by Wade Davis
They turned back at midday, roping up as a precaution. Finch, though concerned about the possibility of another failure in the apparatus, took comfort in knowing that men on oxygen at extreme altitude could in fact survive a sudden, if brief, stoppage. The worst fears of the physiologists—that such a cessation would result in instant death—were unfounded. Still, the experienced mountaineer moved across the North Face with extreme caution, never more than a step or two in front of Bruce. A simple stumble could prove fatal, and both men were exhausted.
They reached the spine of the Northeast Shoulder at 2:00 p.m. and dropped four cylinders to lighten their loads. The clear weather was gone, and Finch thanked the fates that he had not been tempted to go higher on Everest. They trudged down the broken rocks of the stairway, even as violent winds whipped small clouds across their path. Mercifully, there was no snow, and in only thirty minutes they reached their high camp, where they found the good Tejbir sound asleep, wrapped in all three of their sleeping bags. They were much relieved to hear voices from the mist just below: the porters coming up to retrieve their gear. They shook Tejbir awake and instructed him to await the relief. Bruce and Finch then continued down, grateful to see, after but a few moments, the warmth of welcoming Tibetan faces.
But now the sheer weight of their trials fell upon them. Their bodies had reached the limits of the possible. Knees buckled as they staggered down the slope. Bruce’s feet were completely numb. He walked on stumps, with no feel for the ground. Finch said nothing but feared that his young companion might lose one or both feet to frostbite. When they finally reached the broken snows of the North Col, John Noel was there to greet them. General Bruce would famously describe the filmmaker as “the ever present Noel,” adding, “There is no more thorough member of the expedition than he.” This reputation came from moments such as this one. For four days and three nights Noel had maintained his vigil at Camp IV, scouring the upper slopes of the mountain with his distant lens as he tracked the movements of the men. He knew that climbers without food or support had never spent two nights essentially in bivouac at such heights. That Finch and Bruce had elected to go on, despite this ordeal, had astonished him, even as it had filled him with dread. He’d feared the worst when they were hours overdue. As clouds had swept over the Northeast Shoulder, he had burned, at intervals, piles of unexposed film as signal flares. When finally they stumbled onto the flat of the col, he had hot spaghetti and flasks of steaming tea ready for them.
Wakefield and Crawford had come up to the North Col on May 25, arriving just hours after Finch and Bruce had departed for their summit attempt. Despite his age and essential role as medical officer, Wakefield still saw himself as a climber. He and Crawford intended to have their own go at Everest, a plan that collapsed when Wakefield inadvertently overdosed his companion with morphine. As Wakefield later explained in a letter to his wife:
I have overdosed Crawford with morphia and am writing this while he is sleeping it off, hours after we should have started had we been able to go. We had not slept at all for 4 nights owing to the altitude, and we both thought that a good night’s sleep before our attack would do him good. I happened to have some morphia with me that I had been given for this very purpose. So I gave him 0.1 gm by mouth and told him to take another in an hour’s time [if] the first had no effect. He took the 2nd, had a magnificent night’s sleep, but is now far too sleepy to think of climbing even had the drink difficulty allowed us to go! I remember now hearing somewhere that high altitudes may reduce the doses of all medicines necessary. He’ll be alright in an hour or two, but it is dicky up with the attack.
Wakefield’s medical error may well have saved both their lives, for neither he nor Crawford was remotely prepared for the rigors of the mountain. Their aborted effort did have one serious consequence: with Wakefield and Crawford encamped at the North Col on May 27, there was no tent available for Finch and Bruce, who were obliged to continue down to Camp III. The indefatigable Noel escorted them, “nursing them safely,” as Finch recalled, in forty minutes to the base of the North Col. They reached the relative comfort of Camp III at 5:30 p.m. After two horrendous nights fighting to survive the storm, with no sleep or food for warmth and strength, they had from an elevation of 25,500 feet climbed 1,800 feet, only to descend more than 6,000 feet, all in less than eight hours. They were “dead, dead beat,” but even more famished. Noel served up a feast, four whole quails followed by nine great sausages, and still they asked for more. That night Finch took a tin of toffee to bed, tucking it away in the crook of his elbow, and slept without stirring for fourteen hours.
