by Ed Viesturs
In mountaineering, I believe, that’s a quality that’s even more valuable than skill or nerve.
6
The West Ridge
It took only three years to disprove Sir Edmund Hillary’s prognostication that after the first ascent, no one would ever bother to climb Everest again. In 1956, a strong Swiss team put four climbers on the summit, and two other members made the first ascent of Lhotse, at 27,940 feet the fourth-highest peak in the world. That expedition approached the mountain as the British had in 1953, retracing their route through the Khumbu Icefall up to the South Col and on to the top of Everest. High on the Lhotse Face, part of the team diverged from that route to bag their secondary goal—or perhaps their primary, since the Swiss got to the top of Lhotse five days before they summitted on Everest.
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, all approaches from the north were off-limits to Western climbers. So the north side, on which the seven British attempts in the 1920s and ’30s had been prosecuted, would remain closed for another thirty years. Closed, that is, to all but the Chinese themselves—and to their on-again off-again allies, the Soviets.
Herein lies perhaps the strangest of all Everest mysteries. Persistent rumors over the decades have surfaced to the effect that a Soviet team composed of thirty-five climbers and five scientists attacked Everest from the north in 1952—the year before Hillary and Tenzing made the mountain’s first ascent. Those rumors, which were substantive enough to appear in the pages of the London Times, had the team leaving Moscow on October 16, which seems absurdly late in the autumn. (If you’re going to make a postmonsoon attempt on Everest, you need to start the hike in in August, as we did in 1988, in hopes of getting high on the peak by late September or early October.)
According to the reports, six climbers established a high camp at 26,800 feet on the northeast ridge. Then disaster struck. None of the six was ever seen again, despite exhaustive searches by their teammates. The whole party supposedly regained base camp on December 27, with winter in full force.
What makes this fugitive expedition all the more suspect is that later Soviet authorities denied that it had ever taken place. Of course, the eternally secretive Soviet Union might have covered up what could only be regarded by mountaineers the world over as a fiasco of the highest magnitude. Yet from those rumors leaked to Western newspapers and magazines, even the names of some of the lost climbers emerged—Datschnolian (the leader), Lanitsov, Alexandrovich, and Kazhinsky.
I don’t know what to think about the whole business, and I’ve never felt any compulsion to look into it deeply. For that matter, I can’t imagine how one would research such an event or nonevent, since Soviet sources from the early 1950s are not exactly open books even today. In his definitive history of Everest, Walt Unsworth grants the fugitive expedition a kind of plausibility:
The motive was certainly strong enough: had the Soviets been successful in snatching Everest it would have been an outstanding propaganda coup, comparable with Sputnik I. The political will to attempt the coup was not lacking either, particularly as this was during the Stalinist era and at the height of the cold war.
My own instinct is to regard that 1952 expedition as either a hoax or an elaborate rumor founded on misinformation. Although Russians had climbed a lot in the Pamirs and Caucasus, by 1952 the country had never launched an expedition to any of the major Himalayan peaks. And you’d think that a forty-man expedition would leave plenty of identifying trash behind, but as far as I know, no subsequent parties on the north side have found a single “artifact” that could be clearly linked to a 1952 Soviet team. It’s possible that six climbers falling to their deaths from a high camp would never be found—there are quite a few Everest victims whose bodies have never been discovered. But the American 1999 expedition, on which Conrad Anker discovered Mallory’s body, also found an oxygen bottle high on the northeast ridge that they proved had been left by a Chinese expedition in 1975. There’s junk all over Everest, and you’d think that some of the trash that a big Soviet team might have discarded in 1952 would have Cyrillic writing on it!
The whole affair remains murky and bizarre. If no such Soviet expedition was ever launched, what was the source (or sources) of the rumors and reports, which go into such specific details as the date of leaving Moscow and the names of four of the dead climbers? An exploration hoax is usually the work of a single individual, whether delusional or simply dishonest, such as Dr. Frederick A. Cook with his bogus 1906 claim of the first ascent of Mount McKinley. If the 1952 expedition was a hoax, it must have had multiple perpetrators.
I guess we’ll never know.
