by Michael Gill
They retreated from the couloir and next day began a new route up the Lhotse Glacier. November was the beginning of winter with its penetrating cold, unceasing winds and shortening days. The sun was slow to reach into the Cwm and early to leave; not surprisingly, the morale of the Sherpas was low. When a runner arrived with mail, the climbers found that most of it had been stolen in India. Chevalley noted, ‘Gross is in a poor way with insomnia and anxiety; Buzio is too euphoric; Dyhrenfurth is ill; Spöhel is depressed; Reiss is enigmatical.’10
On 19 November, Lambert, Tenzing, Reiss and seven Sherpas set off for the South Col. They were using the new oxygen sets successfully and hoped to make a summit attempt. Fighting the wind, they pitched five tents on the Col. The cold, the wind and the altitude prevented sleep. Lambert described what happened next:
Day broke, but the gale went on … Eventually we came out of our tents, prepared our sacks and at 11.30 set off in the direction of the south-east ridge to establish Camp 9. But the gale and the cold paralysed us gradually. We painfully crossed the Col and ascended the glacier facing the camp. Flattened by the wind against a wall of snow were the remains of an eagle …
We were pierced by the cold despite all our equipment. Tenzing was ill in his turn, the Sherpas almost ceased to advance and we halted at about 26,600 feet. It was impossible to go on in such conditions and at such a height. We left the equipment where we were with the provisions and oxygen bottles and went down again to the Col where we abandoned the greater part of the 130kg we had brought up … This was flight …11
As they retreated off the mountain, the Swiss could look back on a year of exceptional achievement, but with deep regret that they had come close but not close enough. Given the Draegar oxygen sets in spring, they might have been successful. They knew, too, how the British would benefit from their experience. They had shown that the best route on the Lhotse Face was the glacier, not the couloir. There had to be a well-found camp on the South Col with good stoves for melting snow and enough oxygen to give climbers the energy to use them. Without effective oxygen sets, an expedition would fail. They had also learnt that despite their strength at altitude, Sherpas are not supermen; they too collapse, feel fear, lose confidence; the Swiss had needed twice as many of them. And finally they had seen from close up that the route to the South Summit had no insurmountable barriers. Only that last 300 feet to the summit remained unknown.
– CHAPTER 14 –
Organising Everest, 1953
The failure of the Swiss put the British in pole position for 1953, but there were many unknowns. There was the question of leadership for a start. Eric Shipton was the obvious choice. He was the only contemporary mountaineer well known to the general public. His books had made him a legend, and his public lectures filled the halls. So when he finally emerged from Nepal in late July to attend a meeting of the Himalayan Committee on the question of leadership, he was appointed despite his own suggestion that a younger person might be better.
It seemed the only sensible decision, but there was some unease, particularly as the details of the Cho Oyu and Swiss expeditions became known. The Swiss experience made it clear that a summit attempt had to be launched not from the Western Cwm but from the South Col or higher. A considerable weight of oxygen, tents, food and fuel would have to be carried to the Col, and this would require leadership skills of a high order. The problems of logistics and of using the skills of climbers and porters to best advantage made the ascent of Everest more like a military operation than a leisure activity.
All of this flew in the face of Shipton’s own beliefs. He disliked big expeditions and was incapable of the planning they involved. Making climbing a race between competing nations was anathema to him. Until now he had believed that it would be better not to climb Everest at all than to use oxygen. The Cho Oyu group added their discontents, particularly Secord, Pugh and Riddiford, who attributed their lack of achievement to Shipton’s inadequate leadership.
