The Epic of Mount Everest. Francis Edward Younghusband
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And Vines and Martin Conway the highest in the Andes. Italians also joined in the struggle. The Duke of the Abruzzi climbed Ruwenzori in East Africa and Mount St. Elias in Alaska.
Ambition grew with success. The Alps, the Caucasus and the Andes had been conquered. And men were already turning their thoughts to the great Himalaya. The brothers Schlagintweit climbed to 22,260 feet on Kamet. Officers of the Survey of India, in the course of their duties, were brought among the great peaks and in their records are statements that J. S. Pocock climbed to 22,000 feet in Garhwal in 1874, and others climbed to considerable heights to determine the position of prominent peaks.
The main attack on the great peaks has, however, been made by men from Europe trained in the technique of mountain craft which has gradually developed in Alpine climbing. They came from nearly every European country, as well as from America. Graham, in 1883, claims to have reached an altitude of 23,185 feet. Sir Martin Conway pioneered the way among the Karakoram giants of the Baltoro Glacier. The Swiss, Dr. Jacot Guillarmod, explored in the same region. The Americans, Dr. and Mrs. Bullock Workman, attained a height of 23,400 feet. Dr. Longstaff reached the summit of Trisul, 23,406 feet. Douglas Freshfield explored Kangchenjunga.
Then came the most serious and best organized effort to ascertain to what altitude it was possible for man to ascend on a mountain. For it is not the physical obstacle which a mountain presents—rocky precipices or snow and ice—that stands in the way of man’s reaching the highest summits of the Himalaya. In the Alps, where the actual climbing is just as hard as any in the Himalaya, man has been able to overcome every obstacle of that kind. He ascends the most appalling precipices and crags and finds his way up the most forbidding ice cliffs. Nor is the cold of the Himalaya the deterrent: man has withstood much severer cold in the Polar regions. The real obstacle is the want of oxygen in the air at high altitudes. The air grows thinner and thinner the higher we ascend. And as it grows thinner the less oxygen in it is there. And oxygen is one of the substances on which man depends for his minute by minute bodily sustenance. The question, then, which the Italian expedition under the Duke of the Abruzzi came out to determine, was to what height in this thin air, so deficient in oxygen, man could ascend on a mountain-side by his own unaided efforts. This was in 1909, and owing to the difficulty at that time in obtaining permission from either the Government of Nepal or Tibet, between which countries Mount Everest is situated, it was not possible for the Duke to make his experiment on that mountain. He selected therefore the next highest, namely K2, in the Karakoram Himalaya, which is 28,278 feet in height. And this peak proving an impracticable mountain he climbed another, Bride Peak, to an altitude of 24,600 feet and would certainly have reached higher but for the mist and snowstorms.
Man was thus steadily marching to dominion over the mountain, and already the idea of climbing Mount Everest itself had been forming itself in his mind. As far back as 1893, Captain (now Brigadier-General) Hon. C. G. Bruce had thought of it. He had been with Sir Martin Conway in the Karakoram Himalaya and when employed in Chitral suggested the idea. But the opportunity for carrying it out never occurred. Many years later Lord Curzon, when Viceroy of India, made a proposal to Mr. Douglas Freshfield that the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club should join in organizing an expedition to Mount Everest, if he, Lord Curzon, could obtain permission from the Nepal Government to send the expedition through Nepal. This permission, however, was not forthcoming, so nothing came of Lord Curzon’s proposal. The Nepalese are a very seclusive people, but as they have been for many years friendly to the British the Government of India humour them in their desire to be left to themselves.
When Mr. Freshfield, who had already been President of the Alpine Club, became President of the Royal Geographical Society, he undoubtedly would have taken up an idea so congenial to him as organizing a Mount Everest Expedition. But it so happened that his period of office fell during the War. After the War the idea was revived by Captain Noel, who had made a reconnaissance into Tibet in the direction of the mountain in 1913 at a time when the late Brig.-General Rawling was also cherishing the hope of at least reconnoitring Everest. And when the present writer became President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1920 the time seemed ripe for bringing the idea of climbing Mount Everest into effect. He had spent many years in the Himalaya and had been in Tibet itself. He therefore knew the local conditions. And with the resources of a big Society much could be done that was difficult for single individuals, or for small parties of three or four, like those which climb in the Alps.
Meanwhile, there had been a great development in another direction. Actually while the Duke was climbing in the Himalaya, Bleriot was flying across the Channel. And the Great War gave a tremendous impetus to aeroplane construction. As a result men were now able to fly higher even than the top of Mount Everest. The question how high men could ascend seemed therefore to be a matter more for the airman than the mountaineer; and the former had already beaten the latter. Why then take the trouble to climb Mount Everest which would prove nothing but what had already been proved?
The reply is that the two problems differ entirely. The airman sits in his machine and sucks oxygen and the machine carries him upward. He needs skill and nerve of course to fly the machine properly. Still, he is carried up by the machine. He does not carry himself up. And he can have plenty of oxygen beside him to make up for the deficiency in the atmosphere The climber has to rise on his own steam. He has to keep to the earth’s surface. And what we want to know is if there is any part of the earth’s surface so high that he cannot by his own unaided effort reach it. So we select the highest mountain and make our experiment on that.
Some people indeed do ask what all this pother is about. If you want to get to the top of Mount Everest why not get an aeroplane to dump you down there? A similar question might be asked of a University crew. If they want to get from Putney to Mortlake why not go in a motor-boat: they would reach there much quicker and more comfortably than by rowing themselves there in a boat. Or the runner in a mile race might be asked why he did not call a taxi-cab.
Man means to climb Mount Everest—climb it on his own feet. That is the whole point. Only so does he get that pride in his prowess which is such a satisfaction to his soul. Life would be a poor affair if we relied always on the machine. We are too prone already to trust to science and mechanics instead of exerting our own bodies and our own spirit. And we thereby miss much of that enjoyment in life which exercising our faculties to the full brings with it.
And so we come back to the point from which we started. This determination to climb Mount Everest has grown out of the ordinary impulse men have to climb the hill in their neighbourhood. In the case of Mount Everest a mightier effort is required, but the impulse to make it is of the same origin. Indeed, the struggle with Everest is all part and parcel of the perpetual struggle of spirit to establish its supremacy over matter. Man, the spiritual, means to make himself supreme over even the mightiest of what is material.
Both man and mountain have emerged from the same original Earth and therefore have something in common between them. But the mountain is the lower in the scale of being, however massive and impressive in outward appearance. And man, the punier in appearance but the greater in reality, has that within him which will not let him rest until he has planted his foot on the topmost summit of the highest embodiment of the lower. He will not be daunted by bulk. The mountain may be high. But he will show that his spirit is higher. And he will not be content until he has it in subjection under his feet.
This is the secret in the heart of the idea of climbing Mount Everest.
And in proving his powers man would find that joy which their exercise ever gives.
CHAPTER II
PREPARATION
The idea of climbing Mount Everest had thus entered into men’s minds and was slowly spreading there and penetrating deeper. Men were no longer content with idly contemplating the mountain from a distance. They must be up and grappling with it. The time for action had arrived. And how the idea was put into execution is the story now to be told. It necessarily divides itself into three phases. First there is the phase when the mountain had to be prospected carefully; for no one yet—no European—had been within 40 miles of it. This was the reconnaissance phase. Then, a practical way up having been discovered by Mallory, came the actual attempt to reach the summit—an attempt which did