THE ROUTE FOLLOWED BY THE EXPEDITIONS

      CHAPTER I

      THE IDEA

      That Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and 29,002 feet in height, everybody knows. And most people know also that in attempting to climb the mountain two Englishmen lost their lives; that these two, Mallory and Irvine, were “last seen going strong for the top;” and that the top being only 800 feet away they must have very nearly, perhaps actually, reached it.

      How this was done; and how Norton, without oxygen, reached an altitude of 28,100 feet, and his companion, Somervell, scarcely a hundred feet less; how Odell, also without oxygen, twice reached a height of 27,000 feet, and might well have reached the summit itself if more porters had been available; how these feats were made possible by Himalayan porters carrying loads to nearly 27,000 feet; and how all this was done after the Expedition had suffered from a blizzard of exceptional severity and cold as low as 24° below zero at an altitude of 21,000 feet, and, most remarkable of all, after Norton, Somervell and Mallory had been drained of the best part of their resources through having to turn back and rescue four Himalayan porters marooned on a glacier at 23,000 feet; is the story now to be told.

      And first as to the idea these men had in their minds—the idea of climbing Mount Everest.

      When we see a hill we are sooner or later driven to try and get to the top of it. We cannot let it stand there for ever without our scrambling up it. Partly this is because we would like to see the view from the top. But more especially is it because the hill presents a challenge to us. We must match ourselves against it and show that we can get to the top—show ourselves and show our neighbours. We like to show ourselves off—display our prowess. It is an exertion to get to the top, but we enjoy making it. We are doing something that makes us proud of ourselves and gives us inner satisfaction.

      But when we first look at Mount Everest it is a very different proposition. To get to the top of that we never dream. It is right up in the skies—far beyond human reach. So it seems to us. And hundreds of millions of Indians have through the ages looked up at the great Himalayan peaks and not dared to think of climbing even the minor giants, much less the monarch of them all. They will patiently suffer most terrible hardships in travelling thinly clad from the hot plains of India to some place of pilgrimage by a glacier in the Himalaya. Of sheer suffering they will endure as much as any Everest climber. But even the idea of climbing the great peaks never comes into their heads. Not even to those hardy people who spend their whole lives in the mountains has it come. That they have the physical capacity to get to the top of the very highest is proved by the fact they carried loads to nearly 27,000 feet in 1924. And if they could carry a load to that height presumably they could go unloaded to 29,000 feet. Still the idea of climbing Mount Everest they have never entertained.

      How then is it that islanders from the North Sea should have thought of such a thing? Far back we owe the inspiration to the Swiss and Italians. The Alpine peaks are only about half the height of the Himalayan giants. But even they had been looked on with dread and horror till at the end of the eighteenth century the Swiss De Saussure and the Italian Placidus à Spescha tackled their highest summits. The climbers groaned and puffed and panted and suffered from headaches and sickness. Still they attained the summit. And once the highest mountain in the Alps had been conquered the lesser peaks also fell. And soon we English were following in De Saussure’s steps. Through all last century we were engaged in conquering the Alps. And when they were well subdued we turned to higher game. Douglas Freshfield climbed the highest