Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (58 page)

24 Pugh observed in his Antarctic studies into carbon monoxide poisoning that the gas is about twice as poisonous at 15,000 feet as it is at sea level (see Pugh 1959b).

25 Gill 1969, pp. 134–35.

26 HTP: Letter, Pugh to Doey, December 28, 1960.

22.
Winter in the Silver Hut

1 Pugh 1963. Man Badhur was also able to generate heat, increasing his body temperature without shivering.

2 West, “A Memoir: Highs and Lows in Three Countries, 2003,” John B. West papers, MSCL.

3 West 1985, p. 82.

4 HTP: Draft paper, Pugh, L. G. C. E., “Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition: A Report from the Leader of the Scientific Team, October 6, 1960.”

5 Ibid.

6 Pugh summarized the work and the main results of the expedition in Pugh 1961, Pugh 1962a, b, c, Pugh 1964b, Pugh 1965b, and Pugh 1969. For a general account of the expedition and the scientific findings, see West 1998, chapter 10, and Milledge 1982 and 2002.

7 Milledge 1993, p. 173.

8 West 1985, p. 79.

9 Gill’s psychometric tests were devised in collaboration with the MRC Unit for Applied Physiology at the Department of Applied Psychology at Cambridge. See draft article: “Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition 1960/61 from Dr. L. G. C. E. Pugh, Leader of the Wintering Party: Mingbo December 22, 1960” (HTP).

10 They had slide rules and miniature mechanical calculators called Curtas, first introduced in 1948, to help them.

11 HTP: Draft “Scientific Leader’s dispatch” written by Pugh, January 10, 1961. The serow goat is an ancient species of goat native to Asia.

12 HTP: Letter, Pugh to Doey, January 22, 1961.

13 See undated copy of this letter in PP 42.7.318.

14 Ibid.

15 PP 42.7.536.

16 HTP: Letter, Edholm to Pugh, February 9, 1961.

17 On March 1, 1961, Pugh’s diary notes, “Ed bringing in the O2 after all.” He later sent Hillary the detailed research program for Makalu with a note, saying, “I enclose for your information the programme of work envisaged for Makalu. It was fully discussed and agreed before winding up the Silver Hut. Details will naturally have to be fitted in with your plans” (PP 42.7).

18 Ward and Gill earlier made the first ascent of a fluted ice peak behind the Silver Hut which they named Rakpa Peak. It had 60-degree slopes near the top. Also Milledge made the first ascent of Puma Dablam (20,879 feet).

19 The sixth wife was Gita Bannerjee, wife of Doig’s assistant, Bhannu. Lila Bishop and Betty Milledge had been living in Kathmandu throughout the expedition. Irene Ortenburger and June Mulgrew came in with Hillary.

20 HTP: Letter, Pugh to Doey (undated).

23.
Disaster on Makalu

1 PP 42.8: Draft article by Hillary, dated July 1961.

2 Silver Hut Diary, April 10, 1961.

3 Hillary and Doig 1962, p. 212.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 215.

6 Mulgrew 1964, p. 86.

7 Hillary and Doig 1962, p. 216.

8 Ibid., p. 221.

9 Silver Hut Diary, April 9, 1961.

10 Ibid., April 16, 1961: “I had by this time more or less decided I should have to give up the idea of going to Makalu. It would need 10 days travelling at heights up to 20,000 feet & really very little to show for it. My plan is to stay here, take down all the equipment, pack it & take it out to Kathmandu before the monsoon. I should also like 14 days to coordinate & copy out all the results.”

11 Ibid., April 30, 1961.

12 PP 42.7.551: Letter, Doig to Pugh, May 1, 1961.

13 Sukhamay Lahiri and the Indian army doctor Captain Motwani were not invited to Makalu, and Barry Bishop decided not to go because his glaciology project was unfinished.

14 HTP: Quote from Ward’s draft article, “The Uses of Adversity.”

15 Gill 1969, p. 152. The descriptions of the Makalu assault that follow are mainly drawn from the following sources: Gill 1969, chapter 13; Mulgrew 1964, chapters 6, 7, and 8; Harrison 1961; and Ward, draft article “The Uses of Adversity” (1962 HTP).

