Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (20 page)

Goodfellow and the other beleaguered members of the Himalayan Committee felt enormous relief once they began to see the great competence and vigor that Hunt brought to the Everest enterprise. As organization charts and planning and selection documents started to appear with amazing alacrity, they were happy to resume a passive, supportive role. Over at the MRC, Sir Harold Himsworth was delighted too. And even Laurence Kirwan concluded that Hunt had been “the right decision, taken in the wrong way.”
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Behind the scenes at the Alpine Club, however, resentment ran deep. Geoffrey Winthrop Young, doyen of the club’s old guard, spoke for many when he regretted that the Everest quest had been turned into a “soulless and vulgar” exercise in “peak bagging,” “an international dogfight and stunt . . . invaded with all the clamour of competition.”
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As Hunt had astutely anticipated, however, the prospective climbers found the challenge of Everest irresistible, and none of them refused his invitation to join. Even Tom Bourdillon came back into the fold once he saw the chance of persuading Hunt to try out his father’s closed-circuit oxygen on the expedition.

Despite the negative undercurrents, everyone wanted the expedition to succeed. As news of Hunt’s plans filtered through, many of the older climbers hastened to come forward with their own views on how to handle the ascent. This was especially true of the Everest veterans who had firsthand experience of high-altitude climbing.

What really worried them was that Hunt appeared to be so much under the sway of non-climbing scientists. They were particularly concerned about his plans for using oxygen. Edward Norton, whose twenty-eight-year altitude record had only just been broken by the Swiss, was appalled that Hunt had become so committed to oxygen: “As I see it your plan . . . depends in its present form on the efficiency of oxygen . . . all previous experience warns against relying on it.”
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Despite being a scientist himself, George Finch, who brought the first modified RAF oxygen sets to Everest in 1922, was quite certain that Hunt was intending to use oxygen from too low an altitude. He was also extremely critical of Hunt’s decision to take closed-circuit as well as open-circuit oxygen equipment on the expedition. Finch’s son-in-law, Scott Russell, joined in. “This naturally discredits the simple open system which is the choice of the only two men who have the necessary qualifications to form a real judgement, namely Finch and Peter Lloyd [who both had firsthand experience of using oxygen sets on Everest],” he stormed.
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Russell sent Hunt an exceedingly derogatory letter on Finch’s behalf, suggesting that Pugh and the other scientists advising Hunt did not have the respect of elite scientists:

Discussion on the use of oxygen on Everest in the past seems to have gone wrong largely because people with insufficient judgement to form sound opinions and insufficient experience have shouted loudly. What alarms me at the moment is the view, which is not endorsed in the highest scientific quarters, that the physiologists are now in a position to make a much better theoretical assessment than they were a few years ago.
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So strong was this tendency to believe that the climbers had a better understanding of the problems than the scientists that Russell felt able to put forward this view in complete ignorance of Pugh’s recent research. Later, he had the grace to apologize and admit to Pugh that his father-in-law was “not in the picture.”

Peter Lloyd, who had the huge job of procuring all the oxygen equipment for the expedition, was one of Pugh’s most dedicated critics. Lloyd had never been happy about Pugh muscling in on the oxygen, and was even less happy about the amount of power that had been conceded to the High-Altitude Committee. He had hoped initially to become Hunt’s “executive adviser” on oxygen himself, but as Charles Wylie reported to Hunt early on, he had failed to get his way. “The MRC have been appointed and all Lloyd can hope to be is a member of Professor Matthews’ Committee . . . The best scientists on oxygen are on the committee. Lloyd has a lot of experience of practical application of oxygen apparatus, but is neither a physiologist nor an oxygen scientist.”
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Hunt, however, was sympathetic toward Lloyd. Lloyd had been a staunch supporter of his bid for the leadership and was a personal friend. To make Lloyd feel better, Hunt came up with a plan to give him direct responsibility for the closed-circuit oxygen work being carried out by the Bourdillons.
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When Sir Bryan Matthews found out, he hit the roof. He demanded an explicit letter from the chairman of the Himalayan Committee confirming that Lloyd’s role was to carry out the recommendations of the High-Altitude Committee, not to give advice or make decisions himself. Kirwan had to send a memo to Hunt headed “Oxygen Organization,” explaining this to him.
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But Lloyd was not to be silenced and became messianic in his efforts to influence the expedition’s oxygen strategy.

