Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (37 page)

Day in and day out, the scientists pedaled doggedly on the stationary bikes. With infinite patience they worked with fiddly instruments like the Haldane analyzers, which required steady hands, skill, and concentration—tasks which today would be done instantly with machines. There were no computers to record and process their results—everything had to be calculated and copied out by hand.
¹⁰
Demanding even at sea level, this work was harder still at altitude, where concentration, motivation, and intellectual sharpness were depressed by the lack of oxygen. It was Pugh’s awareness of the challenges he and his team faced that led him to attach so much importance to providing a comfortable environment. No discomforts should distract them from maintaining the highest standards. The sheer range and quality of the research they carried out are illustrated by the thirty-six scientific articles, many published in top academic journals, which came out of the expedition, and none of their findings have been refuted.

Pugh looked forward, when the winter was over, to rejoining Hillary for the spring attempt on Makalu without oxygen. From a physiological viewpoint, Everest at 29,029 feet would have been a more-interesting climbing target than the 27,825-foot Makalu; eight men had already climbed as high as 28,000 feet on Everest without oxygen. But it would still be exciting to compare the performances of the climbers who were just back from sea level with those of the climber-scientists who had spent the winter at the Silver Hut.

Edmund Hillary visited the scientists once during the winter. Delayed by bad weather, he flew into Mingbo by Bell helicopter on January 5, having returned the Khumjung Yeti scalp to its home village on the last day before he would forfeit his 8,000-rupee deposit. Feeling “none the worse for his hectic round the world trip,” he told them that the experts he visited in London, Chicago, and New York had pronounced the Khumjung Yeti scalp to be a man-made artifact, fashioned from the skin of the serow goat.
¹¹
As promised, he brought with him the shortwave radio, which was now greatly needed for ordering spare parts for the scientific equipment. Hillary had said he would be staying for six days, but he flew out again after only twenty hours, having dropped a bombshell about his plans for the spring attempt on Makalu.

He told Pugh that, instead of the full-scale expedition, he now intended to mount a classic lightweight “lightning” assault on Makalu—a spontaneous, sparsely equipped, flexible, Shipton-style expedition. This meant that Pugh’s physiological program would have to be dropped, though he and his climbing scientists could still join the climb. In the interests of keeping weight to the minimum, Hillary had also decided against taking any oxygen for rescue operations, though he would take a tiny supply for medical purposes. The 50,000 liters of rescue oxygen that Pugh had procured for the Makalu assault would be left behind in Kathmandu, where it was in storage.

Pugh was appalled. That Hillary wanted to ax the last phase of the physiological program was upsetting enough. But the idea that he was planning to attempt an oxygen-free ascent of the formidable Makalu without any rescue oxygen seemed crazy, and Pugh was not willing to allow the men of the winter team, for whom he felt personally responsible, to put themselves at such risk.
¹²
Twice now when he had disagreed with Hillary, Pugh had confronted him with “straight talk” and threats to resign. This time he was more circumspect, at least to begin with. Saying nothing to Hillary’s face, he waited until after the New Zealander had flown out before drafting with the greatest care a letter that he hoped would persuade Hillary to change his mind. Sensing Hillary’s desire to be seen as an expedition leader of substance, Pugh tried to offer him a tempting alternative.

Hillary could achieve his goal without abandoning the physiology, Pugh argued.
¹³
He could take a team of climbers to make their own “genuine non-oxygen attempt [on Makalu] unencumbered by physiologists.” Pugh and a small science group with much reduced equipment would form an independent physiological camp nearby and finish the last phase of the research completely separately. The scientists would take the oxygen for their experiments. That way, “you would still have the safeguard of the rescue oxygen in the background,” he said, and “you would have fulfilled your original programme to the letter, to the great satisfaction of us all.”

