by Michael Gill
How were Ed’s beliefs standing up to all this? The yeti had been essential to sustaining the interest of World Book Encyclopedia, and its funds, and the creature might exist. For a while at least he became a supporter. In France he was reported as saying in an interview: ‘You will come with me on the greatest adventure of my life, the chasse à l’abominable homme des neiges dans l’Himalaya. Yes, the Yeti exists and I am going to prove it to you.’6 Later he was to become equally emphatic that the yeti did not exist:
Sir Edmund Hillary says the abominable snowman of the Himalayas is only a myth in the superstitious imagination of a simple mountain people, according to a report from Kathmandu. ‘Nothing called yeti exists in flesh and bone,’ he says, ‘only in stories. Any further expedition in search of it would be sheer waste of money.’7
But what about that footprint photographed by Eric Shipton and Mike Ward in 1951? There were two photographs, one from a distance showing Ward looking at a line of tracks typically blurred by melting. The second was altogether different, a close-up on a thin, fractured plate of snow of a track so sharply defined that it seemed that if the observers looked up they would see the animal itself walking off.
Jim Perrin in his biography of Shipton and Tilman follows the yeti thread through the writings of these two best-known of Himalayan explorers and writers.8 Both have a well-developed sense of humour, a disbelief in science and a dislike of pomposity. Shipton and Tilman, says Perrin, had ‘a running yeti gag’ that they kept up for years, trying to outdo each other with word play and practical jokes. In 1951 Shipton realised he had the chance to upstage Tilman by finding and photographing the best ever footprint. In 1984 Perrin interviewed Hillary about that photograph. Ed said:
What you’ve got to understand is that Eric was a joker. He was forever pulling practical jokes, fooling around in his quiet way. This footprint, see, he’s gone around it with his knuckles, shaped the toe, pressed in the middle. There’s no animal could walk with a foot like that! He made it up, and of course he was with Sen Tenzing who was as big a joker as Eric was. They pulled the trick, and Mike Ward just had to keep quiet and go along with it. We all knew, apart from Bill Murray maybe, but none of us would say, and Eric let it run and run. He just loved to wind people up that way.9
Perrin continued:
Ten years after the Travellers’ Club interview I had Mike Ward on the end of a rope on the upper cliff of Glyder Fawr. Michael was an immensely talented rock climber in his day … As I was leading it, the heavens opened and the rock was soon streaming with water. Leaning over from the good belay ledge on top as Michael followed the pitch, I spotted him tussling with a particularly recalcitrant section of vertical crack coated with green slime, and yelled down: ‘So Michael, about that photograph of the Yeti footprint …?’ As I did so, I paid out six inches of slack on a rope which hitherto I’d kept snug and tight. His eyebrows disappeared under the rim of his helmet. ‘Take in, you bastard,’ he gasped, face ruckling into a smile. It told me everything.10
A last word comes from David Snellgrove, Tibetan scholar, writing in his Buddhist Himalaya:
In popular belief the yeti is an entirely mythological creature, identifiable with the rakshasa of Indian mythology. He belongs to the entourage of the ‘Country-God’ of Khumbu (Khumbu-yul-lha) who sends him forth as an emanation, when he intends harm to anyone. Thus to see a yeti is a very bad omen, only to be countered by directing effort forthwith towards accumulating merit. The yeti-caps are used once a year in the temple dances, when a monk masquerading as the yeti accompanies the ‘country-god’ on his reeling rounds. Mountaineers have on several occasions mentioned the existence of unexplained foot-prints, which their Sherpa assistants regularly identify as those of a yeti. Whatever these foot-prints may be, the only connection with the yeti exists as an extension of the popular imagination.11
Mingbo Camp and the building of the Silver Hut
The more serious arm of the expedition carrying in the Silver Hut had been led by Norman Hardie, who was on his third Himalayan expedition. He was accompanied by New Zealand builder and mountaineer Wally Romanes, English physiologist and physician Jim Milledge, and American photographer and climber Barry Bishop. They were escorting 310 Nepali porters carrying the silver segments of the laboratory hut, its physiological equipment and the wherewithal to survive a Himalayan winter at 19,000ft. In 1960 Nepali porters were among the poorest people in this poor country, and among these 310 was a tail end who were too old, too young, too poorly clothed, or too sick with disease to cope easily with the climb up to the high altitudes of the Khumbu region. After 12 days, the route took them over a 14,000ft pass where there was snow on the ground and a bitterly cold wind. None of the porters died, but for Norm it was an anxious crossing as he helped those who were losing strength at the rear of his straggling band.
