Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya

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Contents

Prologue ............................................................................................ 1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 5 Chapter 1: The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude ...................... 8 Introduction .................................................................................. 8 Laying the Foundation ................................................................ 10 Box: Discovering and Naming the World’s Highest Mountain ...... 12 Box: Sir George Everest .............................................................. 14 Box: Oxygen and Altitude ............................................................ 18 Box: Alexander Mitchell Kellas .................................................... 20 Mountaineering Equipment and Clothing .................................... 22 The Pre-Everest Years: Considerations of a Physiological Nature 24 Breaching the 8000m Barrier ........................................................ 30 The Lessons of the 1922 Everest Expedition ................................ 32 Everest: 1924 to the Second World War ........................................ 35 Box: Did Mallory and Irvine Reach the Summit? .......................... 39 Chapter 2: Reaching the Highest Summits ................................ 48 Box: Frostbite .............................................................................. 53 Box: Tenzing Norgay .................................................................. 64 Box: The Closed Circuit Oxygen System and the Ascent of Everest’s South Summit .......................................................... 71 Box: Ed Hillary ............................................................................ 77 The Remaining 8000m Peaks ........................................................ 79 Chapter 3: The Next Generation ................................................ 87 The Silver Hut ............................................................................ 91 Everest in the 1960s and 1970s .................................................... 96 Box: Tom Hornbein .................................................................... 97 Box: High-altitude Illnesses ........................................................ 101

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vi Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya Box: Reinhold Messner .............................................................. 115 Box: Peter Habeler ...................................................................... 117 Box: Spirits on the Wind: Hallucinations at High Altitude .......... 120 Box: Cosmic Rays and High-altitude Climbers ............................ 125 Chapter 4: The Slippery Slope .................................................. 127 Commercialism .......................................................................... 129 Ambition and Competence ........................................................ 138 Box: Dexamethasone .................................................................. 144 Morality and Ambition .............................................................. 146 Box: Sherpas .............................................................................. 159 Chapter 5: Redefining the Game .............................................. 162 Box: Finding Mallory ................................................................ 163 Box: Fast Ascents ...................................................................... 166 Physiology in the New Century .................................................. 168 Everest Today ............................................................................ 174 Box: VO2 Max and Other Measures of Interest .......................... 180 Everest – The Risks .................................................................... 182 Box: Hypothermia ...................................................................... 185 The Future ................................................................................ 188 Notes .............................................................................................. 190 Index .............................................................................................. 222

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Prologue

On 20 July 1939 two men lay outside the tent they had pitched, enjoying the warmth of the summer sun. So warm was it that the men lay naked on their sleeping bags. Apart, perhaps, from the nudity, there is little in this picture to surprise. But the tent the two had pitched was at 7940m, just 671m below the summit of K2, the second highest mountain in the world. The two men were Fritz Wiessner and Pasang Dawa Lama, and the previous day they had climbed to within about 240m of the summit.

Fritz Wiessner was born in Dresden in 1900 and emigrated to the United States in 1929, by which time he had established himself as a superb rock climber: at the age of 25 he had completed one climb in the Austrian Tyrol that was claimed to have been the hardest yet accomplished in the European Alps at that time. In the US he rapidly produced a string of climbs which raised the standard of American rock climbing. It was therefore no surprise that in 1939 he was invited to go to the Karakoram.

The Americans had already attempted to climb K2 in 1938, when an expedition under the leadership of Charles Houston had, in the course of a thorough reconnaissance of the mountain, identified the most promising line, up the Abruzzi Ridge. One member of the team, Bill House, climbed what proved to be a crucial chimney that allowed access to the peak’s upper slopes, but the team was forced to retreat from a high point of 7925m.

The original plan had been for the 1938 expedition to be led by Wiessner, but he was unable to participate because of other commitments.

So, when a new attempt was scheduled for 1939, he was the logical choice for leader. He chose a strong team of American alpinists but for various reasons many dropped out, and the party he eventually led was inexperienced. Nevertheless they made good progress and by 18 July Camp IX had been established at 7940m, below K2’s final pyramid. Here Wiessner and Pasang Dawa Lama, the strongest of the team’s Sherpas, spent the night.

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Introduction

Mountaineers struggling their way to the summit of Mount Everest have little energy to spare – and likely not enough to imagine their straits if they had somehow been instantly transported from sea level onto the upper slopes of the mountain. While climbing Everest has increased in popularity over the years since the first ascent in 1953, it is an activity in which only a small fraction of the world’s population participates.

