had surmounted it suggested they were on the easier Third Step with the summit quite close. Did Mallory have the technical skill to climb the Second Step? In 1999 a top American climber, Conrad Anker, free-climbed it as if he were Mallory in 1924. The obvious line was an off-width crack, wide enough to take arms and legs. Anker was soon up and on to easier rock above. He rated it as Yosemite grade 5.8, which is defined as ‘within the range of the average weekend climber’.11 The average weekender in Yosemite climbs to a high standard using modern equipment; nevertheless, it seems likely that if the top pitch of the Second Step were in the thick air of North Wales, Mallory could have climbed it.
Whether he could have climbed it at 28,300ft on Everest, no one can say. They had oxygen but of a primitive sort. To reach the summit it would need to have been a day of miracles, but miracles do happen. Although it was the Chinese in 1960 who first documented the ascent of this route, in climbing legend this stretch of mountain will always belong to Mallory and Irvine.
– CHAPTER 11 –
The 1930s, a decade of disillusion
One of the unintended consequences of the 1924 expedition was that thanks to the entrepreneurial activities of Captain Noel, all access through Tibet was forbidden for the next nine years. He was undoubtedly right in seeing the dramatic potential of filming the first triumphant ascent of Everest, but as the events of 1924 unfolded it was clear he was wrong in his belief that he could film it. He had abundant footage of the expedition riding its ponies across the plains of Tibet and setting up wintry camps on the East Rongbuk Glacier but the mountain footage, which was to have been full of action, merely showed panting climbers chipping steps slowly with frequent rests. More and more the film’s focus fell on the Tibetans and their monasteries.
On the retreat from the mountain Noel had the idea that he could add life to his showing of the film in a London theatre by having a troupe of Tibetan lamas on stage. They could have trumpets made from human thigh bones in one hand and drums made from human skulls in the other. It was an opportunity, too, for the lamas to see how the other half lived. In the event the Lhasa theocracy took exception to their lamas being made objects of amusement; nor did they like the film of Tibetans picking lice from a partner’s scalp and eating them. Encouraged by the political officer in Sikkim, Major Bailey, who disliked expeditions, the Tibetan authorities cancelled forthwith all permissions for Everest. It became known as ‘the affair of the dancing lamas’.
Noel was unfazed and in 1927 published his own account of the expedition. His observations on oxygen were correct: ‘Very powerful and able climbers might climb Everest without oxygen, but it would be safer … to take oxygen in approved machinery which would be better than Expeditions previously have had.’1 He even anticipated the commercial expeditions of the twenty-first century: ‘Oxygen will render the climb possible to any fit human being; and probably some day in the future the journey to the top of Everest will become an adventurous excursion possible to the ordinary tourist.’2
It is tempting to speculate how the Everest story might have unfolded if Noel had been left behind in 1924 and Finch taken instead of Irvine. Without Noel, there would have been no dancing lamas and no withdrawal of permission. Finch was equal in ability to Mallory and would have been the natural choice to climb with him. With Mallory converted to oxygen, Finch would have been with him keeping the temperamental apparatus working as they attempted the Second Step. They might have been defeated in 1924 but they could have returned on another expedition with improved apparatus and a better understanding of how to use it. They would have relearnt that sleeping oxygen is essential. In 1926, or 1928, or 1930, using optimal flow rates of oxygen and fixed ropes, they would have climbed the crucial pitches, and finally someone would have reached the summit.