To abandon the physiology would be “a breach of faith” with the MRC, the Wellcome Foundation, and all the physiologists at the Silver Hut, he added. The work on Makalu was to have been the crowning glory. “But for this part of the programme, it would not have been possible to obtain support for the physiological team in the first place . . . Mountains like Makalu will be climbed again one day, but it seems unlikely that it will ever again be possible to carry out physiological studies of the kind we are equipped to undertake.”
¹⁴

The calm tone of the letter belied the strength of Pugh’s feeling. And when Hillary refused to budge, Pugh wrote to Edholm in London, asking the MRC’s permission to withdraw from the expedition. He also wrote to the managing director of Field Enterprises, threatening to resign, and warning that Hillary was about to commit an act of “gross negligence.”
¹⁵
Of Hillary’s decision to abandon the physiology, he claimed: “This is a direct breach of the agreement with myself and the scientific party, [as well as] the Medical Research Council and all the other bodies who have supported the expedition.” Of Hillary’s refusal to take rescue oxygen to Makalu, he explained: “Physiological and medical opinion today is strongly opposed to the idea of attempting to climb Himalayan peaks of 28,000 feet without oxygen, unless oxygen equipment is available for rescue purposes; and no responsible scientific body could possibly support such an expedition without it.” He felt deeply unhappy about being part of such a venture: “Should an accident happen on Mt. Makalu, it will not be sufficient for me as scientific leader to shift the blame for the absence of rescue oxygen apparatus on to Sir Edmund. It will be said that I should have insisted on the original agreement being carried out. Sir Edmund Hillary himself would be considered guilty of gross negligence.”

Assuring Field Enterprises that he was “doing his best” to get Hillary to change his mind, he told them that if Hillary would not alter his plans, the entire scientific team would be forced to retire from the expedition. Knowing that Field Enterprises was extremely protective of its public image, he added that, if Hillary returned to the original plan, “no more will be said about this matter.”

Back in London, Edholm was horrified. From the outset, the MRC had been deeply concerned about the dangers of attempting high mountains without oxygen, and had only agreed to support the expedition on the express condition that oxygen equipment to mount a full rescue operation would be available for the Makalu assault. He quickly wrote back, reassuring Pugh that he was acting entirely correctly: “We are all unanimous that the [MRC] will back you to the hilt in your stand and that you should feel completely free to withdraw from the Makalu adventure if Hillary persists with his fantastic plans.”
¹⁶

At last, after sticking to his position for some seven weeks, Hillary changed his mind and went back to the original plan.
¹⁷
He did not explain his reasons, but, apart from any other considerations, he needed the climber-scientists from the Silver Hut team for his assault on Makalu. Pugh’s panic was over. Again he had achieved what he wanted, though this was the third time that he had had to go to the brink to get it.

Pugh said nothing about these problems to the young scientists at the Silver Hut, since his main concern was to keep them happy and focused on their work. One of the things that sustained him throughout the winter was his awareness of how well his side of the expedition was going.

At the end of February, the research was so well advanced that Ward, Gill, Bishop, and Romanes—led by Ward—were able to take time off to make the first ascent of the technically difficult Ama Dablam (22,349 feet), which would not be climbed again for nineteen years.
¹⁸
While they were on Ama Dablam Hillary arrived back in Mingbo with six wives of members of the expedition. He had returned to Kathmandu in February with extra equipment, two fresh climbers—Leigh Ortenburger from California and New Zealander John Harrison—and his own wife, Louise. The ladies’ trek, which left Kathmandu on March 2, was Hillary’s own pet project, and Louise was in the forefront. Jim Milledge’s wife Betty, Barry Bishop’s wife Lila, Ortenburger’s wife Irene, and Peter Mulgrew’s wife June were also in the party.
¹⁹

Pugh’s wife Doey had been invited to join them, but she had declined. She wasn’t strong enough. Nevertheless, Pugh had begged her to come out to Kathmandu so he could fly down on the Red Cross plane and spend a few days with her. His abiding awareness of her presence back in England, supporting him and understanding his point of view, had been a source of strength to him. Having repeatedly unburdened himself of his worries in his letters to her, he longed to see her in person.