• • •
We do know that a massive Chinese expedition attacked Everest from the north in 1960. But the fundamental truth as to what it accomplished remains, more than fifty years later, as uncertain and controversial as the shadowy Soviet venture. The expedition account was published in a Chinese propaganda journal called China Reconstructs, and a translation of the leader’s report appeared in the British Alpine Journal.
According to these accounts, the astounding total of 214 expedition members traveled to the Rongbuk Glacier in March 1960. One-third of the delegation, which included both men and women, was made up of Tibetans. In the spirit of true Communist egalitarianism, acccording to China Reconstructs, the team included “workers, peasants, P.L.A. [People’s Liberation Army] men, serfs who had just been freed from serfdom in Tibet, teachers, students, scientific researchers, medical workers and government functionaries from various parts of the country. In the expedition, there were seventeen Masters of Sports, eighteen First Grade Sportsmen and a greater number of Second Grade Sportsmen. The whole group averaged 24 years of age.” The leader of the team was one Shih Chan-chun.
Over the course of the next two months, this veritable army established a series of seven camps up the East Rongbuk to the North Col, then up the north face and northeast ridge. Progress was painfully slow. Simply getting to the North Col nearly defeated the team. The advance guard of three, all Masters of Sports, took three days to climb 1,800 feet, and still gave up 160 feet short of the col. As Unsworth writes, “From the Chinese accounts, which always lack essential details, it is not possible to determine whether the reconnaissance party were ultra-cautious or merely inept.”
Bouts of activity on the mountain were interrupted by lulls during which all 214 members retreated to base camp. Somehow, though, on May 3, three climbers pitched tents at a Camp VII at 27,900 feet, just below the daunting Second Step. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this claim, but that camp remains today one of the highest ever established on Everest (as opposed to open bivouacs by climbers caught by storm or darkness).
That same day, May 3, the leader Shih Chan-chun and a climber named Wang Feng-tung tried to climb the Second Step. The account of this assault is cloaked in propagandistic vagueness: “We pressed on with great determination and care,” wrote Shih, “boldly using the necessary mountaineering techniques.” By 9:00 p.m., the duo had allegedly climbed all of the Second Step but for a final ten-foot-high vertical cliff of rock. Again according to Shih, the two men dug a hole in the ice in which they bivouacked, taking turns sitting in each other’s lap. They decided not to use supplemental oxygen, despite temperatures of minus 40 Celsius (equal to minus 40 Fahrenheit). In the morning, “Our physical condition . . . was perfectly all right except for sheer exhaustion.”
Once again, however, the entire team headed down to base camp. It was not until ten days later that the principal climbers headed back up the mountain, restocking camps as they went.
By the night of May 23, four climbers had reoccupied Camp VII. The next day, they tackled the Second Step. This time, all four were breathing supplemental oxygen. They got to the final ten-foot wall. One climber, Liu Lien-man, fell four times as he tried to scale the blank cliff. After the fourth try, he was too exhausted to make another attempt.
It’s at this point (if not sooner) that the Chinese account begins
to strain credibility to the breaking point. Another Chinese, Chu Yin-hua, now tried to lead the ten-foot cliff. To do so, he supposedly took off his boots and socks and attacked the wall barefoot! Even this desperate tactic failed to solve the crux.
Finally, the four men resorted to a climbing technique that dates back to the nineteenth century: the shoulder stand. The exhausted Liu crouched against the cliff as Chu (with his boots back on) clambered up his legs and stepped onto his shoulders.
He trembled all over, short of breath, but clenched his teeth and steadily stood up, with much heroic effort. Liu helped Chu Yin-hua to the top of the slab. Finally with the help of a rope paid out by Chu from above, the three others climbed the cliff one after another. Only when they had reached the top of the Second Step did they find that it had taken them three hours to climb this three-metre slab.
Liu was too exhausted to go on. The three Chinese—Liu, Chu, and Wang Fu-chu—and a Tibetan whose name is alternately given as Gonpa or Konbu, now held what they called “an open Communist Party meeting.” They decided that Liu would stay where he was, at the top of the Second Step, while the other three went for the summit. “After the three others left, Liu Lien-man, at the risk of his life, switched off his oxygen in a heroic, self-sacrificing spirit to save the last few dozen litres of oxygen for his comrades assaulting the summit.”