However, ever-increasing numbers fly in commercial jets at and often above the altitude of the summit of Everest. Any of us who have ever paid the least bit of attention to a flight attendant’s routine instructions about emergency procedures knows that the not-exactly-confidence-inspiring oxygen masks (that look like insubstantial plastic cups attached to thin plastic bags) that are supposed to drop down to passengers in the event of a loss of cabin pressure have an important function. In fact, a total loss of cabin pressure that immediately exposed passengers to the ‘thin air’ (or, more specifically, extremely low barometric pressure) of extreme altitude would render them unconscious within the space of approximately 100 seconds or less (with death following in a matter of just a few minutes) – and the higher the altitude, the quicker unconsciousness occurs. Under such circumstances, our bodies would be exposed to very low levels of oxygen, much less than is required to maintain consciousness and life processes, from the ambient atmosphere. There have been documented incidents, as in the case of the demise of a world-famous golfer several years ago, where insidious decompression (and thus exposure to the aircraft’s cruising altitude) went undetected by the flight crew and left crew and passengers quickly insensible and, in short order, dead. But it is the low atmospheric pressure at high altitudes, and not a lack of oxygen per se, which causes this failure, because the Earth’s atmosphere contains approximately 21 per cent oxygen regardless of the altitude.

Atmospheric pressure is about 760mmHg at sea level, meaning that the pressure of the air can support a column of mercury (Hg) 760mm high.

As a climber ascends, this air pressure drops because, of course, there is

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6 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya less air above them. If air was incompressible, then the drop in pressure with height would be linear. But air can be easily compressed, as anyone who has inflated a tyre on their car knows, so as the amount of air above the climber decreases, the compression also decreases, so that the way in which air pressure varies with altitude follows a curve rather than a straight line. The variation of pressure with altitude is also dependent on other factors. Despite what might be imagined, the coldest air in the Earth’s atmosphere sits not above the polar regions but above the Equator.

The effect of the cold mass in the upper atmosphere above the Equator is to increase the air pressure near the earth’s surface, because a cold air mass will always try to ‘sink’, resulting in compression of the warmer air under it. As the Himalayan peaks are (relatively) close to the Equator – Everest is at 28ºN – this effect is an advantage to climbers; if the peaks were much further north, climbers would be at a much more severe disadvantage. As an example, the difference in air pressure between an equatorial and a theoretical polar Everest is about 50mmHg for a given temperature. Air temperature in and of itself has an important effect as well, with air pressure dropping as temperature falls. This is particularly important for climbers on Denali, the highest peak in North America, which rises close to the Arctic Circle. Because the local temperature at Denali’s summit is colder than it is at a similar height close to the Equator (for instance, atop Chimborazo, which stands almost on the Equator and is a comparable height), the combined effect of temperature and latitude is to increase Denali’s effective height by several hundred metres relative to Chimborazo. It is also important to realise that the conditions of the local air mass (for example, high vs. low pressure system) around the mountain can influence just how large the effective height difference is on any given day.

Weather conditions also have an impact. An area of high pressure stationed above Everest might raise the pressure by ~5 per cent. But if a storm were to blow in, then in addition to the problems of high winds and blizzard conditions, a summit climber would have to contend with air pressure falling by a similar amount, perhaps even more.

The problem of thin air at altitude has long been known to humans.

Ancient tales speak of the ‘headache mountains’ of Central Asia, so called because traders crossing them developed severe headaches – an early symptom of mountain sickness. Numerous remedies were tried to cure the problem: travellers who crossed the Nuksan Pass in the Hindu Kush (at more than 5200m) chewed raw onions which they believed would

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Introduction 7 relieve the symptoms; in the eastern Himalaya the sniffing of certain yellow flowers was believed to be the cause of the headaches, and travellers would go to great lengths to avoid getting close to them; the Mirza of the Pamirs believed the cause of ‘dum’ (as they called the problem) was a noxious wind and, if it blew, they would eat fruit in an attempt to gain relief.

The oxygen content of the Earth’s air has not been constant over geological time. A delightful letter to a medical journal1 noted that during the Permian Age, when oxygen was plentiful in the atmosphere, a climber would have been able to reach 12,000m successfully without requiring supplementary oxygen, and ascents of Everest, at 8848m, would have been commonplace without bottled gas. But, of course, at that time, 250–300 million years ago, there were no humans and there was no Everest.

Today the Earth’s highest peak lies at the near-absolute altitude limit a human can reach without supplementary oxygen. If there were mountains just a few hundred metres higher than Everest, then supplementary oxygen would be required by any climber. Yet despite being at the limits of human capability, there are some climbers who not only are able to survive on the upper slopes of Everest without supplementary oxygen, but also find it possible to do the strenuous work necessary to continue the ascent of a demanding summit. At the same time, others are barely able to make progress while breathing bottled oxygen. How can human beings have such different responses to conditions at the same altitude?

The answer to that question is to be found in the story of how the understanding of human physiology developed. The development of knowledge regarding the function of the human body under hypoxic conditions has enabled climbers to reach great heights relatively safely, and that in turn led to the high peaks, once the preserve of the climbing elite, becoming more accessible. But science and technology can only do so much. When circumstances negate its value, the oxygen-poor environment of Everest quickly becomes lethal. The development of high-altitude science and the dangers posed by high-altitude mountaineering are the threads that bind the various sections of this book together.