16 See description in Mulgrew 1964, p. 105.

17 Mulgrew 1964, p. 108.

18 West describes Mulgrew’s affliction as “probably a pulmonary embolus” (see West 1998, p. 297).

19 West, “A Memoir: Highs and Lows in Three Countries, 2003,” John B. West papers, MSCL.

20 Gill 1969, p. 156.

21 In the spring, the Silver Hut had begun to look as if it was precariously perched on stilts because the snow surface on which it stood had melted, leaving intact only a pillar of snow beneath each of the supporting jacks. Hillary donated it to the Himalayan Mountaineering Training Institute of Darjeeling. A team of Sherpas led by the institute’s director, Tenzing Norgay of Everest fame, came to collect it, and it was eventually reassembled at the institute’s training camp in Sikkim, where it remains to this day.

24.
“Gone to India. Your Dinner’s in the Oven”

1
The Times,
June 9, 1961.

2 PP 42.8.646, June 15, 1961.

3 HTP: Letter, 26 September 1941.

4 HTP: Letter, 26 December 1941.

5 Undated letter.

6 HTP: Letter, 1 November 1941.

7 HTP: Letter, October 5, 1941.

25.
The Battle of the Book

1 A complete list of all the publications which came out of the expedition is in West 1993, pp. 200–01.

2 PP 27.18: Pugh’s letter to Hillary, dated June 27, 1962, 764; Hillary’s reply, July 12, 1962, 763. By way of explanation, Hillary told Pugh, “Having completed the manuscript as best I can, I don’t have a great deal to do with any further arrangements.”

3 Ibid.: This file contains copies of galley proofs and Pugh’s suggested alterations.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.: Letter, Pugh to Dienhart (PR Director of Field Enterprises), July 31, 1962. In England Hodder & Stoughton agreed immediately to make any changes that would render the book more accurate.

7 Ibid.: Letter, September 27, 1962.

8 Ibid.

9 PP 42.9: Letters, Pugh to Ward, September 25, 1962, 400, and Pugh to Dienhart, September 27, 1952, 399.

10 Ibid.: Letter, Hillary to Dienhart, December 6, 1962, 130.

11 Ibid.: Letter, Pugh to Dienhart, January 4, 1963, 139.

12
Geographical Journal,
128.4. December 1962, pp. 447–56.

13
The Other Side of the Mountain,
BBC Wales 1978.

26.
The Four Inns Walk

1 Bishop 1963. This expedition is also described in Hornbein’s famous book, written in 1965.

2 Ibid.

3 Forty-one years earlier, in 1922, George Finch, Captain Bruce, and the Gurkha Tejbir Bura survived for two nights in a flimsy tent in appalling weather on the north side of Everest at 25,500 feet. Finch believed that one of the reasons he and his companions survived was that they were able to breathe supplementary oxygen at a low rate from their oxygen sets.

4 PP 23.10: Pugh’s record of his conversation with Bishop, dated December 4, 1963, tells of how the two parties had had no contact for several days, but Bishop decided he and his partner must wait for Hornbein and Unsoeld, who joined them two hours later. Pugh wrote, “I had the impression that Hornbein and his companion owe their lives to Bishop because they would not have been able to find their way down in the dark, and the smallest error would have been irretrievable, as they could not have ascended again without oxygen equipment.”

5 This estimate should only be regarded as giving a general impression of the size of the problem, which all commentators agreed was rapidly getting worse. Pugh quoted the number of thirty to sixty a year in a letter to the chairman of the Derbyshire Adventure Club Mountain Rescue Team (see PP 7.16.147).

6 As well as a complete lack of national statistics, there also had been no formal medical appraisal of accident prevention in Britain, where killer diseases like tuberculosis had tended to steal the limelight. However, since World War II, “the scourge of disease” had been lifted by antibiotics, and people were becoming more aware that significant numbers of deaths and injuries were being caused by accidents. The working party’s own first estimates suggested that 20,000 people were dying in accidents every year, with 300,000 suffering serious injury. See WL SA/MWF/FSO/1. See also Foreword by Capener to Hunt 1965, pp. ix–xii.