Having passed through Namche Bazaar and Tengboche Monastery, Norm had set up a base at the tiny village of Changmatang, near the entrance to the Mingbo Valley at whose head the Silver Hut would be assembled. Surrounded by rhododendrons, Changmatang was a sunny place and its modest height of 13,000ft made it a comfortable altitude for everyone. An easy trail led up-valley to the open grass of the little summer grazing village of Mingbo, nestled into a hollow at 15,300ft. During the benign months of the monsoon from June to September a few families with grazing rights settled here to fatten their yaks and calves on the grass and wild flowers which briefly grow in abundance. But by autumn they were returned to their houses in the larger villages, leaving only a few stone-walled shelters which Wally Romanes converted into a snug kitchen and dining space. Mingbo soon had its small village of tents as it became an advance base en route to a 19,000ft location for the Silver Hut.
Norm had already had a look at the snowy upper reaches of the Mingbo with its gentle névé backed by a headwall of steep ice flutings leading to the Mingbo Pass at 19,500ft. Ed, drawing on memories of a traverse with Eric Shipton in 1951, had chosen the crest of the pass as the site for the Silver Hut. Norm was unhappy with this. Powerful winds funnelled over the pass, and the 500ft slope of steep ice leading up to it was a substantial barrier to porters carrying the hut and its contents. Nor would it be a place of easy retreat if something went wrong during the winter – an illness, or a descent under duress.
Arrived from the yeti hunt, Ed and I joined Norm and Wally for a night camped on the col in gale-force winds which quickly convinced us that a safer and more peaceful winter was likely on the broad reaches of the névé below. But there was an element of uncertainty about any site. Would the slopes rising above the hut bring down avalanches of winter snow that would carry the hut over the nearby cliff? Would the powerful katabatic winds from Tibet that unroofed Sherpa houses in January and February wrench a hut free from its moorings? The answers were not known but a decision was made to level a site on the downhill lip of a shallow snow gully which would, we hoped, offer some protection. In the event, the weather treated us remarkably well. There were nights when the hut lurched alarmingly in the winds, but there was not a great deal of snow and no avalanches. For much of the winter we were bathed in sun.
With the site for the Silver Hut agreed on, the team launched into its building. Within a couple of days the base frame had been built, a floor laid, the curved pieces of the cylindrical outer wall fitted together, and the whole structure anchored to snow-filled kitbags buried two metres deep in the névé. It was a brilliant piece of English design and it served us well throughout the months we lived there. Aesthetically it was pleasing with its silver skin glinting against the fluted ice of the steep slopes behind. The Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition was the original name, but in history it became the Silver Hut expedition.
Leadership
Meanwhile Griff Pugh had been in residence at Changmatang for a fortnight before venturing up the Mingbo. When he heard the hut had been built not at 19,500ft on the col but on the névé 500 feet lower, he expressed his displeasure, and the fault lines bet
ween him and Ed began to show. Ed was by nature impatient to make decisions, and when it came to a choice between col and névé for the Silver Hut, he and Norm had no doubts as to which was the safer site. Griff himself, when he walked up-valley to see for himself, agreed, but he had not been consulted.