For some reason, the men had no flashlights. Yet they managed to navigate “with the help of the twinkling stars and the reflection of the snow.” Reduced at times to crawling on all fours, they ran out of bottled oxygen at 28,950 feet. The following exchange took place:
It was Wang Fu-chou who spoke first: “We are shouldering the glorious task of storming the summit. Can we turn back?”
“Press ahead!” was the determined answer from Chu-hua and Konbu.
The Tibetan took the lead. At 4:20 a.m., he stood on the summit of Everest. His partners joined him.
In the darkness, it was impossible to take photos that might have proved the truth of the Chinese ascent. The three men spent fifteen minutes on top, planting a Chinese flag and burying a bust of Mao Tse-tung in the snow. (Neither object has since been found, but that does not in itself disprove the claim, as the snows and winds of summer and winter can drift over or tear loose anything left on top of a Himalayan peak.) As they descended, the three summiteers found Liu still alive. All four men got back to Camp VII, then, despite their exhaustion and frostbite that would later cost them amputated toes, immediately headed down the mountain.
• • •
Thus the Chinese claimed to have made the third ascent of Everest, and the first from the north. At once, Western experts cast doubt on the ascent. As Ad Carter wrote in the American Alpine Journal, “The details are such that mountaineers in nearly all parts of the climbing world have received the news with considerable skepticism.”
Photos from Camp VII published in various journals were intensely scrutinized and compared with photos taken in the 1930s. The gist of the analysis was that the Chinese indeed had reached an altitude of 27,900 feet, where they said they had pitched their highest camp. But the tale of conquering the Second Step seemed far-fetched. Surviving an open bivouac without bottled oxygen at 28,200 feet? Climbing barefoot at that altitude? Crawling to the summit in the dark without flashlights?
As mentioned in chapter two, in 1975 another Chinese expedition bolted a ladder to the crux cliff at the top of the Second Step. Not only those summiteers but every subsequent climber who got to the top via the northeast ridge scaled the ladder rather than the cliff itself. Until 2007, that is, when Conrad Anker got permission temporarily to remove the ladder and free-climbed the Second Step, rating it 5.10.
In 1960, 5.10 was at the upper limit of the best rock climbers near sea level on cliffs such as Yosemite and the Shawangunks. Neither the Tibetans nor the Chinese were known for their rock climbing skills, and it seems doubtful that they could have surmounted a 5.10 pitch (even with a shoulder stand) at 28,200 feet in subzero cold. What’s more, the objection Anker raised to the notion of Mallory climbing the Step in 1924 applies to the Chinese effort in 1960 as well. Even if they managed to get up the cliff, how did they get back down it? The Chinese report is silent on this subject. As Anker pointed out, there are no places just above the Second Step where a decent rappel anchor could be placed. And you don’t down-climb a shoulder stand!
There’s yet another reason to doubt the Chinese claim. On the opposite side of Everest at the same time, an Indian team was trying and failing to reach the summit. They reported that on May 25, the weather was bad, and that on the twenty-sixth the monsoon broke in earnest. This is in flat contradiction to the “twinkling stars” that supposedly lit the Chinese crawl through the night of May 25–26 to the top of Everest.
Given all these reasons to question the Chinese claim, it puzzles me that Unsworth, who raises many objections, still concludes, “There seems little doubt now that the Chinese did climb Everest in 1960.”
On this matter, my co-author, David Roberts, and I tend to part ways. David has always had a nose for the fraudulent and years ago wrote a book called Great Exploration Hoaxes. He’s told me that he doesn’t believe there’s a chance in hell the Chinese accomplished what they claimed in 1960. In contrast, I tend to give climbers the benefit of the doubt. There’s a long tradition in both mountaineering and exploration of taking climbers and voyagers at their word—unless, as in the case of Frederick Cook and Mount McKinley, the evidence of fraud is simply overwhelming. I’m not willing to go on record as calling those Chinese propagandists liars. It’s within the realm of the conceivable, as Unsworth states, that they did indeed make the first ascent of Everest from the north in 1960. Exactly how they did so would be interesting to learn—I sort of wish I could have been there to see how they might have done it.