Finch had escaped serious harm, though the cold had penetrated the half-inch soles of his boots and three layers of socks to burn four small patches of frostbite on the skin, enough to make walking painful. Bruce’s feet were bad, the left one useless. Neither man had the strength to get off the mountain on his own. On the morning of May 28, a Sunday, they piled onto a sled and were dragged down the glacier by four of the porters. Once the ground became too rough, about halfway to Camp II, Finch hobbled, supported by one of the Tibetans, while the other three competed for the privilege, as they saw it, of carrying the indomitable Bruce on their backs. Courage, strength, equanimity, and perseverance were traits Tibetans both embodied and admired. As they all left the shadow of the mountain, young Bruce glanced back over his shoulder. “Just you wait, old thing,” he said, “you’ll be for it soon.”
Cadging food at every opportunity, with another great meal at Camp II, Finch and Bruce trudged back down to base camp, arriving just in time for lunch on Monday, May 29. News of their record climb had reached General Bruce the previous day, brought down the mountain by Noel and Somervell. No one could challenge the achievement. Finch and Bruce, as Percy Farrar of the Alpine Club would later write, had “added a page to the history of Everest that need fear no competition.” Douglas Freshfield, another iconic figure of British mountaineering, described the climb as “one of the bravest feats of mountaineering on record.”
On May 24, just days before the historic climb, Arthur Hinks had sent a petulant letter to General Bruce complaining that London had heard nothing of the expedition in four weeks; editors at the Times awaited three overdue cables. The first word to reach Hinks in response would be a copy of Finch’s account, written at the request of the general, which detailed with some precision the success of the oxygen party. In six hours, starting from their high camp, Mallory and his team had climbed a vertical distance of 1,985 feet to reach 26,800 feet, a rate of ascent of 330 feet per hour. At their highest point, they were one and an eighth miles from the summit and roughly 2,000 feet below it.
Finch and Bruce had ascended to their high camp at a rate of 1,000 feet per hour. During their summit attempt, they climbed at 900 feet per hour, nearly three times the pace of Mallory, in spite of carrying loads weighing more than forty pounds. Their final point was 1,700 feet below and half a mile distant from the summit. They had gone higher and much closer. Mallory’s party had had food, less severe weather, and spent but a night on the mountain. After two nights in bivouac, Finch and Bruce had set out on their climb half starved and half dead. Yet still they had achieved far better results. The difference could hardly be the experience of the men. Mallory, Norton, and Somervell were veteran mountaineers at the peak of their powers. Geoffrey Bruce was a novice, the untrained Tejbir most likely somewhat of an impediment to a climbing party. There was only one possible explanation. Knowing that his report would end up in the Times, Finch must have taken particular delight in writing his assessment: “The superior results obtained can only be ascribed to the fact that the weaker party made use of an artificial supply of oxygen.”
. . .
THE FATE of the expedition now hung on the opinion of the medical officer. Effectively there were two, Longstaff and Wakefield. At base camp Tom Longstaff, though still suffering from indigestion and insomnia, had recovered sufficiently to reassert his authority. He had been the first to greet Mallor
y, Norton, Morshead, and Somervell on their return in the late afternoon of May 23. As he saw to their injuries he had tried to lift their spirits, reminding them that they had performed heroically, breaking the long-standing height record by a stunning 2,000 feet.
Longstaff, a veteran climber, knew the dangers of the heights, what it meant to fail, the fine line between success and disaster. At thirty, climbing in Tibet, he had survived an avalanche that swept him 3,000 feet off a mountain by spending two nights in a snow cave at 23,000 feet. He had experienced directly how the brain suffers, how reason becomes impaired, how a body starved of oxygen becomes more susceptible to frostbite, how a climber’s strength and resistance weaken with every day spent at extreme altitude. The condition of the men returning from the higher camps disturbed him profoundly. Norton’s ear was bad; the top of it no doubt would have to be removed. The cold had entered his boots, damaging both feet. His heart had also been strained. Morshead was destined to lose three fingers, amputated at the final joint. When Geoffrey Bruce was carried into base camp on Monday, May 29, unable to walk, his feet severely injured, Longstaff decided to act. He resolved to give each man a thorough examination. “Must put my foot down,” he wrote in his diary. “There is too little margin of safety. Strutt agrees.”
