Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (4 page)

The scientists who had been debating the issues since the early 1920s were just as divided. Oxford professor Georges Dreyer, who had designed the oxygen equipment used by British fighter pilots in World War I, believed that oxygen was necessary for a safe summit assault.
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The head of another Oxford department, Professor John Scott Haldane—perhaps the most eminent physiologist of his day—disagreed, declaring that there was “every reason to hope that, apart from the physical difficulties, men could with the help of acclimatisation get to the top [of Everest] without oxygen.”
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But the younger generation of academics tended to disagree.
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The oxygen taken to Everest in 1921 was not used.
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It was first tried in 1922 on the second expedition, at the instigation of George Finch, who was considered by the then president of the Alpine Club to be one of the best mountaineers he had ever seen.
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The team, led by Brigadier General Bruce, included such legendary climbers as the formidably handsome George Mallory, Edward Norton, Howard Somervell, and Tom Longstaff, all stalwarts of the English Alpine Club. Finch, an outstanding chemist at Imperial College, and later, a fellow of the Royal Society, applied his rigorous scientific mind to the preparations for the expedition. Almost by accident he discovered the benefits of oxygen. In an effort to improve the climbers’ Primus stoves, which did not burn well at high altitude, he visited Oxford University, where Professor Dreyer had one of only two pressure chambers in the country for simulating high altitude.

While working in the pressure chamber, Finch breathed oxygen through a tube to compensate for the thin air, and was amazed by how much better and more alert he felt with it, than without. On the back of this revelation, Dreyer convinced him that oxygen was the key to success on Everest, and a slightly reluctant Everest Committee was persuaded to provide it.
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The breathing equipment was based on the standard RAF apparatus, modified by Finch with the help of Dreyer and RAF experts at Farnborough.
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By the time they reached base camp, many of the climbers already suspected that Finch’s heavy, clumsy oxygen sets would spoil the pleasure of climbing and unbalance them on difficult terrain. They also argued that it would be unsportsmanlike to use oxygen. Finch pointed out that they would probably view oxygen as acceptable if it came in the form of a pill, and tried in vain to persuade them that it was no more of an artificial aid to climbing than boots or Thermos flasks.
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When several climbers reported that the weight of the sets neutralized any perceptible benefits from the oxygen, the news was welcomed by the skeptical as evidence that oxygen was of no use anyway.

Unfortunately Finch fell ill and was unable to take part in the main push for the summit in 1922, which was undertaken without oxygen by Mallory, together with Norton, Somervell, and Major H. T. Morshead. They reached 26,800 feet.

By the time Finch recovered, all the experienced climbers were exhausted, and he was forced to make the first-ever oxygen-assisted bid for the summit of Everest with a novice climbing partner, Geoffrey Bruce, the transport officer. They failed, but set an altitude record of 27,320 feet, ascending higher in bad weather than the stronger main assault team had climbed in better weather without oxygen.
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The record only lasted until 1924, when it was beaten by Norton climbing without oxygen, but the achievement made a deep impression on George Mallory.

Finch was an outspoken character, unpopular with the rest of the Everest team. He had consistently been refused membership to the Alpine Club, and while his record climb in 1922 finally gained him acceptance as a member, he was excluded from the next Everest expedition in 1924 because of a dispute with the Everest Committee.
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In his place, the committee selected Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, a handsome, membership-worthy Oxford undergraduate. Julie Summers, Irvine’s great-niece and biographer, admitted she was baffled about “why Sandy was ever considered as a possible candidate for the 1924 expedition. He was so much younger than any of the other expedition members . . . he was sorely lacking in real mountaineering experience, and his height record to date was 5,800 feet, some 23,200 feet lower than the summit of Mount Everest.”
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Irvine, a third-year chemistry student, was put in charge of oxygen because he was “rather good with his hands.” With no real experience he made fundamental changes to the apparatus Finch had prepared for the expedition, while simultaneously writing home to a friend: “I really hate the thought of oxygen. I’d give anything to make a non-oxygen attempt. I think I’d sooner get to the foot of the final pyramid without oxygen than to the top with it . . . Still, as I am the oxygen mechanic, I’ve got to go with the beastly stuff.”
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As “climbing leader” on the expedition, Mallory planned the summit assaults and chose which climbers would take part.
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He never admitted to being influenced by Finch, yet he decided to use oxygen for his final attempt on the summit, selecting the novice Irvine as his climbing partner. “Irvine has done the principal engineering on the [oxygen] apparatus,” Mallory explained to his wife, “so Irvine will come with me.”
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On June 8, 1924, Mallory and Irvine set out on their final climb with Irvine’s modified equipment, never to return.

