Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (21 page)

So irritated was Hunt that he was moved to give Pugh a salutary reminder of the strength of feeling within the climbing community against mixing science with mountaineering. “Scientific research combined with Everest has in the past been the subject of some controversy and, I suspect, the cause of a certain amount of friction. Views have been strongly expressed and renewed to myself in recent weeks that the two objectives are better pursued separately on different mountains.” And he emphasized that it was only because he, Hunt, had stood up against their objections that Pugh had a place on the expedition.

I do not agree with this view which is the principal reason why I have agreed all along with the Himalayan Committee’s proposal to accept the MRC’s offer (or request) to send out 1–2 physiologists with the party, hence your inclusion. It is my firm belief that the two interests
can
live side by side and
can
be mutually beneficial during the course of an expedition.

In truth, because of the prior commitment made to the MRC, it would have been difficult for Hunt to have left Pugh behind. If he had excluded Pugh, he might have put the committee in the embarrassing position of being asked to return the £600 Royal Society grant for Pugh’s research that they themselves had applied for and gratefully received.
³⁰

Though he professed himself to be in favor of science in private, in public Hunt tended to associate himself with the antiscience camp, and to dwell on his fears that Pugh’s involvement with the expedition might get in the way of the overriding objective. “One of the lessons learned from the past is that science and mountaineering do not readily mix,” he would later write. “I was always sure that we must concentrate single-mindedly on the main purpose of getting up.”
³¹

Pugh, however, was just as keen as Hunt for the expedition to succeed. He did his best to reassure Hunt, sending him a letter emphasizing that he regarded his research project as secondary to the overriding aim of the expedition, and that in his view, “The physiology should in no way interfere with the general plan, and should be as unobtrusive as possible.”
³²
He assured Hunt that his program of experiments “looks more formidable on paper than it really is,” and also pointed out that the main purpose of the research was to find practical ways of helping high-altitude climbers to achieve their goals: namely, “to get information which will enable the maximum benefit to be obtained from the oxygen,” and “to find the best methods of getting acclimatised and of preventing high-altitude deterioration.”

Try as he might, however, Pugh did not find Hunt wholly supportive in the run-up to the expedition. Having rebuffed Lloyd’s efforts to get him to cut down on the oxygen being sent to Everest, Hunt decided to assuage Lloyd’s feelings by cutting most of the fifteen oxygen cylinders allocated to Pugh for his experiments.

Pugh also wanted a new and better tent for his Everest research. The pyramid tent he had used on Cho Oyu was too dark, too low for his apparatus, and had reached extraordinarily high temperatures when the sun was out. Hunt refused, and did not respond to Pugh’s subsequent letters. On the other hand, when he discovered that Pugh had sent his gun to Nepal, he wrote at once: “I really was taken aback to learn that you have put your .22 rifle in the ship despite the decision which Major Wylie passed on to you from me that we could not accept it.”
³³

None of this dissonance behind the scenes delayed the preparations. All those involved worked extremely hard, and most of the equipment and supplies (except for the oxygen) were ready to be shipped out on February 12. Pugh, Hunt, Bourdillon, and the two New Zealanders made their way separately. Pugh flew out at the beginning of March, having gained almost three weeks extra for his preparations. Admittedly, he used two of those weeks to visit Engelberg, to “try out experiments” and derive sustenance from the place he loved most, leaving his wife and children at home as usual.

Pugh flew alone from London to Kathmandu, with four changes of plane in Zurich, Beirut, Delhi, and Patna, carrying with him several “precious cases” of equipment. At Beirut airport, he tore his coat rushing to rescue them from some porters, who appeared to be making off with them. On March 5 he finally arrived, slightly disheveled, in Kathmandu, where he took the airport bus into town and went directly to the British embassy, to look for the rest of the expedition.

13

The Trek from Kathmandu

Griffith Pugh found John Hunt, most of the climbers, and twenty Sherpas at the British embassy. The Sherpas had walked from Darjeeling, led by Tenzing Norgay. Many had brought along their wives, who were being photographed on the embassy lawn, dressed in colorful traditional costumes. Pugh was delighted to find that the British team was being put up in luxury, either in the embassy or one of the bungalows on the embassy grounds. His own bedroom was in the embassy itself, next door to John Hunt.