That very day he submitted a full medical report to the general. Of all the men, only Somervell was fit. Morshead, suffering constant and severe pain, had to be evacuated immediately, accompanied by one of the medical staff. Norton and Geoffrey Bruce could barely walk. Neither could be expected to render further service. Strutt, too, was worn out, quite lost to the expedition. Finch was also weak, suffering from an enlarged heart. Mallory, with frostbitten fingers and a readily detectable heart murmur, was also deemed to be unfit. Longstaff put these opinions in writing, both to protect himself and to ensure that no man on the expedition be accused of cowardice. “Please impress on all,” he wrote to his old friend Younghusband, “that this adventure is the very deuce. The cold at high altitude and the lack of desire for food is hard to stand. The climbers are heroes and saints. They are facing the utmost limits of endurance. It’s harder than Polar work. And the climbing is none too easy; it’s not an easy peak.” Longstaff was clearly of the opinion that the expedition had shot its bolt. It was time to go home. What was the point of launching another assault on the North Col, he argued, when both the fitness of the men and the conditions on the mountain, with the monsoon imminent, precluded any possibility of reaching the summit?
Mallory was not about to give up. For nearly a week he had waited at base camp for word from the mountain and the fate of the oxygen attempt. “I think they will certainly break our record,” he wrote to Ruth on May 26, three days after his return. “They have had very good weather. But I don’t expect them to have reached the top at the first attempt … I shan’t feel in the least jealous of any success they may have. The whole venture of getting up with oxygen is so different from ours that the two hardly enter into competition.”
This was surely an instance of a man protesting too much, and it was not the first time Mallory had glossed over the truth in letters to his wife. Finch and Bruce had hardly benefited from finer weather. Even as Mallory wrote this note, they were trapped in bivouac for a second day in conditions unlike any ever endured by a climber. The men at base camp were not blind. If the efforts to climb without supplemental gas had been such a distinct endeavor, why did Mallory, upon learning of Finch’s success, make immediate plans for a third attempt with every intention of using the apparatus? Mallory, in truth, simply wanted to be the first to summit Everest. He did not really care whether it was with or without oxygen. As for medical concerns, Mallory dismissed the messenger. “Longstaff is in one of his moods of bustling activity,” he told Ruth in a letter on June 1, “when he becomes tiresome, interfering and self-important.”
The medical challenge resolved itself. On May 30, the very day that Wakefield returned to base camp from the higher camps, Longstaff contracted severe conjunctivitis and for several days was unable to perform any duties. Finch, according to his diary, “heard a pretty little plot concocted in the tent next to me.” Mallory was arranging for Wakefield to reexamine Finch, Somervell, and himself, all with the goal of foiling Longstaff and securing a clean bill of health. When Mallory’s heart was checked the following day, Wakefield declared a satisfactory recovery, having found no evidence of any abnormality. Wakefield had his own motivations, as he wrote his wife, Madge, on May 31: “I am deeply chagrined to say that I am too old for the final summit attack … But no man of my age has been higher than me, in fact I am the only one who has stuck it up to 23,000 feet, and the others of my age who have been so high, are now on the sick list and returning home quam celerrime [as fast as possible] along with others who have not been so high.” Wakefield no doubt sensed and resented the disdain with which others, as we know from their diary notes, viewed his capabilities and contributions. He had hoped to make a mark with Crawford, which was why he was at the North Col on May 27, when prudence would have had him at Camp III, awaiting the return of Finch and Bruce at a place far better situated and equipped to deal with a medical emergency. It was a quixotic notion in every way, but for Wakefield, broken in the war, the mountain offered redemption. Only Mallory had the influence to sway General Bruce, and counter the weight of Longstaff and Strutt, who were both opposed to a third assault.
Wakefield spent the afternoon of May 31 in the general’s tent, writing and reading reports, and debriefing Bruce on the results of the medical examinations of that morning. The general, with one eye on London and the expectations of the Everest Committee, agreed to a third attempt. It was not an ill-considered decision. On May 27 John Macdonald, the son of David Macdonald, the British trade agent at Yatung, had arrived at base camp with mail and money for the expedition. He brought word of the political situation in Lhasa. British arms, rifles and ammunition, were finally arriving, but there was no stability. Charles Bell, the reluctant advocate of the Everest efforts, had left the Tibetan capital in October of the previous year. It was by no means certain that the Tibetan authorities would grant permission for another expedition. If the British team backed off now, there might not be another opportunity.