There are many who hold to the romantic view that Mallory and Irvine—or Mallory alone—may have reached the summit before dying on the way down. But there are cogent reasons why this was unlikely. Mallory and his team had spent the best part of the preceding month at high altitude, undertaking grueling maneuvers (without oxygen). As a result, Mallory told his wife, “the physique of the whole party has gone down sadly.”
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On top of this general loss of condition, Mallory had been suffering from persistent stomach problems and a severe sore throat, “with bursts of coughing fit to tear one’s guts . . . headache and misery together.”
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He doubted his fitness to take part in the second (oxygenless) summit attempt of June 1–2, but joined in regardless. When that failed, he went on to make his third attempt less than a week later, without recuperating at lower altitude in between.

The route to the summit from the northern side is difficult even for modern professional climbers.
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Mallory was tackling it accompanied by an inexperienced partner who was suffering from “the prevalent throat trouble” and “appalling sunburn,” and had spent the whole of the previous week at the punishing altitude of 23,000 feet.
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They had, at best, a meager and uncertain supply of oxygen; in fact, the expedition leader, Edward Norton, suspected the equipment might have had “some mechanical defect.”
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Without an appreciation of the need to keep the body hydrated and without modern lightweight equipment, the probability that they succeeded must be virtually nil.
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There is a complete lack of evidence that either of them did—only wishful, romantic speculation.

Following the deaths of Mallory and Irvine, oxygen was not used for a summit attempt on Everest again for twenty-eight years. Finch never returned to the Himalayas, but was always present on the sidelines, furiously castigating later Everest teams for failing to make proper use of oxygen, and for indulging in their “futile” debate about the ethics of using artificial aids to climbing.
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However, oxygen was not the only problem. Everest mountaineers could not agree when it came to acclimatization—the gradual process of adjustment to the lack of oxygen at altitude.
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Many of the unpleasant symptoms of oxygen shortage, such as headaches, nausea, sleeplessness, disturbed breathing, fatigue, and loss of appetite are alleviated, if not entirely eliminated, by acclimatization.

