Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (19 page)

On Cho Oyu, Pugh had observed the climbers’ eating habits and preferences for certain foods. He weighed the food they ate and analyzed its caloric content. He measured the energy they expended on the approach march and in the climbing phases, and showed that the food provided on Cho Oyu did not match the outlay of energy. He noticed, too, that the lack of acclimatization caused appetites to fail even at relatively moderate altitudes. Furthermore, the “bulky and strange” local Nepalese diet had caused digestive problems and stomach upsets.
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It was hardly surprising that climbers had suffered drastic losses in weight and condition at altitude.

Pugh’s diet plan contained sufficient calories to meet the climbers’ needs and was more like a normal European diet than the rations on earlier expeditions. Different prepacked menus were provided for each day of the week, and were to be supplemented with local foods such as eggs, rice, and potatoes. There were special “twenty-four-hour, vacuum-packed assault rations” for the climbers going to high altitude and those taking part in attempts on the summit. They consisted of a basic meal—from which the climbers could reject items they felt unable to eat—supplemented by luxury items they themselves had selected before the expedition. In this way they were able to cater to the picky appetites of men at high altitude.
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George Finch had suggested prepacked high-altitude rations as early as 1924, but until 1953, no one provided them.

In November 1952, long after all the main decisions on diet had been made, John Hunt assigned George Band, the youngest climber in the team, to assist Pugh with the rations. Band was rather disdainful about Pugh’s dietary plans, as he made clear to Edmund Hillary: “Dear Ed . . . the assault ration seems frightful. It was composed by Pugh on last year’s experience, when, I gather, most people were never truly acclimatised. Thus it will be unsatisfactory for a fit team. Unfortunately it is too late to alter it now . . .”
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However, a recent review of Pugh’s diet for the expedition came to the opposite conclusion—that Pugh’s “approaches are still ascribed to today, fifty years later.”
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Pugh had been withering about Shipton’s attitude toward hygiene on Cho Oyu. With Michael Ward, he prepared a careful hygiene and health plan which Hunt echoed in a homily to the team, telling them they would not be able to indulge in “the same liberties as a private party,” but must take “all possible steps . . . to ensure that the health and strength of the party are preserved.” They would not be allowed to sleep in local houses, and their campsites would be sited away from villages. Pugh also provided Hunt with briefings on specific issues, such as diseases encountered during Himalayan trips and treatments for them.
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Pugh had to work extremely hard in the run-up to the expedition, spending long hours toiling flat out in his laboratory at Hampstead, as well as traveling to different parts of the country. He went to Snowdonia in north Wales with the climbers to test oxygen equipment and masks; to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to test equipment in the wind tunnel; to Cambridge for the meetings of the High-Altitude Committee; and to the Oxford School of Physiology to consult with experts on respiration. In addition, he was developing a program of experiments to conduct on Everest and assembling his experimental equipment, modifying items that had not worked well on Cho Oyu. There was precious little time for home life or leisure.

Very little of the climbers’ equipment that went to Everest escaped Pugh’s attention. He was particularly interested in high-altitude footwear. The Swiss had used lightweight boots made of reindeer skin for high-altitude climbing. They were excellent, but too expensive for the British, so Pugh collaborated with the British Boot and Shoe Association to develop a cheaper, lightweight boot for use above 20,000 feet.
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Having designed a prototype boot for ski-mountaineering, he was very conscious of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory’s wartime finding that 1 pound of weight carried on the feet is equivalent to 4 pounds on the back. Testing samples of rubber for the soles at the MRC, he decided that microcellular rubber would be lightest and provide the best insulation.
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The finished soles had half the density and three times the insulation of the cleated Vibram soles of conventional mountain boots.