7 Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) learned about the English public school system when studying at Oxford between 1904–06 and 1910–14, before returning to Germany where he had been born and brought up. He founded a public school called Salem in Germany in conjunction with Prince Max of Baden, because, he claimed, of his disappointment in the qualities of leadership he perceived in contemporary German society. The school occupied part of the prince’s castle home at Lake Constance, and the prince’s son, Berthold, Margrave of Baden, was the first pupil. Berthold later married the second sister of Prince Philip of Greece, who in turn married Princess Elizabeth, heir to the British throne. The Jewish Hahn was forced to leave Germany in 1933, and subsequently started Gordonstoun in Scotland, with help and support from distinguished well-wishers such as William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury), Lord Tweedsmuir (John Buchan), and G. M. Trevelyan. The progressive principles on which Salem and Gordonstoun were founded are described in Stewart 1972 and Brereton 1968. It would be wrong to characterize the school as solely preoccupied with physical or athletic aspects of education. There was a concerted attempt to develop the whole person, with emphasis given particularly to self-discipline, enterprise, physical fitness, service to the community, craftsmanship, and compassion. See also Wedell 2004. Prince Philip began his education at Salem, moving to Gordonstoun when Hahn left Germany. The Royal Family has been sending its children there ever since.

8 This was seen as a result of the ending of the war, the impending end to National Service, the advent of television, and a general shortage of sporting and recreational facilities. See, for example, Justin Evans 1974, p. 22.

9 The movement spread to forty countries throughout the world.

10 The Award Scheme provided a program of activities leading to a hierarchy of awards and was intended to be used as a resource by existing youth organizations to supplement their own activities. Hahn’s objectives, if not his precise methods, echoed those of Baden Powell’s earlier Boy Scout movement, which also deliberately set out to promulgate traditional public-school values among young people of all social classes. Baden Powell first published
Scouting for Boys
in 1908, and the first official Scout Camp was held in the same year. Springhall 1977, p. 64, argues that the Scout movement had its roots in the ethos of “muscular Christianity,” which dominated British public schools in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and in the intellectual climate of the UK in the 1900s. One admiring commentator remarked of the Scouts, “In the next generation there should be no overgrown lad standing on street corners idly and foolishly, gaping after they know not what. There will be a new race of boys in England when the Scouts of today have little Scouts of their own.”

11 Hunt 1978, pp. 127–30.

12 See Pugh 1966, p. 126, “Incident 19.”

13
Daily Herald,
February 21, 1961. PP 61.5 has a collection of newspaper articles on deaths from hypothermia.

14 “Convention on Accident Prevention and Life Saving,” organized by the Royal College of Surgeons, May 14, 1963.

15 See Hunt 1965, p. 228, for papers given at the convention. One delegate alone showed signs of doubt when he announced, “There is an attitude amongst many people that by shoving poor characters into the mountains you will transform them into first class characters. This is not so . . .”

16 Ibid., p. 229.

17 See Sir Arthur Porritt’s speech of welcome at the opening of the convention (Ibid., p. 5). Sir Arthur Porritt (1900–1994) was a distinguished surgeon, former Oxford athlete, and Olympic sprinter. As the only man ever to be president of the Royal College of Surgeons and the British Medical Association simultaneously, he was a prominent establishment figure.

18 Furneaux, W. D., “Psychology of Adolescent Misadventure,” Ibid., p. 240.

19 Ibid., pp. 224–27.

20 PP 6.43.56.

21 WL SA/MWF/F20/1.

22 See “Scouts Die, Two Lost on Moor,”
The Times,
March 16, 1964. The competition took place on March 14–15, 1964.

23 Pugh 1964a.

24 Pugh frequently referred to the work of: Adolph and Molnar 1946, who studied nude subjects performing on ergometers in various weather conditions; Belding et al. 1945, who studied clothing test methods in the United States during the war and the effects of exercise on the insulation value of clothing; Breckenridge and Woodcock 1950, who measured the effect of wind on the insulation value of military cold-weather uniforms; Hall and Polte 1956, who measured the effects of wetting on the insulation value of clothing; and (occasionally) German hypothermia experiments carried out on Dachau prisoners and later investigated and published after the war by Major L. Alexander 1946 etc.

25 In a later article (Pugh 1967c) Pugh wrote, “The metabolic response to cold during exercise was approximately equal to that brought about by a 300kg increase in work load, and amounted to 15–20% of the subjects’ estimated maximum O2 intake.” When a subject “was exercising at a given work rate in the wet cold situation his oxygen intake was 50% higher than it was at the same work rate in dry conditions.”

26 Pugh 1964a, p. 1212.

27 The association between the quantity of subcutaneous fat and resistance to cooling in water was well understood by this time. Pugh’s research into hill-walkers showed that there was no similar relationship between fat and cold resistance when walkers’ clothes were dry, but when their clothes became wet in windy conditions, they got into a similar situation to people in water, and fat appeared to become a helpful factor in keeping them warm. Many of the hypothermia victims studied by Pugh turned out to be very thin (see Pugh 1966a).