Some early Everesters believed it was essential to ascend the mountain slowly, allowing time for acclimatization. The 1933 team, led by Hugh Ruttledge, paused for a few days at each camp on the way up. Ruttledge reported that this resulted in better fitness and improved climbing performances. But Tom Longstaff, medical officer on the 1922 Everest expedition, declared himself “an unbeliever in the fetish of acclimatisation,” arguing, “It is far better to try to rush the peak with men who are under-acclimatized than to lose perhaps the only chance of good weather.”
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There were further disagreements, too. In the 1920s, Finch claimed with remarkable prescience that climbers continued to acclimatize up to a height of roughly 21,000 feet. However, above that—and certainly above 23,000 feet—the advantages of adaptation were outweighed by the physical deterioration caused by the altitude: Sleep would always be fitful, and it was impossible to recover from fatigue or to regain a lost appetite, resulting in a rapid decline in health and strength. Therefore, time spent at or above 23,000 feet, Finch argued, should be kept to an absolute minimum.
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In 1933, Ruttledge’s team ignored Finch’s advice and spent an extended period at 23,000 feet. They descended in extremely poor shape, claiming they had not known “how long it was safe to go on acclimatising.” “We have learned our lesson,” the expedition doctor, Raymond Greene, admitted.
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But the lesson was not learned. The leading climber Frank Smythe, who took part in the Everest expeditions of 1933, 1936, and 1938, rejected the idea that time spent at camps above 23,000 feet should be minimal: “Contrary to the belief of some, recuperation of physical energy is possible at a height exceeding 27,000 feet, and I would go even farther and say that for a period of two or three days at least, acclimatisation more than counterbalances deterioration at this altitude.”
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And the Everest veteran Noel Odell—the last person to see Mallory and Irvine alive—refused to accept that the debilitating effects of extreme altitude could outweigh the benefits of acclimatization, insisting that: “Acclimatisation to an altitude of 27,000 feet has been demonstrated, and there seems no valid reason why it should not be possible to 28,000 feet, or to the top of Everest.”
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Acclimatization issues aside, rations were a further problem. The leading climbing manual of its time,
Mountain Craft,
written by Geoffrey Winthrop Young, an influential member of the Alpine Club, recognized that, because high altitude suppressed the appetite, climbers should be provided with “pleasant luxuries that go down easily.”
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“Food that is not palatable or eaten with pleasure is of little benefit,” he emphasized.
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This was affirmed by Raymond Greene, the Everest doctor in 1933: “Not only must all the food [on Everest expeditions] be of the highest quality, but the individual tastes of every member must be studied with the greatest care and without any regard for economy.”
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Accordingly, the early expeditions took large quantities of food with them, including delicacies such as foie gras and truffled quails, together with supplies of wine, champagne, and whiskey. However, Greene complained that expedition organizers often failed to apply their own principles. In 1933, for instance: “There were plenty of complaints about food. The choice had been left to the secretary in London who had asked us all for our suggestions and then took no notice of them . . .”
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In the 1930s an influential group of climbers rejected the lavish approach. Pioneering a new lightweight style of expedition, consisting of just a few skilled climbers supported by a handful of local Sherpas, the renowned climbers Eric Shipton, Bill Tilman, and Frank Smythe adopted the principle of eating local food at lower and intermediate altitudes, and taking supplies from England only for the high-altitude stages. But as local foodstuffs were often in short supply, the climbers frequently went hungry.

Uncharacteristically, Tilman and Shipton took professional advice on high-altitude rations from an expert in nutrition, but the advice did not take into account the fussy appetites of mountaineers at high altitudes, nor did Tilman and Shipton follow it completely.
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When leading the 1938 expedition, Tilman pared down the food to an absolute minimum to keep the weight of the baggage as low as possible, causing his team to complain bitterly of hunger and to blame the plague of ill health that bedeviled the expedition mainly on the inadequacy of the food.
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As early as 1923, Finch pronounced it vital to eat the right food at the highest camps, and recommended that “high-altitude food parcels” be planned and prepacked in England.
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Again, his advice was ignored. Fifteen years later, after four more unsuccessful expeditions, Frank Smythe, apparently unaware that he was only repeating what Finch had said long before, suggested that high-altitude rations should be carefully prepared in advance and taken up the mountain in “small, labelled boxes.” In reality, however, they were far from carefully planned: “The usual procedure is to plan out some food for high-altitude camps, and when one gets to Camp Three, one lumps as much as one can remember of it into a rucksack and takes it up.”
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Everyone recognized that diet was important, but this did not lead to concerted action. Time after time climbers descended from periods at altitude with wasted muscles and haggard faces, drained of energy and having invariably lost large amounts of weight.

Even more important than poor diet was the inadequate consumption of fluids. Tom Longstaff, argued that “[t]he loss of body fluids by evaporation is, in my belief, a grave element in mountain sickness. Thirst is a terrible trial at great altitudes . . .”
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Dr. Hingston, medical officer in 1924, recognized that in addition to evaporated sweat, high-altitude climbers lost large amounts of water by exhaling warm, wet air from their lungs and breathing in dry, cold mountain air in its place.
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He suggested that dehydration might be one of the key causes of the high-altitude deterioration that undermined the performance of climbers.
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