As the boots had to cope with temperatures as low as –40°F, the uppers had three layers: an inner waterproof layer and an outer leather layer enclosing a kapok insulation filling, with a further rubberized waterproof outer layer, to protect from melting snow; the inner waterproof layer prevented sweat from the foot from compromising the insulation. Pugh insisted the boots have large eyelets so the laces could be easily adjusted, and at each stage in the production process he had the boots tested in the cold chambers at Farnborough.

On Cho Oyu, Pugh had made a detailed survey of the climate and weather conditions and used the results—combined with the limited information available from previous expeditions—to predict the likely conditions at high altitude on Everest. He then subjected the Cho Oyu clothing and equipment to systematic analysis, using the thermal insulation (“clo values”) system for measuring the insulation values of clothing, supplemented by the questionnaires filled in by the climbers themselves.
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His conclusion was that a better fabric was needed for tents and windproof clothing, so, together with academics at Farnborough, he tested nine different fabrics, ultimately choosing a new cotton-nylon fabric called “Wyncol” for the Everest tents and climbing suits.
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It was an exceptionally windproof, “breathable,” lightweight fabric, highly resistant to tearing. The windproof smocks and trousers that he designed were modified from arctic clothing. Many of the features were typical of his attention to detail, such as the black taffeta inner linings for the outer garments—a slippery material that made them easy to pull on over the inner insulating layers—and an adjustable hood, to which he added a wire-stiffened visor for protection against the wind and snow. Crucially, Pugh made strenuous efforts to ensure the Everest clothing was properly fitted, unlike the clothes for the climbers on Cho Oyu. He also added extra pockets and loops and had the clothes fitted with zips rather than buttons.

Having recorded temperatures and conditions inside the tents on Cho Oyu, Pugh proposed several modifications: strong, sewn-in, tear-resistant groundsheets; adequate ventilation; economy of weight; and sleeve entrances to keep out snow and drafts. The sleeping bags used on Cho Oyu had also proven inadequate, so he studied their thermal properties and specified the amount of down needed to give protection for temperatures as low as –40°F. He stipulated that the sleeping bags must be long enough to pull over the head and wide enough to allow a man to turn over inside, assisted by a slippery inside lining.

At Cedars, he had concluded that air mattresses (“Lilos”) were superior to the more-conventional camping mattresses, so he recommended that they be used on the expedition.
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He also helped to design an innovative double-layered airbed with improved insulation and increased comfort. In addition, he insisted that items like sunscreen, which had not been officially supplied on Cho Oyu, must be provided for Everest, and that the goggles should be darker-tinted than those used on Cho Oyu.

By the time the expedition set off from England, Pugh’s analytical and creative skills had been applied to a seemingly endless list of topics. However, he did not find himself being treated like the guru who held the key to success on Everest. The few people in the climbing world who knew anything about what he was doing found it hard to credit that, as a scientist, he was capable of making a useful contribution. Far from treating him as worthy of their respect, they regarded him as an object of skepticism and suspicion, and even, in some quarters, scorn and derision.

12

Opposition and Suspicion

John Hunt was told in advance to expect “hostility” when he arrived in England in October. His appointment as the new Everest leader was greeted with a storm of protests from the climbing world. So vociferous was the outcry that the Himalayan Committee met at the Alpine Club on September 24 to reconsider its decision and vote again. Tom Bourdillon, who had been promised a place on the Everest team by the now-ousted Shipton, appeared at the meeting and read aloud an indignant letter of resignation. Laurence Kirwan, who believed that Shipton was the best choice of leader, voted against Hunt.

Hunt’s appointment was confirmed by six votes to two, but Basil Goodfellow sent a letter to Germany, forewarning Hunt of “the difficulty of your position.”
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The Cho Oyu climbers were “intensely loyal to Shipton,” he cautioned, and were having “profound doubts” as to whether they would “join an Everest party under any leader but Shipton.” He also warned of “nervousness that the expedition will become a military operation, not in the British mountaineering tradition.”