John Noel, present when Bruce made his decision, later cast it in the language of war: “In a struggle between man and mountain, such as this, as in any other battle … the moral effect of turning away from the enemy, after having once challenged and opened the fight, is fatal.” General Bruce did not see it in this way. Writing to Hinks on June 1, he expressed concern about the weakness of the men and questioned whether any climber could endure more than one full exposure to the mountain. “I shall be very much relieved indeed,” he confessed, “when this last attempt is finished because to tell you frankly I am afraid of Everest under the present conditions with the monsoon only within days of us.”
To placate Longstaff, who was furious that his advice as both physician and mountaineer was being ignored, the general authorized his old friend to leave immediately for India, accompanied by the sirdar Gyalzen, in order to escort Morshead and Strutt to proper medical care. Traveling light by way of the Serpo La to Lachen, they might well reach Darjeeling in twenty days. Morshead would have to ride with his mutilated hands strapped to his shoulders, and his damaged feet stretched out before him in improvised stirrups. He would need opium for pain but was otherwise fit for the journey. The walking wounded, Norton and Geoffrey Bruce, would go with Tejbir to Kharta, where General Bruce intended to rest the main body of the expedition before undertaking the long journey home across Tibet. Once the general’s decision was announced, a certain calm came over a previously anxious and restive camp. It was now a simple matter of each man to his duty.
Outwardly Mallory was sanguine, his only concern being the coming monsoon, which the lama of Rongbuk had predicted to break on June 10. But privately he was torn between caution and a growing obsession. On June 1 he wrote to his good friend David Pye, sharing d
oubts he would never express to Ruth: “David, it’s an infernal mountain, cold and treacherous. Frankly the game is not good enough: the risks of getting caught are too great; the margin of strength when men are at great heights is too small. Perhaps it’s mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt … It sounds more like war than sport—and perhaps it is.”
On Saturday, June 3, having bade farewell to their injured comrades, Mallory, Finch, and Somervell started for Camp I, preceded that morning by Wakefield and Crawford, who had gone up in support. Finch, weaker than imagined, could hardly walk and broke down completely when they arrived, just after 3:30 p.m. He was out, and would return to base camp the following day. Keen to be reunited with his wife, he gladly accepted the general’s offer that he leave with Longstaff’s medical party, scheduled to begin the long trek back to Darjeeling on June 5. It was an odd reversal of fortunes. One day heading for the summit of Everest, the very next joining a party of invalids, clip-clopping their way home.
The snow began to fall late on Saturday, the day of their arrival at Camp I, and continued all through the night and the following day. The climbing party, reduced now to four men, huddled in a small stone hut with walls half the height of a man and roofed with the outer fly of a Whymper tent. It was a miserable shelter in which to wait out the opening squalls of the monsoon. The one thought on everyone’s mind was whether it made sense to be making an attempt in such weather. As no one wanted to give voice to the obvious, they spoke little. John Noel’s arrival in late afternoon did little to break the monotony.
The morning of June 5 dawned with some promise, and though the snow was wet and heavy, in six hours they pushed through all the way to Camp III. Morale did not soar when they arrived in the mist to find every tent flat on the ground and all the stores buried beneath eighteen inches of new snow. Fortunately, the next day was clear and bright, the warmest any of them had experienced at the high camp, and though there was little wind they managed, with the help of Morris, who had been ordered up by the general, to dry out most of the gear. The sun did its work on the snow, and with the intense heat by day and the cold by night, the surface hardened. Their plan was to move up to the North Col on Wednesday, June 7. Wakefield, for the moment, would remain in reserve at Camp III, awaiting Mallory’s prearranged signals from the col indicating what supplies needed to be brought up by him on June 8. Crawford and Noel would accompany Somervell and Mallory as far as Camp IV, along with fourteen porters carrying food, fuel, and ten cylinders of gas and two sets of the oxygen apparatus. Somervell and Mallory would climb without oxygen as far as their high camp, and use the gas only once above 25,000 feet. This arbitrary decision suggests that while Mallory had no compunction about using oxygen, he had yet to absorb the lessons of Finch’s record climb.