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Chapter 1

The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude

Introduction In 1995 Johan Reinhard, an American archaeologist heading a PeruvianAmerican expedition, discovered the almost perfectly preserved mummy of a teenage girl near the summit of Ampato, a 6288m stratovolcano in southern Peru. The mummy, quickly named la Doncella, ‘the maiden’, in Peru and ‘the ice maiden’ in the English-speaking world, caused a sensation, not least because of the altitude of the discovery. But four years later, working on Llullaillaco, another stratovolcano close to the Argentine-Chilean border and the Atacama Desert, Reinhard made another discovery. At 6723m, Llullaillaco is the sixth highest mountain in South America and the second highest active volcano on Earth.

Reinhard’s team discovered the mummies of three children close to the summit. It is believed that they were child sacrifices, killed perhaps 500 years ago to appease the Incan gods, or to thank them for a successful harvest. Llullaillaco was probably the highest point reached by humans in South America in the pre-Conquistador era, and also the highest point reached by humans until the late nineteenth century. In Tibet the summer snowline can rise to 6500m, though vegetation is very sparse beyond 6000m. Yaks and snow leopards have been reported to roam up to 6100m, and Tibetan gazelle and kiang (wild asses) are occasionally seen at similar altitudes, though they prefer to stay below 5500m. It is likely that early Tibetan hunters reached heights similar to those of their prey, and that traders crossing the high passes between India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet also reached comparable heights. There is, however, no evidence for permanent or semi-permanent habitation above about 5,200m on either side of the Himalaya, and that is also likely to have been the limit in South America. Higher terrestrial elevations were truly terra incognita 150 years ago. Although a few very brave (and/or ignorant) men had ascended to altitudes over 8000m as early as 1862 in hot air balloons, these ‘exposures’ to the extreme altitude environment were short term, usually lasting little more than an hour or two. Nonetheless, their flights

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The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude 9 were full of near-misses as well as outright tragedy, as knowledge of the human body’s ability to deal with low atmospheric pressure and thus low tissue levels of oxygen, known as hypoxia, was extremely rudimentary.

Although some tentative steps had been taken towards an understanding of high-altitude physiology in the early years of the nineteenth century,1 it was not until the work of Paul Bert2 that the first giant leap forward was made. Bert, a Frenchman, was the first person to make an extensive study of the effects of barometric pressure. In the early 1870s he had a fortuitous meeting with Paris physician Denis Jourdanet, which was to have far-reaching consequences for the new science.

Jourdanet was fairly wealthy and had travelled among the mountains of Mexico, where he developed an interest in high-altitude medicine. He and Bert shared enough medical interests to become friends and fellowworkers, with Jourdanet providing Bert with funds to establish a laboratory with a decompression chamber for the investigation of hypoxic phenomena. During the course of his high-altitude field experiences, Jourdanet had formulated the hypothesis that blood contained less oxygen on high mountains because the atmospheric pressure was lower, calling this theory ‘barometric anoxemia’. With Jourdanet’s financial backing, Bert aimed to put this theory to the test with a series of laboratory studies that would ultimately go an enormous distance in helping to sort out the puzzle of maladaptation to altitude that expresses itself, for instance, in the form of mountain sickness.

Although it seems so obvious today as to be easily taken for granted, Bert was able personally to confirm his deduction that mountain sickness is caused by exposure to an environment with low oxygen pressure. In a series of experiments, he allowed himself to be rapidly ‘taken up’ to a simulated altitude of approximately 5500m in a pressure chamber, and then breathed supplementary oxygen in order to successfully relieve his symptoms of acute hypoxia. Finally, he breathed supplementary oxygen during the course of being ‘taken up’ to the same altitude, finding himself untroubled by any noxious symptoms during the process, providing clear evidence that the use of supplementary oxygen in a low barometric pressure environment was based on a firm physiological footing.

Bert made other pioneering efforts of great interest to medical science, but his study of high-altitude (hypobaric) and high-pressure (hyperbaric) environments (such as deep-sea diving) is the work for which he is primarily remembered. This is no doubt due to the fact that, in 1878, he published his 1178 page magnum opus La Pression Barométrique, Recherches

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10 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya de Physiologie Expérimentale. This work contained not only Bert’s experimental results, but also an encyclopedic history of all that was then known or believed about high and low barometric pressures and mountain sickness. A very notable tribute to the lasting value of La Pression Barométrique is that it was of fundamental importance to aviation medicine during the Second World War. The need for an English edition at that time prompted its translation by the academicians Fred and Mary Hitchcock at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. This first English edition of the book – Barometric Pressure: Researches in Experimental Physiology – was finally published in 1943, 65 years after its original publication in France!