Responding to her husband’s entreaties, Doey organized a trip to Nepal with her elder sister Hermione. But after all her years of being left at home, she was not content merely to visit Griffith in Kathmandu. Arranging for the children to be taken care of, she had planned an expedition of her own—a grand tour of India, taking in all the major sights, and culminating in the holy city of Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas, where she and Hermione would attend a course on transcendental meditation given by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was not the first time in her life that she failed to be completely open with her husband, neglecting to tell Griffith about her ambitious plans. Perhaps she did not want to worry him, or perhaps she felt he would oppose her visit to the Maharishi.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was an Indian yogic guru who set out on a world tour in the late 1950s to introduce the technique of “transcendental meditation” and “the healing powers of cosmic consciousness” to potential followers. Appealing to people like Doey and Hermione, who were dissatisfied with conventional religion but still wanted to find spiritual meaning and purpose in life, he quickly attracted a substantial following in the UK. Doey and Hermione did not know it at the time, but they were at the vanguard of spiritual fashion. In 1968, the Maharishi would become world famous when the Beatles joined his movement and made the pilgrimage to the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh.

On March 19, while the rest of the Silver Hut team joined Hillary and the ladies at Changmatang, Pugh accompanied an injured Sherpa, Gumen Dorje, to Kathmandu on the Red Cross plane, where Pugh brought him to the hospital. Afterward, he met up with Doey and Hermione in the bar of the Royal Hotel in Kathmandu, drank a small glass of whiskey, and promptly passed out.

He felt “very slack and sleepy” throughout his three-day stay in the capital. Nevertheless, seeing Doey was an enormous relief, and, after flying back to Mingbo, he sent her an unusually warm, appreciative letter: “Seeing you for these 3 days has been simply wonderful. Please try to forgive all my grousing, but being able to talk over my difficulties with you has helped & supported me, and I think I shall be able to carry on now to the end in a good spirit.”
²⁰
He added that he thought she had been looking “very well and relaxed.” “We must try and make sure you have proper holidays in future and don’t go on working the way you do month after month without a change and a rest.”

He had no idea that she was about to set off on a personal adventure of her own.

23

Disaster on Makalu

Makalu, which is roughly 30 miles from Mingbo, could be approached by two possible routes—a sixteen-day trek up the Arun Valley and the Barun Valley, or a much shorter high route which involved crossing the Mingbo La and two further 20,000-foot passes. Hillary had originally intended to send half his team to Makalu by the low route, but opted instead to take his entire party and all his equipment over the high route, which could be covered in four or five days. The disadvantage was that the fifty Sherpas he had employed would have to trek back and forth three or four times, chaperoned by the climbers. The carry would take almost as long as the low route, but would need fewer Sherpas and would therefore be cheaper.

Hillary’s preparations for the trip were interrupted when an entirely unexpected political fracas blew up over the recent ascent of Ama Dablam, due, perhaps to a change of government. Delayed in Kathmandu for two weeks sorting it out, he finally landed back at Mingbo, tired, anxious, and unacclimatized, but determined to make up the time they had lost. By then the carry to Makalu was already well under way. Climbers had already cut ice steps and fixed ropes up the vertical fluted ice slopes leading to the Mingbo La.
¹
Teams of Sherpas had ferried sixty loads to the top of the pass, and a camp had been established on the Hongu Glacier on the other side. Across the glacier, the second even higher and equally precipitous pass led to the high Barun Plateau, from which the final demanding pass gave access to the Barun Glacier, which drains the west face of Makalu.

Pugh himself was aware that he “would probably not be fit enough” to tackle the route to Makalu. Already, he wrote, he “could only just keep going steadily at 19,000 feet & cannot expect to do long days at 20,000 feet without risk.”
²
The winter had taken a toll on his health, and the long days of working had been making him so tired that he was sometimes incapable of doing accurate analysis. Hillary responded sympathetically: “I was anxious for Pugh to cross the Barun if possible and supervise the scientific work [on Makalu], but his long period at high altitudes was undoubtedly affecting him (he was a good deal older than the rest of us), and he doubted if it would be wise for him to attempt the journey.”
³