But it soon became clear that Tenzing and his fellow Sherpas were not at all pleased that they had been billeted in the garages, formerly the stables, at the back of the building, without beds, toilets, or washing facilities. Tenzing himself was offered a room in a hotel but refused to leave his team.
¹
Indian independence was still recent, and sensitivities about colonial attitudes were very near the surface. The next morning, the Sherpas expressed their displeasure by standing in a row and ceremoniously urinating on the road in front of the embassy building.

They were given a severe reprimand by John Hunt. It was not well received, and relations between the Sherpas and their British employers were strained during the early part of the expedition.
²
Nevertheless, Tenzing’s knowledge of Everest promised to be of great value, and Hunt sought to diffuse any bad feelings by following the Swiss example of formally inviting him to become a full “climbing member” of the British team, in addition to his role as expedition Sirdar. This honor failed to allay Tenzing’s resentment and, to the consternation of the British, just before leaving Kathmandu, he expressed his feelings publicly in an interview with Ralph Izzard, a British journalist from the
Daily Mail.

Tenzing had not signed the confidentiality agreement preventing the rest of the team from talking to the press. The agreement was designed to ensure that the expedition’s chief sponsor,
The Times
, could maintain exclusive control over all the news emanating from the expedition. Like all the other journalists (except for James Morris of
The
Times
), Izzard was having a hard time covering the expedition. Lacking any other story, he was relieved to get the interview with Tenzing, who spoke fulsomely about how much he preferred working with the Swiss and the French to the British.
³
Izzard was thoroughly patriotic and enjoyed nothing better than writing heroic articles in rousing purple prose about British valor, but he now resorted to framing a controversial story about Tenzing’s tense relationship with his British employers. The resulting article, which was syndicated to a prominent Indian newspaper, led to Izzard being branded an “enemy” of the expedition.
⁴

Hunt decided to split his large and unwieldy expedition into two groups for the trek to Thyangboche, the village near Everest that had been chosen as the base for the extended acclimatization period Pugh had recommended. They set off from the medieval town of Bhadgaon, 10 miles east of Kathmandu, where their eight tons of luggage had been laid out in orderly piles on the Nepalese army’s parade ground. The first convoy left on March 10. It consisted of Hunt; the climbers: George Band, Tom Bourdillon, Charles Evans, Alf Gregory, Wilfred Noyce, Mike Westmacott, and New Zealanders Ed Hillary and George Lowe; cameraman Tom Stobart; 45 Sherpas; and 150 porters. Pugh and Ward were relegated to the second convoy with the one remaining climber, Charles Wylie. They departed the following day with 11 Sherpas and 210 porters.

For the second time in his career Pugh faced the prospect of having to live and work for several months with men who, quite apart from any personal feelings toward him, were instinctively hostile to the presence of a scientist on their expedition. Hunt could have made life easier for Pugh by telling the climbers about the huge contribution he had made before the expedition, and the fact that he had relied heavily on Pugh’s recommendations. However, addressing the team shortly before departure, he signally failed to do so; instead, he was deliberately dismissive.

Pugh appreciated that Hunt was preoccupied with the formidable logistical challenge of steering his team up Everest, yet he could not help but find Hunt’s attitude disturbing. “I was very worried by two pep talks Hunt gave at Kathmandu,” he reported to Otto Edholm back in London, “in which he went out of his way to stress the minor importance of physiology to the expedition.”
⁵
And he confided to his wife, Josephine: “I’m afraid I’m in for a difficult time with Hunt, who turns out to be extremely pompous and quite out of reach as far as I am concerned. There is nothing for it but to be patient and say nothing and get on with my own job.”
⁶

Pugh had already tried to reassure Hunt that his main ambition was to help put the climbers in the best possible position to succeed. He regarded his research as secondary and intended to carry it out unobtrusively, taking the greatest care not to interfere with the climbing. But this did not mean it was insignificant. It was specifically designed to gather information that would help climbers perform better at high altitude in the future. It was in the climbers’ interests to cooperate.

