Read Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain Online
Authors: Harriet Tuckey
After a few days at Mingbo adjusting to the altitude and checking supplies, Hillary rushed up the valley to take charge of the carry, paying scant regard to the fact that he felt “lethargic and unacclimatised,” and had to drive himself “every inch of the way.”
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It wasn’t particularly late in the climbing season, but in his desire to catch up with his timetable he minimized rest periods and urged his team to make the utmost haste across the passes: “We had imbued the Sherpas with our sense of urgency. Although I gave them rest days when I felt they needed them, I was loath to waste a working day.”
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Reveling in the fact that the route was “probably more technically demanding than any other approach to . . . a really high mountain,” Hillary suffered no qualms about imposing more than two weeks of “hard unceasing work over difficult country” on men who were just about to take on the challenge of ascending the world’s fifth-highest mountain without oxygen. “We worked like demons,” he reflected later. “It was a formidable route over which to take 200 loads of 60 lbs each, but I reckoned we had the men to do it.”
John Harrison and Peter Mulgrew agreed about the scale of the challenge. Harrison described the carry as “a mammoth carrying task.” Mulgrew called it “one of the most strenuous periods of the expedition.”
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But no one appears to have suggested that such exhausting activities at altitudes of around 20,000 feet might not be the best way to prepare for the task ahead.
The high route proved extremely arduous for the Sherpas and the climbers alike. Each of the three passes was steep, icy, and dangerous. Hundreds of steps had to be cut, and at least 600 feet of ropes fixed to enable the heavily laden Sherpas to cross them, which they did repeatedly. Blessed by reasonable weather, they made up all the lost time, and after two weeks of hard work the final loads arrived at Camp One on the Barun Glacier at the foot of Makalu on April 25. Hillary described struggling toward the top of the third pass:
A bitter wind was blowing. I found it cold and hard work. As we crept towards the crest of the pass the impression of exposure, of a terrific drop beneath, was overwhelming. But the fixed ropes gave even the laden Sherpas the confidence to push on upwards as hard as their aching muscles and gasping lungs would let them. I was glad to stagger over the top of the 20,300-foot col.
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As if the carry itself wasn’t exhausting enough, Hillary had added to his labors by twice trekking all the way back to Mingbo for discussions with Pugh and the press officer, Desmond Doig. Most of the scientists had been toiling at the Silver Hut, working twelve-hour days and occasionally staying up until midnight, to get their projects finished before moving on to Makalu. They were not involved in the carry. After Hillary’s second visit, two of the scientists, John West and Jim Milledge, joined him for the return trek to Makalu. By now Hillary’s exertions were beginning to tell on him, and he noticed that he couldn’t keep up with the younger men. “These two were in fine form and seemed capable of going faster than I found comfortable.”
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Concerned about the scientists’ well-being, Pugh had arranged that, after their trek to Makalu, they would “spend 5 days recuperating at low altitude in the Barun Valley” before going up to start their scientific program.
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In sharp contrast, Hillary rushed straight up the mountain to lead the vanguard of climbers preparing the route and establishing the camps.
Pugh complained later that, by opting for the high route, Hillary had “made it impossible for me to accompany him,” but as the end of April drew near, he also realized that the extra time at the Silver Hut would be very useful.
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Telling Hillary of his final decision over the radio, he asked his old Everest companion Michael Ward to take charge of the physiological team, commenting in his diary that evening, “If [Hillary] gives the physiologists a fair run, I am confident they will carry out our programme satisfactorily.”
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Pugh was not the only one who chose to miss out on Makalu. Desmond Doig was due to trek over the high route a few days after the main party, but withdrew at the last minute, dissatisfied with Hillary’s arrangements, explaining to Pugh in a note: “As usual [Hillary’s] instructions are delightfully vague. I’m to wander across to Makalu taking days and days and carrying cooking pots, etc. So definitely NO GO!”
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Instead, Doig stationed himself at the Silver Hut and took charge of the only radio link with Hillary, so he could control the news passed on to Kathmandu and the world’s press.