Bert’s studies were without doubt a most important milestone in the everexpanding canon of knowledge concerning the physiological effects of oxygen and its lack on the human body. As such, Paul Bert is widely recognised today as the father of ‘modern’ high-altitude physiology and medicine.

While the hard-earned knowledge of Bert and other scientists was useful as mountaineers started to push the altitude ‘envelope’ to near the 7000m barrier by the end of the 1800s, mountain climbing exposed people to the hypoxia of high altitude over much longer periods (days, weeks or even months), and thus adaptation to altitude and deterioration from altitude were still unknown quantities. It should thus come as no surprise that early attempts to climb the world’s highest peaks, particularly K2 and Kangchenjunga, very early in the twentieth century were unsuccessful.

Laying the Foundation In 1786 Mont Blanc (the highest peak in the European Alps, at 4810m) was climbed by two Chamonix residents, Dr Michel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, after the aristocratic Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure had offered a sizeable reward to the first ascentionists. Though their achievement is often regarded as the start of alpine climbing as a sport, another 70 years would pass before the ‘Golden Age’ of climbing in the European Alps began. Those early climbers, who were chiefly British, though invariably employing local guides, wore little more than old street clothes and concentrated on finding the most straightforward route to any summit they attempted.

In the Himalaya climbers were preceded by the map-makers of British India’s Great Trigonometric Survey (GTS). Work began in 1802, and just seven years later, while exploring the upper reaches of the Ganges,

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The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude 11 Lieutenant William Spencer Webb, a Survey employee, surveyed a peak known as Dhawala Gira (now known as Dhaulagiri) and found it to be 26,826ft (8190m). Astonished, he returned the following year to check his result: it was correct. But, rather than being excited by the finding of the world’s highest peak, the geographers of Europe scoffed at the absurd height calculated by this amateur surveyor: everyone knew that the world’s highest mountain was Chimborazo in the Ecuadorean Andes. In the years that followed GTS surveyors worked their way towards the border of forbidden Nepal. From close to the border they set up survey stations from which they were able to fix the height of the great peaks of the Himalaya. One, Peak XV, they discovered to be the highest mountain in the world. It was named after George Everest.

Occasionally, the survey stations set up by the GTS were at high altitude: some on the high Karakoram peaks were at over 6000m. As a consequence, exactly when climbers, rather than explorers or mapmakers, came to the Himalaya is a matter of opinion – when does an explorer become a climber? Why does a map-maker choose one peak rather than another, or decide to press on to the summit when a lower shoulder would be adequate for his purposes? One of the most striking examples in this grey area was William Johnson, who was a member of the GTS but seems to have climbed as much for the thrill of it as to set up triangulation stations. In 1865, on an unsanctioned journey into China’s Kunlun Shan (a journey that eventually led to his resignation from the GTS), he claimed to have climbed a 7284m peak. More recent surveys give the peak’s height as 6710m and some, both at the time and today, question Johnson’s claim, though it is beyond doubt that he did achieve such altitudes elsewhere.

It is now generally agreed that the first ‘pure’ climber to visit the Himalaya was W.W. Graham in the spring of 1883. At that time Bhutan and Nepal were off-limits, Sikkim vaguely hostile and the Karakoram both remote and politically sensitive, the borders of Russia, Afghanistan and British India having still to be defined. Of the Himalaya only Himachal Pradesh and northern Uttar Pradesh (Garhwal and Kumaun) were easily and safely accessible. It is therefore surprising that Graham, accompanied by his Swiss guide Joseph Imboden, chose to go to Sikkim.

The pair explored the southern approaches to Kangchenjunga, but then Imboden fell ill and had to return to Switzerland. Graham next employed two Swiss guides, Emil Boss and Ulrich Kauffmann, and headed for Garhwal. The trio arrived in July and apparently completed two climbs

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12 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya

Discovering and Naming the World’s Highest Mountain In 1847 Andrew Waugh, Surveyor-General of India, measured the height of Kangchenjunga, finding it to be 28,176ft (8588m), a height which made it, at the time, the highest mountain in the world. But at the same time Waugh surveyed another peak well to the west. It was a long way off, making the height very uncertain, but Waugh was reasonably sure it was higher still. At the time there was no official identification system for the peaks the GTS was surveying, so Waugh referred to this new peak as ‘ ’’. In 1849, during surveys from the Ganges plain around Bihar, observations were made of several peaks in forbidden Nepal and John Armstrong, a survey assistant, calculated the height of a peak he called ‘b’. It was almost 29,000ft (8839m) high. When informed, Waugh wondered if his peak ‘ ’’ and Armstrong’s peak ‘b’ were the same. He therefore sent out James Nicholson, another GTS surveyor, to take further readings. But rather than clarifying the position, Nicholson added to the confusion by creating his own reference system. On this, the highest peak was designated ‘h’. To bring order to the system, Waugh decided to redesignate all the peaks, starting with Kangchenjunga and working west. Kangchenjunga was designated Peak I. The high mountain was Peak XV and it was indeed the one previously designated ‘b’, ‘ ’ and ‘h’. When its height was more accurately calculated, it was found, as Waugh had anticipated, that it was indeed the highest mountain in the world.