Although he was the scientific leader he was not always around to do the leading. On Everest in 1953 as research physiologist he was often at Base Camp where James Morris and Tom Stobart got to know him. Morris wrote:
I always enjoyed his company. He was full of peculiar knowledge, and passed it on at surprising moments in a hesitating, slow-spoken, pipe-puffing manner; as if some gentle country parson, settling down for a quiet scriptural chat with his parishioners, were suddenly to present some theories about Kafka, the dipping hem-line, or space travel.12
Cameraman Stobart also enjoyed his company. He described him as:
… a large red-haired man who combined the two traditional qualities of the professor – clear-sighted intelligence and absent-mindedness. Of all the members he was, I think, the one I preferred to be with because he had that sort of speculative curiosity, wonder and originality of thought possessed by all the scientific elite. He never became dull and we never ran out of topics for conversation.13
Despite his detachment from everyday life, Griff was unhappy at the way he had been presented in the Everest book and film, partly because he felt his contribution had been insufficiently acknowledged. For the Silver Hut expedition he became more assertive. On 2 August while still in London he had written:
My Dear Ed, I am not at all happy about the turn of events since your last visit … It turns out that in referring to me as Senior Physiologist you do not give my position adequate recognition before the public with the result that we have articles in the press which are distressing to me personally … I am continually having to assert myself to keep Jim [Milledge], and even Mike Gill, from making independent plans which do not fit in with my arrangements …
So please send me your assurance (1) that you will see that my position and work for the expedition are properly recognized, and (2) that I am referred to not as Senior Physiologist which, so far as the press is concerned, merely means the oldest physiologist, but as Director of Medicine and Physiology for the expedition, or some equivalent title. I have come to feel that this is so important to the success of the physiological programme that I cannot allow any MRC equipment to be shipped until I get your answer.
As you know, dear Ed, I have always had the highest personal regard for you, and I feel sure you will understand my point of view. Yours ever, Griff14
Ed replied by telegram:
Have just received your letter of 2nd August and can appreciate your concern over your status stop However as we both know that the physiological programme depends on your direction and experience I suggest you have more confidence in yourself and me to work this matter out satisfactorily in the field. Regards Ed Hillary15
Grievances can swell disproportionately on expeditions, and by 9 November Ed was muttering in his diary that Griff ‘has been sculling about down below doing nothing useful and getting on everyone’s goat’.16 Griff for his part was writing, ‘I shall have to have another straight talk with him soon and, if the result is not satisfactory, return home …’17
Ed described in his diary the straight talk that came three mornings later:
A rather trying day for me. Griff visited me and from a notebook reeled off a long and detailed list of my weaknesses and inadequacies … I think I can be excused a few harsh words at the end – but they were very few – and we decided to part in some disharmony. However the discussion continued in Desmond and Marlin’s tent and they attempted to calm the troubled waters … By afternoon things were much more harmonious and Griff had obviously improved by letting off steam. Perhaps things will be OK after all, though old Griff is decidedly eccentric. Both John Hunt and Eric had their flare ups with Griff – and so have I – I hope it’s the last one.18
Griff might have felt relieved that he had let off steam, but it was not a way to endear himself to Ed. But for the time being at least, peace had been restored to the Mingbo Valley.
Science at 19,000 feet
The scientific phase of the expedition based in the Silver Hut lasted four-and-a-half months from mid-November 1960 through to the end of March 1961. It was a special time remembered with great affection by those who lived through it. The setting could hardly have been more spectacular, with the cirque of steep ice and rock of the Mingbo La at our backs and the vertiginous walls of Ama Dablam rising high above us in the other direction. The altitude was in the grey zone between acclimatisation and deterioration, but most of the time we achieved an equilibrium and kept at our work consistently. Each evening after a day in the laboratory, with the sun setting behind the mountains to the west, we would ski down the slopes of the névé to where it broke up into an icefall. Our isolation from the rest of the world was almost complete, and we never missed it. The party fitted together seamlessly. We were a happy group.