One of Lloyd’s biggest complaints was that Pugh was causing far too much oxygen to be shipped to Everest. The amount needed depended partly on the oxygen-flow rates and partly on how fast the climbers would climb with oxygen. Using his Cho Oyu findings to calculate the requirements, Pugh wanted the British team to take far more oxygen to Everest than had ever been taken before—nearly ten times more than the Swiss had taken the previous autumn.
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The High-Altitude Committee backed his recommendations.

Brushing aside Pugh’s estimates, Lloyd produced his own, purely theoretical calculations, which purported to show that the climbers would in fact ascend much faster than Pugh thought, so they would need far less oxygen than Pugh imagined.
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He also disagreed with Pugh’s view that oxygen should be available for descent as well as ascent. He tried to convince the Himalayan Committee that the proposed amount was “too expansive,” and that it would be impossible to transport; most of it would be wasted.
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He badgered John Hunt—ultimately without success—with insistent messages urging him to reduce the quantities. In the end, however, it would prove profoundly fortunate that Hunt ignored Lloyd and deferred to the greater authority of the High-Altitude Committee.
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Oxygen masks were yet another bone of contention. Lloyd and George Finch both believed fervently that climbers would never be able to tolerate them. Both had tried the prewar oxygen masks—Finch on Everest in 1922, and Lloyd in 1938—and had found them suffocating. In their view, the only feasible way of delivering oxygen to climbers was the alternative system designed by Finch in 1922, where the climber breathed the oxygen in through a wide-bore tube and closed the tube with his teeth when breathing out.

Wing Commander H. L. Roxburgh of Farnborough had published a paper in 1947 explaining why the prewar masks had been unsuitable for climbing. The masks, tubes, and valves were designed for use by seated pilots and were too small to cope with the much greater quantities of air breathed in by climbers in the midst of vigorous exercise. The solution was to fit the masks with bigger tubes and larger, more-sensitive valves.

But the message failed to get through to Lloyd or to Finch, or indeed, to the Swiss Everest team in 1952. The Swiss oxygen sets developed suffocating resistance to breathing when the climbers panted and could only be used comfortably when they were sitting down and breathing normally.
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Consequently the Swiss had to attempt Everest effectively without climbing oxygen.

The Farnborough scientists who had helped Lloyd in early 1952, before the Cho Oyu expedition, had brought in a young colleague named John Cotes to adapt the RAF oxygen apparatus—including the masks—for climbing. Cotes tried to persuade Lloyd that he could modify the masks very effectively, but made no headway. “They were so fixed in their idea that they had to have an oxygen tube,” he recalled. “It seemed a monstrous suggestion. I was absolutely appalled. This was a hopeless way of going about things, and I reckoned that we could do much better!”
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Instead, Lloyd ordered Cotes to ignore the masks and work on improving the Finch-style tubes.

It was only when Sir Bryan Matthews came on the scene to help with the preparations for Cho Oyu that Lloyd’s instructions to Cotes were changed, and he was able to adapt the masks, widening the tubes connected to the mask and making the valves more sensitive as suggested by Roxburgh, and also creating a special latex cowl to fit over the front, to prevent freezing. Pugh carried out some trials on Cho Oyu and suggested a few modifications. He also compared the performances of the masks and the tubes and found that the climbers far preferred the masks.
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Cotes was persuaded to continue working on the masks for Everest, but Finch and Lloyd remained hostile, Finch announcing in a lecture to the Royal Society in December 1952 that the high-altitude climber—being “particularly prone to claustrophobia”—would simply “not be able to tolerate a close-fitting mask,” and Lloyd insisting that a consignment of wide-bore tubes be sent to Everest, where—in the end—they would not be used.
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The fearsome Sir Bryan clearly found his encounters with Lloyd and Hunt frustrating at times. After his initial contretemps with them, Matthews made a special point of protesting every time Hunt or Lloyd missed a meeting of the HAC.
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Then in late January, when it looked as if Lloyd would fail to have all the oxygen cylinders ready to be shipped out to India with the main Everest party, Matthews sent Hunt a caustic letter, complaining about the “slow progress of the production of oxygen” made by “your oxygen controller,” and criticizing the Himalayan Committee:

The main responsibility for any deficiency rests with the Himalayan Committee who have never been prepared to make or support any long-term plan by which proper climbing oxygen equipment can be evolved. I am only sorry that the Himalayan Committee did not regard oxygen as essential to the success of the expedition from an earlier date.
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Hunt passed the letter to Lloyd, who returned it having scrawled on the bottom, “Sorry, any comments are unprintable.” The oxygen was not ready in time and had to be flown out to India separately.

Although John Hunt relied heavily on Pugh, they were slow in getting to know one another personally. They were very different characters with different cultural outlooks. Pugh was blunt and straightforward; he was capable of keeping his thoughts to himself, but when he spoke he said what he meant. Hunt was far more subtle and elusive. As befitted his army background, he was a consummate manager who laid great stress on planning and team-building, showing firm though motivational and inspiring leadership. Pugh respected Hunt’s management and organizational skills, which he considered essential if the expedition was to have a reasonable chance of success. Unlike many of the climbers—among them Hillary, Lowe, Gregory, Wylie, and Ward—Pugh never thought Shipton capable of meeting the organizational challenge of Everest: “Shipton was a very dreamy sort of man—he never would have managed it—never would have managed to get the oxygen organized. Hunt was forceful and he kept the momentum going.”
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It was some time, however, before Pugh came to understand that he and Hunt were on very different wavelengths.

Pugh’s first chance to get to know Hunt outside the context of formal meetings came in early December when he traveled with Hunt, Wylie, and Gregory to the Jungfraujoch above Grindelwald in Switzerland. They took great quantities of equipment with them, including twenty-two different types of climbing boots, five types of tents, and assorted cookers, sleeping bags, gloves, and goggles. Pugh was expecting to conduct systematic trials to establish which were the best. However, things did not go to plan. Hunt regarded himself as an expert on climbing equipment, and he was not prepared to waste good climbing time on what he regarded as unnecessary and pedantic scientific trials. The result was that the choices were not made in the systematic way Pugh would have liked. He hid his dissatisfaction, but he was very disappointed.

Back in London, as Christmas drew near, Eric Shipton gave a talk about the Cho Oyu expedition at the Royal Geographical Society. Pugh was invited to say a few words about “the physiological problems connected with the climbing of Mount Everest.”
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He took his assignment literally and, with his usual blunt forthrightness, delivered a doom-laden lecture that conveyed all too accurately the doubts about the oxygen equipment that were being discussed behind the scenes—particularly about the logistics of transporting enough oxygen cylinders to the highest camps.

We shall be putting our faith in an old-fashioned open-circuit system because we know that it will work. The unfortunate part is that because nine-tenths of the oxygen is wasted, it is necessary to take with us a large number of oxygen cylinders, and it is doubtful whether it is possible to take enough up to the South Col [of Everest] to supply the climbers with sufficient oxygen.

Pugh wasn’t all that hopeful that the Bourdillons would successfully modify the closed-circuit system either, saying, “We are trying to develop an improved apparatus, but I’m not sure it will work.” As for a summit assault in poor weather without oxygen? That, too, was fraught with problems: “Even if the climbers reach the summit they might well sit down on their way back from the summit and die of cold.” Honest as it was, this was most definitely not the kind of talk that Hunt wanted the public or his climbers to hear. A week later, he sent Pugh a letter, tactfully but firmly asking for greater circumspection. “A contented and confident party is one of the basic needs for success and will be my very personal concern,” Hunt explained. “It may not be easy, at times, to preserve amity, and confidence is easily shaken, particularly by a scientific ‘slant’ in the mind of the ‘layman.’ ” If Pugh held “strong opinions,” he should share them with Hunt himself “rather than [with] other members of the team.”
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