The height of Peak XV was positively determined in 1852, but it was not until 1856 that Waugh felt justified in announcing the discovery. In March that year he wrote to Henry Thuillier, the Deputy Surveyor-General (who, later, as General Sir Henry Thuillier, was to succeed Waugh as SurveyorGeneral): I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor, Colonel Geo Everest, to assign to every geographical object its true local or national appellation … I have always scrupulously adhered to this rule as I have in fact to all other principles laid down by that eminent geodesist. But here we have a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate Nepal, and to approach close to this stupendous snowy mass. In the meantime, the privilege, as well as the duty, devolves on me to assign to this lofty pinnacle

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The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude 13 … a name whereby it may be known among geographers, and become a household word … In testimony of my affectionate respect for a revered chief, in conformity with what I believe to be the wish of all the members of the scientific department over which I have the honour to preside, and to perpetuate the memory of that illustrious master of accurate geographical research – I have determined to name this noble peak …

Mont Everest.

The height was given as 29,002ft (8842m).

The French ‘mont’ was dropped in 1857 in favour of ‘Mount’. Usually that too is now dropped, the peak just being known as Everest. In August 1856, in a letter to the Asiatic Society following Thuillier’s announcement, Brian Hodgson, a former political resident of Kathmandu, and then resident of Darjeeling, claimed the peak was actually called Devadhunga or Bhairathan. As a result of this letter, in early 1857 Waugh set up a committee to investigate the peak’s name. This concluded that Devadhunga (meaning God’s Seat) was applied to many places and that there was no evidence to support Bhairathan. Despite Waugh’s contention, both China (Tibet) and Nepal claim that the peak had a local name, though in the case of Nepal the suggested name, Sagamartha, is of very recent origin (dating from the 1960s) and was invented to prevent the Tibetan name gaining worldwide acceptance. The Tibetan name, Chomolungma, meaning ‘Goddess Mother of the World’, is also used by the Sherpas, the only Nepalese who had sight of the peak before modern times. The official Chinese name is now usually transcribed as Qomolangma. The Chinese claim that this name appeared on an eighteenth-century map.

The present accepted height of the mountain is 8848m (29,029ft), though a measurement based on a GPS system anchored to the closest rock to the summit in 1999 suggested a true height of 8850m (29,035ft) for the rock, and a further elevation of 1m due to the summit snow cone. The collision of the Indian tectonic plate with the Eurasian means that the summit is still being elevated and moved north-eastwards. The exact degree of change is subject to academic debate, but an annual elevation of 4mm is now generally accepted. If that figure is correct, and has remained essentially constant over the last 60 years, then Everest’s summit is now 23cm higher than when Ed Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached it.

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14 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya

Sir George Everest In 1818 William Lambton, the first Superintendent of the GTS, appointed as his Chief Assistant a young artillery captain by the name of George Everest. The captain pronounced his name Eve-rest rather than Ever-rest.

George Everest was born on 4 July 1790, probably in Gwernvale, a beautiful house (now a hotel) outside Crickhowell, a small town set between the River Usk and the Black Mountains, a range forming part of the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales. Some have suggested that George was born in London, but as his father, Tristram, was a solicitor in Crickhowell, that seems the more likely birthplace. George, the third of six children born to Tristram Everest and his wife Lucetta Mary, née Smith, became a Gentleman Cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich when he was 14 years old. Seven days after his 16th birthday he arrived in India as a lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery. In 1811, during a temporary posting to Java, it is known that he was involved in surveying work and it is assumed that he had had similar experience in India as well, sufficient for Lambton to appoint him as his Chief Assistant. Everest became Superintendent of the GTS on Lambton’s death in 1823, and Surveyor-General of India in 1830.

George Everest was a crotchety man, his subordinates and others finding it extremely easy to get on his wrong side: one fellow officer who referred to him as a ‘Compass Wallah’ very soon regretted the suggestion. On his return to England Everest was offered a knighthood, but he turned it down on the grounds that the proposed honour was insufficiently grand for someone with his lofty credentials. Some time later Everest accepted another knighthood, when the order was more in keeping with his view of his worth. He would doubtless be appalled that the now-standard pronunciation of the mountain which bears his name differs from that of his own name.

But despite his limitations when dealing with other people, when it came to the work of the GTS Everest was dedicated almost to the point of obsession. Initially the surveying took place during the rainy season, the air being clearer then than during the hazy days of dry weather. But the weather, together with the malarial swamps, took their toll, many employees dying of malaria or suffering a lifetime of ill-health. Everest himself contracted malaria, which forced him out of India for two years, and later for five more years, but each time he came back to push the survey forward.