The four expeditions of the 1930s
By 1933, the Tibetan authorities had relented and gave permission for four expeditions. Those of 1933 and 1936, both led by Hugh Ruttledge, were large and expensive. Those of 1935 and 1938, the first led by Eric Shipton, the second by H.W. Tilman, were small. All four were failures. On the mountain they found too much wind, too much snow, too little oxygen, and rock that was more difficult than they had expected. In 1933 two assault teams reached roughly the same high point of 28,100ft as had Norton in 1924, and like him realised they had no chance of reaching the summit before dark, even if they found the strength to continue. The 1933 second team of Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton was thought to be the strongest but on the day of their summit attempt Shipton was struggling:
It must have been about 7.30 when we started. It was a fine morning, though bitterly cold. I had a stomach ache and felt as weak as a kitten … After about two hours I began to feel sick and it appeared to me that I was approaching the end of my tether … So I decided to stop and let Smythe go on alone … after waiting a little longer I started back to Camp 6.3
Smythe entered the Great Couloir but found the way upwards blocked ‘by a series of fearsome black overhangs … Time alone rendered the summit inaccessible.’ His solo retreat down the mountain was made memorable by his conviction that he was being accompanied by a person who was not Shipton, and by the sight of two curious-looking objects in the sky, like kite balloons which seemed to pulsate and have wings and a beak. The ethereal heights above 27,000ft were a place for visions as well as terminal exhaustion.
Reflecting on how one might climb that last thousand feet, Smythe conceded that he would use a large quantity of oxygen to overcome the difficult section in the couloir:
Prior to 1933 there were those to whom the thought of oxygen was abhorrent. I confess to a similar prejudice. There seemed something almost unfair in climbing what was then thought to be an easy mountain by such artificial means. I doubt whether there is a member of the present expedition who now thinks thus, for Everest has been proved to rely for its defence not only on bad weather and altitude, but on its difficulties too … its weapons are terrible … as exacting on the mind as on the body. Those who tread its last 1000 feet tread the physical limits of the world.4
It was an insight that came too late, for not a litre of the considerable weight of oxygen the expedition had carried to the foot of the mountain had been used, except in an unsuccessful attempt to treat frostbite. The mountain was not entirely devoid of oxygen, however, and Raymond Greene, expedition doctor and brother of novelist Graham, described finding some old cylinders left behind by Finch at Camp 5 in 1922. One was in perfect order. Greene sat down, opened its valve and breathed in the oxygen that came hissing out: ‘The result was remarkable: everything around seemed to brighten; a lost sense of colour returned; for the moment I felt stronger, and was able to resume the climb.’5
Drawing on his experience in 1933, Shipton argued that a small, cheap expedition had as good a chance of reaching the top as one that was large and expensive. Why not, he reasoned, reduce equipment and supplies to the bare minimum and live off the land as much as possible. Eggs were in relative abundance, mutton from the scrawny local sheep was tasty, the roasted barley meal called tsampa that formed the staple Tibetan diet was edible, to Shipton at least, when made into a paste with sugared tea.
Permission was granted, and in June 1935 Shipton’s minimal expedition
was exploring the Nyonno Range just east of Everest. Ironically, the monsoon arrived as late as 26 June. As they crossed unknown passes and climbed virgin 21,000ft peaks, they could look west to the snowless black rock of the route on Everest bathed in sun. As a year to climb the route from the north, 1935 was exceptional.
In July they moved to the East Rongbuk Glacier to make a token climb on Everest. At 21,000ft they found and buried the body of Maurice Wilson, a free spirit with an ambition to cure the ills of the human condition through fasting and faith. An ascent of Everest would provide the fame that would secure recognition and acceptance of his beliefs. His body was found half buried in snow just higher than Camp 3.
When the Shipton climbers occupied a camp on the North Col, the slopes were thickly covered in new snow, confirming that the monsoon is not the best time of year for climbing Everest. In confirmation, a vast area of new snow to a depth of two metres avalanched off the slopes of the North Col during the interval between their arrival and their departure four days later.
Ruttledge was back in 1936 leading the best-resourced of all the expeditions so far. The wireless equipment alone comprised 58 porter loads and there was newly developed oxygen apparatus of both the closed-and open-circuit varieties with variable oxygen flow rates up to a generous 6 L/min. They might have had the best equipment ever, but they were also plagued by the worst weather of any expedition to date and the highest point reached was a lowly 23,000ft on the North Col.