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Despite the weather taking a turn for the worse, the push up Makalu progressed very well at first. By April 30, in constant winds and daily snowfalls, the climbers had succeeded in establishing and stocking Camp Two at 19,600 feet, and Camp Three at 21,000 feet. On May 1 and 2, Camp Four was put in at 23,000 feet, and on May 5, Michael Ward and New Zealander Mike Gill cut the final steps up the steep slopes leading to the exceedingly windy 24,400-foot Makalu Col.
Two days later Hillary and the climber-carpenter Wally Romanes were improving the ice steps and fixing ropes between Camps Three and Four when, on reaching 23,000 feet—just above the place where he had collapsed in 1954—Hillary developed a severe headache. Returning down to Camp Three, he did not recover overnight. Realizing he had been “grossly overdoing it,” he descended to Camp Two, but the following morning he was still describing himself, in his understated way, as “not too happy.” By the end of the day he was talking gibberish, unable to stand, seeing double, and had no feeling in his left side. He had suffered a high-altitude stroke.
Hillary was put straight onto oxygen, and the scientists, who all happened to be at Camp Two at the time, took it in turns to keep an all-night vigil at his bedside. By the morning he had recovered “fumbling” powers of speech but not his normal vision, and he was still groggy, out of balance, and “shaky in hand.”
Oxygen was also being used on a Sherpa with the potentially fatal condition of high-altitude pulmonary edema, in which fluid leaks into and accumulates in the lungs, preventing normal breathing. West and Milledge had brought the Sherpa down from Camp Three. He collapsed halfway down and they were forced to go down to fetch some rescue oxygen before he could complete the descent. He remained on oxygen for a further twenty-four hours.
The attempt on Makalu was only just getting under way, and already Pugh’s rescue oxygen had been needed by two men. But this was nothing compared with what was to come.
The two scientists, Ward and Milledge, who were both practicing doctors, ordered Hillary to go down to 15,000 feet or below, threatening all manner of dire consequences for his health if he returned above that height within a few months. He was unwilling to obey. Consulted over the radio, Pugh advised that the New Zealander should be collected immediately by helicopter and flown straight back to Kathmandu. Instead, Hillary decided to return on foot to Khumjung to build the schoolhouse he had promised the village. This meant walking down the Barun Valley along a low, safe route that did not rise above 15,000 feet—the route that he had decided against using for the in-going trek.
Ward and Milledge both felt that Hillary should not undertake the walk without a doctor, so Milledge gave up his role in the scientific program, together with his chances of reaching the summit of Makalu, to become Hillary’s personal physician on his way down the Barun Valley. For Hillary it was a terrible wrench to have to give up and hand over control to someone else. Before leaving he asked Michael Ward to take over the leadership of the assault on Makalu.
Hillary would reach Khumjung without mishap and build his promised schoolhouse with the money he had raised in Chicago during his Christmas trip around the world. From then on, his career as a high-altitude climber all but finished, he would put his peerless ability as a fund-raiser to the service of the Sherpas of Nepal, setting up a network of hospitals and schools, and achieving many other good works in the Solu-Khumbu region. In the process, he would become known as New Zealand’s “best loved citizen.”
With Hillary gone, the full Makalu assault was launched on May 11, when the first assault team—consisting of Wally Romanes and Mike Gill from the winter group, and American Leigh Ortenburger, one of the fresh climbers—moved up to Camp Five on the Makalu Col, at 24,400 feet. A support party of climbers, Sherpas, and supplies came up with them, together with scientists Ward, West, and Tom Nevison, who brought with them the stationary bicycle and other scientific equipment. Nevison had left the winter party in early January and returned with Hillary in the spring. Mike Gill described the Makalu Col as “the most desolate place one could imagine.”
Ward and West assembled the stationary bicycle and spent the next five days undertaking the final stage of their program of physiological experiments, with Ward heroically substituting for Jim Milledge, who had dropped out to help Hillary. Ward explained: “I thought if I took Milledge’s place on the Makalu Col doing physiological work with West, we should still be able to complete our physiological programme as well as climb Makalu.”
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However, the maximum work exercises were taking their toll on Ward, and Hillary would later complain that he gave greater priority to the science than to the climbing, undermining his fitness by staying too long on the col.