He retired in 1843 after completing the survey of the Great Arc, a line of longitude stretching 2400km from Cape Comorin, at India’s southern tip, to the Himalaya. This survey was needed so that corrections could be made to

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The Early Quest for Extreme Altitude 15 all other survey work to allow for the fact that the earth is neither a flat plate nor a sphere. Triangulation, the surveyors’ tool, works well on flat surfaces, and the Earth is flat, more or less, over short distances. But on the scale of India the fact that the Earth is curved does matter as on a curved surface a triangle’s angles do not add up to 180º. To make the necessary corrections the Earth’s exact shape is needed, and for that the Great Arc had to be measured.

Everest had been in poor health for many years, carrying the unhealthy legacy of malaria and its after-effects, and it was not expected that he would survive long in retirement. But back in England, to the astonishment of those who knew him, this grumpy old man married in 1846. He was 55, his bride, Emma Wing, was 23. Between 1849 and 1859 the couple had six children, and Everest lived out his remaining years – he died on 1 December 1866, aged 76 – as a model of Victorian patrician contentment. He is buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Church, Hove on England’s south coast.

He had only two grandchildren, both of whom died childless, and the Everest line died out in 1935.

which, if true, were astonishing. Graham claims to have reached 6900m on Dunagiri (7070m, and not climbed until 1939), and then climbed Changabang (6864m), the peak whose fierce granite spire dominates the Ramani Glacier. This ascent of Changabang (which was not officially climbed until 1974) is now given no credence; indeed, it was being questioned within 15 years of Graham’s trip. The claimed height on Dunagiri is also disputed: many believe it likely he got no higher than 6100m on a subsidiary ridge.

After his Garhwal climb Graham returned to Sikkim with Boss and claimed to have climbed Kabru (7349m) to the south of Kangchenjunga.

If true, Graham and Boss would have been the first men known to have gone above 24,000ft (7,315m), but that ascent is also discounted by most authorities, who believe that Graham actually climbed a peak about 1220m lower. It is not thought that Graham was a liar, his explorations being well documented. More likely his obvious inability to tell north from south and east from west, and his habit of making assumptions about what he was looking at (which owed more to wishful thinking than geography), meant he was genuinely mistaken about which mountain he was actually on.

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Chapter 4

The Slippery Slope

As already noted, early in the same year that Messner soloed Everest a Polish expedition made the first winter ascent of the mountain, while later in the same year another Polish team climbed the South Buttress.

Over subsequent years the world’s leading mountaineers made their way to the mountain, intent on finding newer and/or more difficult ways to the top: the Russians climbed a new route (the Central Pillar) on the South-West Face in 1982; an American team climbed the East (Kangshung) Face in 1983; the Czechs climbed the South Pillar in 1984, and in that same year a small Australian expedition climbed the Great Couloir on the North Face (‘White Limbo’), two men reaching the summit without supplementary oxygen. Two years later the complete Hornbein Couloir was climbed by the Swiss Erhard Loretan and the Frenchman Jean Troillet. The two men skied to the base of the face, then climbed to the summit in 39 hours, without using supplementary oxygen.

After an hour on the summit the pair glissaded to the base of the face in just 3½ hours.

In 1988 a Sino-Nepalese-Japanese expedition made simultaneous ascents of the northern and southern routes, the summit teams meeting at the top and descending by each other’s route to complete the first north-south and south-north traverses. There was also a live television transmission from the summit. The same year a new route was forged up the East Face to the South Col by a small Anglo-North American team climbing without Sherpa support or supplementary oxygen, the Briton Stephen Venables continuing alone to the summit by way of the SouthEast Ridge.

But not all attempts to reach the highest point on Earth, either by these new routes or along existing lines, were successful. In 1974 a postmonsoon French expedition attempting to climb the complete West Ridge was caught out by a sudden return of the monsoon, one Frenchman and four Sherpas dying in an avalanche, while another Sherpa, thrown 200m down the mountain by avalanche blast, also died. It was the worst

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128 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya death toll since 1970, but a pointer to the future: though only five climbers died between 1975 and 1978, there were six deaths in 1979, eleven in 1982, nine in 1984, seven in 1985 and ten in 1988. In 1989 one of the seven men killed became the 100th known fatality on Everest. The 1989 death toll included five Polish climbers, part of a very strong team attempting the West Ridge. Two reached the summit, but their retreat, and that of one of their colleagues from high on the mountain, was through deep snow and worsening weather. An avalanche swept the men to the Lho La: three were killed instantly, two others died of their injuries.

The lone survivor managed to reach the team’s Camp 1, but was injured and snow blind, having lost his goggles in the avalanche. Marooned at Camp 1, he radioed for help, but because of the conditions a rescue had to be made from the Tibetan side of the mountain. As the Chinese had closed the border in the wake of the furore over the Tiananmen Square events, some fine diplomatic footwork was required before a rescue team set out; nevertheless, the rescue team reached the now-starving Pole and brought him down safely.