When I climbed the Chinese ladder in 1990, I had a good look at the Second Step. It was clear to me that it would be very difficult at best to climb this cliff at sea level with proper rock shoes and warm weather, let alone at 28,240 feet in temperatures below zero, wearing bulky high-altitude gear. Even with the ladder, it was quite a struggle for me without supplemental oxygen. The ladder is more or less vertical, not leaning into the wall at an angle, which makes climbing it strenuous and awkward.
As with the Russians in 1952, I guess we’ll never know the truth—unless somebody digs the bust of Mao Tse-tung out of the summit snows.
• • •
It may seem curious that Americans showed so little interest in Mount Everest before the 1960s. Over the decades, leading American mountaineers had made important contributions to climbing in the great ranges. The first ascent of Minya Konka in western China, a remote mountain once rumored to be higher than Everest, was pulled off in a brilliant tour de force by a four-man American team in 1932, with Terris Moore and Richard Burdsall reaching the summit. (Minya Konka was one of the few great mountains in the world climbed on the first attempt, and Chinese authorities later tried to discredit the well-documented American triumph.)
The first ascent of Nanda Devi in 1936, which for fourteen years would remain the highest summit yet reached, was organized by four young Americans who invited four more senior Englishmen along on the expedition. It was the two Brits, Bill Tilman and Noel Odell, who reached the top, but the Americans, particularly Charlie Houston and Ad Carter, played crucial roles in this smoothly orchestrated ascent.
The three American attempts on K2, in 1938, 1939, and 1953, paved the way for the Italian first ascent in 1954. In the 1950s, another pair of American expeditions made breakthroughs in the Karakoram. The 1958 expedition to Gasherbrum I, led by Nick Clinch, succeeded in placing Pete Schoening and Andy Kauffman on the summit. That was the only one of the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks whose first ascent was achieved by Americans. Two years later, another American team made the first ascent of Masherbrum. Though slightly lower than 8,000 meters, at 25,660 feet, Masherbrum was a formidable and dangerous challenge that had previously t
urned back such world-class mountaineers as Don Whillans. On July 6, Willi Unsoeld and George Bell reached the summit, followed the next day by Nick Clinch (once again the expedition leader) and the Pakistani Jawed Akhter.
Two attempts on 8,000ers in the 1950s that included Americans have faded into the limbo of almost-forgotten exploits. The first attempt ever made on Makalu, the world’s fifth-highest mountain, was undertaken by an American team led by Will Siri in 1954. The climbers reached a shelf at 23,300 feet before being turned back by storms. Makalu’s first ascent would come the next year at the hands of a crack French team led by the Annapurna veterans Lionel Terray and Jean Couzy.
And in the autumn of 1955, an international team led by the German-born American Norman Dyhrenfurth attempted Lhotse. Among their members were three Americans: Fred Beckey, George Bell, and Dick McGowan. The team made an admirable effort, reaching 26,600 feet—only 1,300 feet short of the summit—before being defeated by cold and high winds. The intended summit push would have been made by Beckey and the Swiss climber Bruno Spirig. It was a Swiss team the next spring that made Lhotse’s first ascent.
By 1960, Dyhrenfurth, who would become a kind of professional leader of large-scale Himalayan expeditions, had his eye on Everest. It would take him and others two and a half years to organize what became the American Mount Everest Expedition (AMEE). And when it finally came together, it would amount to the most complex and expensive American climbing expedition ever launched anywhere, before or since. (Most expensive, if you adjust 1963 dollars to reflect later inflation.) In the 1960s, nationalistic efforts to climb the highest peaks were the norm, and high costs were taken for granted in other countries as well as America. Think how much money the United States spent on its Apollo program, just to get the first men on the moon!
Dyhrenfurth’s rationale was that only big expeditions had a good chance of succeeding on 8,000-meter peaks. According to James Ramsey Ullman, the AMEE’s official historian, during the planning stages Dyhrenfurth and Charlie Houston had a lively debate about big-versus-small. To Houston, a huge crowd on Everest would violate what he called “the true mountaineering spirit.” Ullman later explained Dyhrenfurth’s thinking:
