Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (52 page)

53 Ibid., p. 146.

54 See Greene’s comments in Tilman 1938, p. 496.

55 See also Greene 1939, p. 158.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

3.
Mountain of Destiny

1 See, for instance, Shipton 1969, p. 183.

2 Annapurna I is 26,493 feet. The Swiss climbed Pyramid Peak, 23,294 feet.

3 The expedition was headed by Oscar Houston and included his son Charles, H. W. Tilman, Anderson Bakewell, and Elizabeth Cowles. Departing in October 1950, they planned to follow local trails to Mount Everest to discover whether a feasible climbing route existed on the southern side (see
Berge Der Welt
1954). Tilman’s verdict was “. . . although we cannot dismiss the South Side, I think it is safe to say there is no route comparable in ease and safety at any rate up to 28,000 feet to that by the North East” (Tilman 1951).

4 In his autobiography, Shipton 1969, p. 185, Shipton wrote: “I thought it highly improbable that we would find a practicable route up the southern side of Everest . . . Bill Tilman agreed with this opinion, and so did General Norton, who reckoned the chances against our finding a route to the South Col at forty to one.”

5 Ward 1972, p. 50.

6 Ibid., p. 55. Letter Murray to Ward, May 28, 1951; W. H. Murray (1913–1996) was often described as the “Sir Galahad of the peaks.”

7 RGS/EE/99: Minute Books of Mount Everest Committee and Himalayan Committee, entry for June 12, 1951.

8 TNA FO 371/92928: Letter Goodfellow to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the Foreign Office, June 13, 1951.

9 Ibid.: Telegram from the Community Relations Office, London, to the High Commission in Delhi, June 20, 1951.

10 Ibid.

11 Only climbers under forty years old were admitted into the group, and climbing standards were scrutinized every two years (see Ward 1972, p. 57).

12 Ibid., p. 55. The Aiguille du Dru is 12,316 feet.

13 Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889–1971) gained a first-class degree in chemistry at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1912, and later took a medical degree, becoming a doctor in 1925. He served as an RAF test pilot from 1914–19.

14 The altitude tables produced by the International Civil Aviation Organisation are constructed using simplifying assumptions about the relationship between air pressure, humidity, and temperature and how these factors change with changing altitude, in order to provide a viable universal standard on which the altimeters of all aircraft can be calibrated. They do not show the actual physical barometric pressure on the ground, where air pressures, particularly above altitudes of 16,404 feet, vary according to the distance from the equator, being higher than predicted by the standard tables near the equator, and lower near the poles. When it was first measured in 1981, the barometric pressure on the summit of Mount Everest in good weather proved to be 17mmHG higher than the pressure predicted by the standard international altitude tables, i.e., the equivalent of Everest being 1,542 feet lower than expected. See explanation in Milledge 2006, and the articles by West 1996 and by Pugh 1957. Specialists such as meteorologists have always understood this point. Paul Bert correctly predicted the approximate barometric pressure on the summit of Everest in 1878 (see Appendix 1,
La Pression Barométrique,
Paris), as did Alexander Kellas 1917.

15 Supplementary oxygen was first extensively used in aircraft in 1916. The apparatus was designed by R .H. Davis of the firm of Siebe Gorman and by Professor G. Dreyer at Oxford University. Siebe Gorman provided the oxygen sets for the early Everest expeditions that were adapted from Dreyer’s design. These matters are very clearly explained in layman’s terms in a comprehensive history of high-altitude medicine by Pugh’s former colleague, Professor John West (see West 1998, p. 229).

16 As soon as Shipton took over the leadership, the committee granted the expedition £2,500, solving all of their financial problems. See RGS/EE/99: Minute Books of Mount Everest Committee and Himalayan Committee, July 19, 1951.

17 The invitation was apparently issued in response to a last-minute request, received via the New Zealand Alpine Club.

18 AC D 103: Bourdillon Diaries.

19 The India Office was the government department in London which oversaw and administered the British government in India between 1858 and 1947.

20 Ibid.: The Swiss applied again in 1926. An India Office official commented : “It is impossible not to sympathize with the [Everest] Committee’s desire to achieve definitively the so-nearly-accomplished conquest of Mount Everest; and there is a distinct possibility that if a claim is not staked out without delay for a further British expedition, a Swiss or German expedition may seek facilities for an attempt on the mountain; it would be difficult to refuse the former, at any rate, any help in approaching the Tibetan Gov’t unless it can truthfully be stated that a prior claim has been registered.” The Hon. Sec. was warned to send in an application for the British, which was then preemptively put to Tibet before the Swiss application, on the basis that “if permission were refused to a British expedition we may assume that it would be refused to a foreign.” Another file note admitted, “[T]his is not a sportsmanlike attitude, but there is a possibility of another British expedition in 1926, and we should prefer our own party to win the glory of a successful ascent.”