Perhaps the most important expedition during this era, in terms of its contribution to our understanding of how the human body adapts (or fails to adapt) to extreme altitude, was the American Medical Research Expedition to Everest during October and November 1981. The chief objective of the expedition was to obtain measurements of human cardiac and lung function at altitudes above 26,000ft. An extensive scientific programme was successfully completed, including measurements on the summit of Everest itself. The expedition consisted of six ‘climbing scientists’, all strong climbers and medical doctors, who were responsible for carrying out physiological measurements at extreme altitude. A group of eight physiologists working in laboratories at Camp II (6300m) and Base Camp (5350m) rounded out the team of Westerners. Physiological testing was carried out at four sites on the mountain: Base Camp, Camp II, the South Col and the summit itself.

The aims of the expedition were primarily medical and physiological, but also included a simple, but very important, meteorological task that had not been done previously: the measurement of barometric pressure on the summit. The one value for barometric pressure obtained on the summit, 253mmHg (compared to the sea level average pressure of 760mmHg), was relevant to the expedition’s physiological investigations because it is this pressure that determines the partial pressure of oxygen in inspired gas and is thus a major deciding factor in how well the body is

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The Slippery Slope 129 oxygenated at the tissue, or cellular, level. It is appropriate to mention here that a barometric pressure measured at Everest’s summit is considerably higher than would be found if a measurement was taken in the same season at the same altitude at latitudes closer to the poles. The reason for the higher pressure on Everest is that barometric pressures 4-16km above sea level are very much latitude-dependent because of the presence of a large cold air mass that exists in the stratosphere above the equatorial regions (see Box in Chapter 1). Everest is ‘tropical’ enough (latitude-wise at least) to be influenced by these higher equatorial pressures.

One of the most interesting scientific findings of the expedition was related to the fact that as the climbers reached higher and higher altitudes, the gas pressure of both carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body fell – the former due to hyperventilation and the latter by simply breathing air with a reduced oxygen pressure. It was thus surprising to discover that once the climbers reached an altitude of about 6500m, there was essentially no further reduction in the body’s oxygen pressure when climbing to even higher altitudes. It seems that this occurs because hyperventilation becomes ever more marked at higher and higher altitudes, and all of this deep and frequent breathing tends to ‘defend’ the pressure of oxygen levels in the body (simply by moving great quantities of air in and out to allow for better oxygenation) so that they do not continue to fall. Not surprisingly, significant differences were found in expedition members’ breathing response to the hypoxia of high altitude – and those who had a more ‘brisk’ breathing response to hypoxia (i.e. breathed faster and harder) seemed to better tolerate extreme altitude than those individuals who only had modest hypoxia-induced breathing responses.

John B. West MD, PhD, the expedition’s leader, thankfully gave us the book Everest: The Testing Place,1 which details the above-mentioned science, in addition to many other investigations, carried out during this amazingly productive venture. It is written in a very readable manner, with the non-medic (especially) in mind.

Commercialism In 1961 Jimmy Roberts2 resigned as British Military Attaché in Nepal (or, by his own telling, effectively sacked himself after explaining to a brigadier how much he disliked him and being reported for ‘insulting’ a senior officer3). He then started a company offering treks in the Himalaya, his Mountain Travel trekking company becoming the blueprint for the

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130 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya journeys now enjoyed by thousands every year. Roberts was also responsible for persuading the Nepalese government to allow a number of lower peaks to be classified as ‘trekking peaks’, permits for which can be obtained more easily and at much lower cost than permits for other summits. The beginnings of Mountain Travel were inauspicious, taking three American ladies (Roberts denied that they were grandmothers when that tale became part of Nepalese folklore) on a trek to Everest in 1965.

During the years when Nepal closed its borders to climbing expeditions, Mountain Travel’s treks relieved some of the poverty that the closure of the Tibetan border and the lack of expeditions brought to the Sherpa people. In time, of course, other trekking agencies started up, and by 1975 the number of trekkers had risen from Roberts’ original 3 to over 12,500 annually.

As Nepal became easier to reach, and the access infrastructure improved, it was inevitable that some trekkers with climbing experience would be tempted to move on from the trekking peaks to the higher mountains. But while this is now often seen as the beginning of ‘commercial’ climbing, that entirely depends on the definition chosen for ‘commercial’. As early as 1904 the pioneering New York female climber Annie Smith Peck had tried (and failed) to persuade the makers of ‘Soapine’4 to sponsor an attempt on a South American peak. The British expeditions to Everest in the 1920s were financed, in part, by companies seeking to profit by association with (they hoped) a successful ascent. The classic expeditions of the 1950s that succeeded in climbing (most of) the 8000m peaks were, largely, national, that is, they were sponsored by national societies or groups with the blessing, and usually financial support, of government. But there was also private sponsorship: John Hunt’s book on the 1953 British Everest expedition has an entire Appendix (Appendix IX) acknowledging the assistance both of individuals and companies, goods from the latter being offered free or heavily discounted. The Broad Peak expedition, which as already noted marked a distinct change in expedition format, was funded by public and company donations with equipment supplied, in large part, in order to gain from the advertising potential that would derive from success.