Hunt reassured Goodfellow that he was “quite prepared” to encounter “opposition and suspicion.”
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Once in England, he embarked on a charm offensive to win the support of the doubting climbers, insisting that he too was a climber in the romantic tradition. He shared their values and disliked having to adopt a professional approach as much as they did. But it was, he insisted, a necessary evil: “The fact must be faced that we are inevitably involved in the competition for Everest, and that our opportunity in 1953 should be exploited while it lasts. It would be surprising if either the French in 1954 or the Swiss in 1955 failed to reap the advantage if we let it slip past.”
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When Edmund Hillary wrote to him expressing dismay at the burgeoning size of the expedition, Hunt replied: “Your remarks on the size and weight of the expedition are very fully sympathised with! . . . You and I enjoy climbing mountains in quite a different way [from this], but we are caught up in the symbolic significance of this show and the consequent importance of succeeding by all reasonable means.”
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In his letter from Thyangboche of June 8, Tom Bourdillon had used the same rationale to justify his support for a large-scale, highly organized, professional approach to the Everest project, and had made it clear that he too was setting aside his preference for the kind of climbing he enjoyed, purely out of patriotism: “Everest attempts have become an international competition in which . . . the pleasure of the climber takes second place to national prestige.”
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Nonetheless, assuming a competitive stance toward any climbing project, even the climbing of Everest, and organizing a military-style expedition making use of professional scientific advice, as Hunt intended to do, was in direct conflict with the traditional values of the Alpine Club. This conflict between Hunt’s professed romantic climbing credo and his need for technological and scientific support was at the heart of what would soon be a difficult relationship between himself and Griffith Pugh.

The climbing community’s antipathy toward militaristic expeditions had its roots in a fundamental difference of outlook between the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society, which had caused many stormy arguments between the two world wars. The RGS was a learned society founded to promote knowledge. It had always been committed to the principle that it would only support expeditions that had scientific as well as exploratory or sporting aims, and the society never doubted that the heroic and the scientific could march happily side by side. In 1921, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Younghusband, president of the RGS, waxed lyrical about the heroic sporting goal of the first Everest expedition, yet was equally enthusiastic that a geodesist, a glaciologist, geographers, and a gentleman physiologist would accompany the climbers.
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The Alpine Club, with its amateur sporting ideals, was less well disposed toward science. As the revered Leslie Stephen (onetime club president and editor of the
Alpine Journal
) told members in 1924: “True alpine travellers loved the mountains for their own sake and considered scientific intruders with their barometers and their theorising to be a simple nuisance.”
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By the 1930s an influential contingent had become convinced that the huge size and mixed objectives of the early Everest expeditions, with all the scientists and their equipment, were largely to blame for the repeated failures. The other problem, in their eyes, was that several of the early expeditions were led by army officers rather than climbers, as a consequence of RGS influence.

In the mid-1930s the Alpine Club view gained the ascendancy, fiercely advocated by iconic Everest veterans like Frank Smythe, Bill Tilman, and Eric Shipton. The RGS’s scientific aspirations were set aside; the juggernaut missions of the past were supplanted by small, flexible expeditions far more enjoyable for the climbers and more consistent with their sporting principles.

After World War II, the ideas associated with Shipton and Tilman—that only climbers could understand the needs of other climbers, and that small, casual expeditions were the only type worth going on—remained articles of faith. The casual approach was in perfect harmony with the public-school sporting ethos of “untutored brilliance,” the so-called “Corinthian Spirit” by which gentlemen sportsmen achieved effortless success without really trying. Only the mundane professional—an altogether lower order of person—would stoop to engage in elaborate preparations and heavy training, or feel the need for scientific advice.

As for involving scientists in mountaineering expeditions, not only was it unpleasant, but in Bill Tilman’s view, it was also dangerous: “The frenzy of the scientist readily extinguishes the common sense of the mountaineer and raises a very ugly head indeed. As the Spanish proverb says, ‘Science is madness if good sense does not cure it.’ ”
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