21 Ibid.

22
Daily Telegraph,
June 13, 1929.

23 TNA FO 371/92928: Letter Summerhayes to Murray at Foreign Office, November 26, 1951.

24 TNA FD1 9042.

25 TNA FO 371/101162.

26 TNA FO 371/101162. The note continued, “This is especially so where the Swiss were concerned, since our relations with them in the Far East were most friendly and cooperative.”

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

4.
Turf Wars

1 Letter, Pugh to his wife, October 27, 1942.

2 These experiments were carried out at the US Naval School of Aviation Medicine by Charles Houston and Richard Riley in 1944, with the ostensible aim of finding out if acclimatization could help aviators to tolerate higher altitudes (using oxygen). The experimental subjects spent a total of thirty-five days in the pressure chambers, experimenting both with and without oxygen (see West 1998, pp. 236–41). News of the research results filtered through to British climbers like Shipton and Frank Smythe, who drew a variety of conclusions. Smythe claimed Houston’s experiments were “. . . of the utmost interest and explode our ideas about oxygen,” and wrote excitedly to his friend Amery that Houston had shown “Oxygen when used on acclimatised men at high altitudes is useless” (AC E18: Letter, Smythe to Amery, November 5, 1946).

3 AC E18: Letter, Shipton to Donkin (Hon. Sec. of the Himalayan Committee), February 5, 1947.

4 Video interview of Pugh conducted by Jim Milledge, Professor Raymond Clarke, and Mervyn de Calcina-Goff in 1992.

5 Matthews and his team at Farnborough had greatly improved the oxygen sets used for flying by developing an “economizer,” which stopped oxygen being wasted when the user was breathing out, and by creating a much-improved mask, designed by J. C. Gilson.

6 RGS/EE/99: Mount Everest Minute Books, February 24, 1948 and March 2, 1948. Greene looking at diet dropped out after a year. Russell attended a few meetings. Lloyd produced an oxygen report in 1948 but failed to follow up.

7 See
Times
obituaries of Peter Lloyd (1907–2003), April 21 and April 30, 2003,
Daily Telegraph,
April 30, 2003,
Guardian,
May 1, 2003. Lloyd climbed in the Alps in the late twenties and early thirties and joined Bill Tilman on an Anglo-American expedition to Nanda Devi in 1936, before going to Everest in 1938.

8 Lloyd 1939, p. 87.

9 Typical of this tendency was a remark made by Lloyd at the RGS in October 1938, speaking at the end of Tilman’s talk on “The Mount Everest Expedition of 1938.” “I have a lot of sympathy with the sentimental objections to its use [oxygen] and would far rather see the mountain climbed without it; but on the other hand I would rather see the mountain climbed with it than not at all” (see Tilman 1938).

10 See, for example, Mangan 1981 and 2006, Girouard 1981, Porter and Wagg, 2006.

11 See for instance RGS/EE/59-60. Mount Everest Reconnaissance: Letter, Scott Russell to Kirwan, July 17, 1951.

12 Odell 1932, p. 95.

13 See Unsworth 1981, pp. 77–79, for discussion of attitudes to oxygen in the early 1920s.

14 Smythe 1942, p. 48.

15 Tilman 1948, p. 109.

16 Younghusband in Norton 1925, p. 5.

17 Younghusband
in Smythe 1933, p. 1.

18 Young 1949 (7th ed.), p. 3.

19 Apart from the treasurer, R. W. Lloyd, the other committee members were all relatively passive. They attended meetings and voted, but did not do much of the work. The members of the committee are listed in note 9 of chapter 8.

20 RGS EE 62/63/64.Oxygen: “Oxygen Equipment for Everest: Notes on a meeting held on December 14, 1952,” note 8. The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough was founded at the same time as the RAF itself in 1918 and carried out mechanical as well as medical research and development. In 1939 a separate Royal Physiological Laboratory was established, which became the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in 1944.

21 West 2003 gives a comprehensive description of the oxygen sets. Four cylinders of compressed oxygen were carried on the climber’s back. The rate at which the oxygen was delivered to the climber could be varied. A complete fully charged set weighed approximately 30 pounds. The sets included a device called an economizer that reduced waste by storing oxygen—released at a continuous rate—in a bag while the climber was breathing out.

22 The emergency oxygen in modern commercial airliners is based on the same principle as the closed-circuit.

23 Bourdillon thought that open-circuit oxygen would not significantly reduce what he called the hyperventilation of climbers, and believed that the sodium loss which resulted from “over breathing” was the underlying cause of many aspects of altitude deterioration. He explained some aspects of this theory in a brief informal paper called “Questions re: Physiological Adaption on Everest Expeditions,” December 12, 1951 (in RGS EE 62/63/64.Physiology). It did not impress Professor McCance, a very eminent expert on nutrition who was asked to comment, as he made very clear in a letter to Kirwan of December 20, 1951 (in RGS/EE/ 62/63/64.Oxygen).

24 RGS/EE/62/63/64.Physiology: Letter, Lloyd to Kirwan, December 28, 1951.

25 Shipton and Ward thought they saw a route to the southwest (Shipton 1953, p. 9); Tom Bourdillon and Bill Murray were also reported to have spotted a possible route on the west side.

26 Laurence Kirwan (1907–1999) was an Oxbridge-educated archaeologist with a special interest in the Sudan and Nubia. Recruited to the RGS in 1947, he became secretary and director in 1948, remaining in the job for the next thirty years. He was the driving force behind many expeditions associated with the RGS, of which the two most famous were the Everest Expedition of 1953 and Vivian Fuchs’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1957–58. He was knighted in 1972. See obituaries in
The Times,
April 22, 1999; Geographical Journal, Vol. 165.3, November 1999;
Guardian,
April 21, 1999;
Dictionary of National Biography,
Ure 2008.

27 See RGS/EE/62/63/64.Oxygen: Letter, Kirwan to Lloyd, December 20, 1951.

28 RGS/EE/62/63/64.Physiology: Letter, Lloyd to Kirwan, December 28, 1951.

29 RGS/EE/62/63/64.Physiology. This conversation is recorded in a letter from Bourdillon to Kirwan, December 23, 1951.

30 RGS/EE/62/63/64.Physiology. At Bourdillon’s suggestion, Kirwan invited two experts to this meeting, Professor Robert McCance, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Cambridge, and Professor Bryan Matthews. He explained that the invitation followed discussions “in particular with Dr. R. B. Bourdillon about ways of dealing with the physiological problems of climbing Everest.” See also “Note on a meeting held at the RGS on January 4, 1952,” initialed “RBB,” sent with a covering note to Kirwan on January 5, 1952 in same file.

31 RGS/EE/59/60.Applications for Cho Oyu Expedition: Letter, Kirwan to R. B. Bourdillon, January 17, 1952.

32 Ibid: Letter, Bourdillon to Kirwan, January 16, 1952.

33 PP 6.11 and 33.2. Bourdillon’s research proposal has Pugh’s handwritten additions at the bottom.

34 Professor Bryan Matthews (1906–1986) was a public-school and Cambridge-educated physiologist who developed his interest in altitude medicine while also doing important work into neurophysiology at Cambridge before World War II. He took part in the International High-Altitude Science Expedition to Chile of 1935, led by Bruce Dill, and distinguished himself by spending the longest time at high altitude, as well as making a significant scientific contribution to the expedition. After leaving Farnborough he returned to Cambridge, where he rebuilt and led an outstanding physiology department, always insisting on scientific excellence and being willing to recruit only those of exceptional academic ability. Matthews became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1940 and was knighted in 1952. See: Gray 2004 and Gray 1990.

35 RS HD/6/2/9/2/6: Letter, January 29, 1952.

5.
In the Mountains of Lebanon

1 HTP War Diary, December 13, 1941.

2 i.e., Middle East Command.

3 HTP Letter, Pugh to his mother Adah, January 11, 1941. Mussolini’s Italian troops occupied Albania in April 1939 and attacked Greece from Albania in October 1940. Limited British forces were deployed to Greece in November 1940, honoring the British commitment to assist Greece should it be attacked.

4 W. James Riddell (1909–2000) was a member of the British international ski team for six years. He became a professional writer after leaving Cambridge, and resumed this occupation after the war. He described his experiences at Cedars in his book
Dog in the Snow
(1957).

5 The school was established by 2nd Australian Imperial Force 1 Corps and called Middle East Ski School. Riddell was attached to the Australian army and promoted to major to set it up. When the British Ninth Army GHQ took it over a year later, it was renamed IXth Army Ski School, and finally called the Ski Wing of the Middle East Mountain Warfare Centre. The rock-climbing section, commanded and run by David Cox, was called the Mountaineering Wing.