Meanwhile, the first assault team, Romanes, Gill, and Ortenburger, continued up the mountain on May 12, hoping to establish two further camps on their way, and then make for the summit using the same route as the successful French team in 1955. The key difference was to be that while the French climbed with oxygen, they had none.
They established Camp Six at 25,800 feet, but the next day became so tired cutting steps across a stretch of glacier icefall that they failed to ascend high enough to put in Camp Seven. Gill described how stressed he felt: “The first few blows of the ice axe used all my tiny reserve of oxygen, leaving me fighting for breath. Another five steps and I would sink to a halt. A rest, recovery, and the struggle would go on.”
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Dumping the equipment and supplies they had brought up for Camp Seven at a temporary depot at 26,300 feet, they started down for Camp Six with a blizzard “beating at our backs.” On the way, Gill lost his footing, and he and Romanes, to whom he was roped, hurtled down the steep ice slope, desperately trying to save themselves with their ice axes, the Sherpas watching in dumb silence. Luckily they came to a natural halt 50 feet below, when they hit a patch of deep snow. Uninjured, but subdued, they staggered back to Camp Six.
When they awoke the next morning, the gale was still blowing full force, and Gill had a frostbitten nose and had lost all feeling in his fingers and toes. So they decided to give up and return down to the Makalu Col. All three men reached Camp Five exhausted. Wally Romanes felt so bad during the night that Ward, assuming the role of expedition doctor, gave him some medical oxygen to relieve him. Ward himself had been secretly resorting to the odd bout of oxygen at night as well. Mike Gill was mildly frostbitten and also suffering from the altitude. Ortenburger, Gill, and Romanes descended to Camp Three the following day.
The second assault party, consisting of the American climber-scientist Tom Nevison and Hillary’s friend Peter Mulgrew, set off from the Makalu Col on May 16. Both men were fresh climbers, having only just returned to Nepal after several months away.
The first day of their assault passed without mishap, but the following day on the glacier between Camp Six and the proposed site of Camp Seven, one of their six Sherpas—who were all tied onto a single rope—slipped and fell backwards, pulling the others with him. Chaotically they crashed down the steep and treacherous ice slope toward a sheer drop of thousands of feet over the northern wall of the Makalu massif.
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They looked certain to be killed. Miraculously the rope snagged, bringing them all to a halt. But one Sherpa broke his ankle, another cut his head, and a third—Annullu—cracked a rib, though he did not realize it at the time. All of them were badly shaken.
Nevison and Mulgrew sent the two obviously injured men back to Camp Six, and continued upward with the remaining Sherpas, Mulgrew shouldering the lion’s share of the loads left by the injured men. He and Nevison established Camp Seven at just over 27,000 feet—only about 750 feet below the summit—and sent all the remaining Sherpas down, except for Annullu. Mulgrew described himself and Nevison as “desperately tired after the exertions of the last few hours.” At 27,000 feet they had been feeling the shortage of oxygen very acutely: “At this great altitude it felt almost a physical impossibility to force enough oxygen into our labouring lungs, no matter how often we paused for breath . . . we were frequently forced to halt, windblown and prostrate, trying to gather enough power . . . for the next short step.”
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So fumbling and slow had they become that, although they rose at 6:15 the next morning, they did not leave camp until 9:00 a.m., when at last, with Annullu, they began their final assault. Inching upward without oxygen equipment, “muscles aching, lungs bursting, and hearts pounding,” they plugged their way slowly toward their 27,766-foot goal. A rising wind screamed across the summit, showering them with a constant spray of fine snow. They were able to progress only extremely slowly, covering just 100 feet per hour. Then, about 300 to 400 feet below the summit, Mulgrew collapsed in agony. Stabbed by a terrible pain in his right side, he lay gasping for breath, scarlet sputum spraying from his mouth and staining the snow around him.
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He had probably suffered a blood clot in his lungs.
With Mulgrew having difficulty in moving, they struggled back to Camp Seven before nightfall, the bitter penetrating wind blowing at their backs all the while. The next morning, they started down toward Camp Six, but the descent was steep and made more difficult by the continuing bad weather. Eventually Mulgrew blacked out, and the three men became stranded at the windswept depot above Camp Six where there was no tent. Annullu, now in considerable pain himself from his cracked rib, set off down to seek help.