Hermann Buhl in particular had a highly developed commercial sense when it came to the trip, not only from the point of view of offering publicity shots in exchange for equipment,5 but also in terms of earning a living by lecturing and producing books: in that sense Buhl was an early example of the professional climber – as opposed to the professional

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The Slippery Slope 131 mountain guide – already referred to in Chapter 3 as being seen in increasing numbers in the 1950s.

After the national expeditions had made the first climbs of the 8000m peaks, national funding was still largely responsible for early repeat climbs of Everest. The Bonington era on the peak was characterised by sponsorship from companies, but the idea of allowing a competent climber who wished to reach Everest’s summit to be ‘sponsored’ by the man attached to him by rope rather than by some corporation differs only by degree – though the actual size of the degree has become a fiercely debated topic. During the Golden Age of alpine climbing wealthy men had paid local guides to reach summits and some of the guides were as driven by personal ambition as they were by the money they received.

Dudley Wolfe paid his way on to the 1939 American K2 expedition (and paid many expedition expenses as well), and despite his limited experience reached a point high on the mountain. Wolfe’s ambition was to reach the summit, and his cash was responsible for Weissner and Pasang Dawa Lama almost doing so.

Then, in 1982 two Americans, Richard Bass and Frank Wells, each with the ambition of reaching the so-called Seven Summits,6 joined an American team led by Lou Whittaker (twin brother of Jim, the first American to reach the summit in 1963) attempting Everest from the north. The expedition was marred by the death, in tragic circumstances, of the female climber Marty Hoey, and failed at around 8400m. Having failed to summit again in 1983 and 1984, in the spring of 1985 Bass bought his way on to a Norwegian expedition to the south side of the peak, his cash overcoming the misgivings of team leader Arne Naess. This time, climbing with his climbing guide Dave Breashers (who had already reached the summit in 1983) and the Sherpa Ang Phurba, Bass was successful. The argument over whether Bass’s ascent was the first ‘commercial’ ascent seems hardly worth pursuing, as in the post-monsoon period of the following year the era of commercialism began in earnest. It was unsuccessful and two men died, one of them Swiss, the other a Nepalese Sherpa.

Bass and Wells, the latter in particular, were extremely wealthy and pursued their goal on a money-no-object basis. The people that followed them, while not needing to be in the same stratospheric wealth band, certainly needed to be well heeled. During the decade following the ascent of the 14 8000m peaks expeditions to Everest had continued to be expensive, high-profile events, but there had been a general move towards

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132 Everest and Conquest in the Himalaya lower budget, smaller expeditions, more in keeping with the mood of the world’s youth, and certainly with the hippie culture which had traversed India and arrived in Kathmandu. But the era in which commercial climbing on Everest developed was very different. In Britain the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan in America, ushered in an era frequently dominated by supply-side economics, which saw the power of trades unions reduced and tax incentives for private enterprise, particularly entrepreneurial endeavours, enhanced. A discussion on the value or otherwise of this rampant free marketeering with its reduced emphasis on society as opposed to individual desires – Thatcher famously maintained that there was no such thing as society – is beyond the scope of this book, but one consequence cannot be ignored as it had an effect on commercial climbing on Everest.

Mountaineering, particularly expedition mountaineering, had always largely been the preserve of the (usually educated) middle classes, those with the time and money to pursue costly and time-consuming activities.

As noted previously, the general improvement in the living standards of populations after 1945 led to a more cosmopolitan climbing fraternity, but when it came to buying a position on an expedition to Everest, it was, again, left to the middle classes with the time and money to indulge themselves. These people were keen to exploit new opportunities. Highrisk adventure travel was the sport of choice for a generation brought up in an era when high-risk adventure capitalism was the preferred option.

There were lots of possibilities for those seeking risk and adventure, but Everest was the ultimate trophy. It was also, of course, the ultimate risk, those joining a commercial expedition gambling a very large amount of money and risking their lives against the vagaries of weather and snow conditions. But despite the risks, soon after Bass and Wells and the first tentative commercial ventures, the flood gates opened and the mountain became a free-for-all, a situation aided by the Nepalese government’s realisation that their income could be considerably enhanced if they adopted the Chinese idea of selling permits to more than one expedition per season. Until 1987 the Nepalese sold a permit to one group for their side of the mountain, while the Chinese sold permits for each route on the north side. The Nepalese decision to follow the Chinese example led to an immediate increase in south-side traffic; when the flood of applications failed to slow, the demand being apparently limitless, both Nepal and China went one stage further, selling permits for teams wanting to climb the same route.