The tunnel-shaped hut was six metres long by three wide with windows at either end. A central kerosene stove separated a living space with eight bunks and a dining table from a laboratory with benches for equipment and a yellow bicycle ergometer for tests at varying workloads. The window filling the laboratory end offered a fine panorama.
The detailed physiological measurements we were making at 19,000ft were unique. At this altitude the oxygen content of air is half that at sea level, and at first our work capacity was also half our sea level ability, though it increased to around two-thirds as we steadily acclimatised. Assessment of lung and heart function required measurements of oxygen and carbon dioxide in lungs and blood. Blood leaving the lung at sea level is close to 100 per cent saturated with oxygen, but in the Silver Hut it was down to 70 per cent. An important finding was that during exercise the saturation dropped a lot further, sometimes below 50 per cent, despite a huge increase in the rate of breathing. This helped explain why climbing upwards at high altitude is such an extraordinarily exhausting business, even though one may feel relatively comfortable at rest.
For the most part we felt well at the Silver Hut, but we all lost weight, an indication of the high-altitude deterioration that could accelerate if one’s defences were weakened. It happened to me in early February when I was well acclimatised. Up till then I had lost only three pounds in weight, but one day Mike Ward and I put in a long hard day climbing a steep fluted peak behind the hut. The approach was in deep snow and the fluting required hours of step-cutting. When we arrived back at the hut after dark I was completely done in. Over the next nine days I became lethargic, lost appetite, slept poorly and lost eight pounds in weight. On the tenth day I walked 6000 feet down to Changmatang. I ate a huge meal, slept for 12 hours, and by the morning was back to normal. It was a good case history of high-altitude deterioration and its cure.
It was not my first altitude illness on the expedition. Shortly after arriving at 13,000ft in the Rolwaling during the yeti hunt, I found myself increasingly breathless when walking uphill. Next morning I awoke stuporose and cyanosed with my lungs full of fluid. Tom Nevison made the logical diagnosis of pneumonia and started me on antibiotics and oxygen. Within 12 hours my colour and general wellbeing had improved to a remarkable extent. Tom was not to know that just then an article by Dr Charles Houston was appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine describing an illness exactly like mine, with the additional evidence of a chest x-ray which showed extensive pulmonary edema. This was HAPE, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, which is rapidly cured by administering oxygen. Without doubt I had HAPE in the Rolwaling, and with a degree of severity that might have killed me had the miraculously curative oxygen not been available.
Shortly before he moved up from Mingbo to the Silver Hut in February, Griff was presented with the sort of natural experiment that intrigued him. It involved adaptation to cold, one of his major research interests. The subject was M
an Bahadur, a Nepali from down-valley wearing thin cotton clothes, a red turban and no footwear. He presented himself at Griff’s Mingbo laboratory and was occasionally found eating a piece of laboratory glassware. He slept comfortably outside with no bedding in sub-zero temperatures. Here was someone who truly had a special adaptation to cold. How did he do it? Griff had the necessary equipment: one set of temperature sensors attached to skin and another inserted into Man Bahadur’s rectum to measure core body temperature. Measurements showed that he maintained his body temperature not by the unadapted person’s response, which was to shiver throughout the night, but by turning up his basal metabolic rate – a sort of central heating.
One evening as the Sherpas filled in the hours between dinner and sleep in their usual way, which was drinking and telling stories, they talked about Man Bahadur. What were all those wires for? And the one protruding from his rectum? Pugh Sahib was known to be unusual, but this was more than the usual mystery. Finally Annullu, he who had been first on the South Col in 1953 with Wilf Noyce, decided he should take a look. It didn’t look right. Encouraged perhaps by a relieved Man Bahadur, Annullu dismantled the experiment by removing all the wires – an action that won him banishment to the Silver Hut which was too cold even for Man Bahadur. Griff published his findings in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 1963: ‘Tolerance to Extreme Cold in a Nepalese Pilgrim’.
First ascent of Ama Dablam