However, Hunt’s words about the “minor importance” of Pugh’s role fell on receptive ears. The majority of the climbers subscribed to the view that science had no place in mountaineering, and that most scientists had no understanding of climbing. To them Pugh was “a boffin [scientist], with his head way up in the clouds.”
⁷
They certainly didn’t want to waste time participating in his experiments. “To some of us,” Noyce wrote, revealing an almost visceral aversion to the prospect of being drawn into scientific experiments, “. . . the idea of taking a physiologist was repugnant . . . I myself fully imagined a kind of vampire, lurking at Camp III in readiness to absorb our blood and deflate our lungs as we weaved wearily over the icefall.”
⁸

Pugh felt isolated by the cultural divide separating him from most of the team. This struck him forcefully on the first evening of the trek as he gazed at a beautiful mountain view that had caught his attention the year before. Reminded of having felt equally cut off from the climbers on Cho Oyu, he found himself wishing that he could simply “go to sleep and wake up three months later to find the whole Everest expedition over.”

After mentioning these insecure thoughts in a letter to Josephine, however, he dismissed them in the next paragraph as a mere product of oxygen shortage. He was not the type to dwell on negative issues. In any case, there were things to look forward to. On Cho Oyu he had mostly trekked alone, but he now had a like-minded and enthusiastic companion: “Ward is in his element,” he wrote to Josephine, “and I think we shall get on very well together.”

Michael Ward was similar to Tom Bourdillon in having one foot in the climbing camp and the other in the science camp. He was admired as a climber and was popular among his peers. Ed Hillary wrote approvingly of his “raffish grin” and “easy tempestuous nature,” and Wilfred Noyce stressed how much he enjoyed climbing with Ward. At the same time, Ward was completely won over by Pugh’s physiological prescriptions and quite sure that his mentor would soon be shown to have solved the key problems of altitude, cold, and dehydration that had bedeviled previous expeditions. Pugh was also quietly hopeful that his ideas were about to revolutionize high-altitude mountaineering.

The two doctors soon shrugged off any doubts they had about being segregated from the main party and settled down to enjoy the trek. The path took them across the grain of the hilly countryside, descending steeply into river valleys, climbing out again across “well tilled” terraced hillsides and “fields of green wheat and early potatoes” and upward to the rhododendron forests, where the “mossy trunks of the trees were twisted in fantastic shapes.”

The only other European in the second convoy was Charles Wylie, who regarded science as a foreign language for which he had no personal aptitude or interest. Educated at public school and Sandhurst like John Hunt, Wylie was a Gurkha officer, fluent in Nepalese. He had been put in charge (with Tenzing) of hiring the porters for the march-in, and had volunteered to join the second convoy, to act as a “tail end Charlie,” sweeping up stragglers and making sure all the baggage arrived safely at its destination. He felt bored and excluded by what he described as the “seventeen-day conversation” about physiology going on between the two doctors. They, on the contrary, regarded it as a “great advantage” to be in his company, because he presided over a satisfyingly comfortable regime, spoke the language well, and was “good at organising the Sherpas and coolies.”
⁹

Under Wylie’s supervision, they dined every evening in front of their tents with two Sherpas standing attentively behind them, fulfilling their every wish. “We all get on very well together and our arrangements are less Spartan than those of the earlier party,” Pugh confided happily to Josephine.
¹⁰

Some of the great Everest veterans, such as Bill Tilman and Eric Shipton, regarded any such luxury as “sissy,” but Pugh was dedicated in his opposition to the fashion for “Spartan” regimes in the mountains. In his view, the human body already had enough to contend with at high altitude without being subjected to unnecessary stress, so he had set out to ensure that all reasonable comforts were provided for the team. Comfort at night was a priority, hence his attention to the detailed design of the sleeping bags and air mattresses. “Toughness, if it implies neglecting to take measures to reduce fatigue and strain, has no place in Himalayan planning,” he said.
¹¹
A decent cup of coffee for breakfast in the morning was important to him, so he had brought his own tins of good-quality ground coffee and a coffee strainer. Knowing how uncomfortable it could be to crouch in front of a gas analyzer, he was the only member of the Everest team to take a chair to base camp. The chair seemed a stroke of genius to cameraman Tom Stobart, whose lanky body was always uncomfortable reclining on the ground. At base camp he frequently sneaked into Pugh’s tent to snatch a few restful moments sitting on it.
¹²