Ed was more circumspect in public, but in the privacy of his diary he too was critical. After meeting the Swiss in Namche he wrote:
In my opinion Eric is now quite unsuitable as an Everest leader as instead of a powerful combining and shaping factor in the expedition he disturbs people’s confidence, saps their enthusiasm and fills them with doubt entirely because he has now little or no confidence in his own judgments and is jealous of positive judgments of others.1
He made the same point to Jim Rose, his NZ Alpine Club colleague (and future father-in-law), though pointed out that his close relationship with Shipton would be advantageous when the British selected their team for 1953:
Eric would like to see a party of four British and four New Zealand climbers going to Everest next year – at least that’s what he told me. He knows there is a body of opinion in England opposed to the inclusion of any New Zealanders and certainly not more than two but Eric thinks he can handle them …
I don’t think there’s much doubt that Eric is far from the ideal big party leader – he realises this himself – but his influence is pretty terrific and even in Nepal and India he is treated by officials as someone of considerable importance.2
Ed never went public with these sorts of statements about Shipton. He was too fond of him, too much an admirer of his feats of climbing exploration, too aware of how much he owed to him. But his strongly developed competitive instincts were alight now that he saw a chance to be part of the expedition to make the first ascent of Everest – perhaps even in the summit team. He was, after all, stronger at altitude than anyone else in the Cho Oyu team. It was something to dream about.
There might have been reservations about Shipton, many of them unexpressed, but on 28 July he was offered the leadership and he accepted. Next day he wrote to Ed:
My Dear Ed,
There was a Him. Com. Meeting yesterday at which next year’s trip was discussed in general terms. I was asked to lead it; I said I wasn’t too keen … Then I was sent out of the room while they discussed it. I was pressed to take it on (it’s a great pity they didn’t see me in the Himalayas this year as they wouldn’t have been so keen) and I said I would, providing I wasn’t necessarily expected to go high. Then we went on to discuss the party – I said I wanted you and George and Harry Ayres and this was agreed … We are in the process of selecting a Secretary/Organiser, possibly John Hunt. Now could you three get together and draw up an exhaustive and detailed list of proposals about equipment and food. I’d like your ideas about boots, tents, sleeping bags, woollen clothing, etc and also about ice pitons, rope etc, and apparatus for crossing crevasses …
I have suggested a party of 9 including myself …
Yours, Eric.3
Whether this casual approach might have led to success if Shipton had remained as leader no one can say. Mention of oxygen is conspicuous by its absence. Ed claimed later that he, Charles Evans and Charles Wylie would have filled any organisational vacuum, but that was in old age when he had become more oracular.4
August 1952 went by with the doubts about Shipton only growing. When the Himalayan Committee began to think of alternative leaders, military personnel came to mind. They were experienced in logistics, and in the absence of any current war might be available immediately and free of charge. Two names were at the top of their list: Colonel John Hunt and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Wylie.
Wylie was an officer with the Brigade of Gurkhas who had spent most of the Second World War in the testing environment of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. He spoke Nepali fluently and he was also a climber. As overall leader, Wylie was too understated to be a convincing candidate, but he gladly accepted the position of organising secretary in London and transport officer in Nepal, a position he carried out alongside sardar Tenzing Norgay. Unusually among expedition members, he did not write a book, so remained relatively unsung, but he played an indispensable role.
John Hunt had a far more impressive Himalayan record than he was generally given credit for. His military career ha
d been in India and Europe, so he was largely unknown to the post-war generation of English climbers. He was born in 1910 in the Indian hill town of Simla. Four years later, he lost his father to the war in France. He was educated at Marlborough, where he excelled at French, German and rugby, and by his mid-teens was climbing regularly in the Alps. Coming from a family of soldiers, he applied for Sandhurst where he entered first of his year in 1928, and was again first when he passed out as a senior under-officer. In 1931, commissioned into the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, he moved to Calcutta where Bengalis were becoming restless under British rule, a movement which earned Hunt’s sympathy.
When on leave from his regiment between 1931 and 1938, he went into the Himalayas where, with friends, he reached 24,500ft on the unclimbed Saltoro Kangri in the Karakorum, and attained the 23,350ft south-west summit of Nepal Peak just north of Kangchenjunga. He became a member of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society in 1935, and was accepted for the 1936 expedition to Everest only to be turned down by a doctor who heard a cardiac murmur – and reputedly told him he should take care when climbing stairs. Climbing to 24,500ft in the Karakorum would seem to be strong evidence that the murmur was of the common benign variety rather than an indication of heart disease, but the decision was not open to appeal.
Hunt returned to Britain in 1939, and was made chief instructor of the mountain warfare school in Braemar. In 1944 he commanded a battalion in the invasion of Italy, where he was awarded the DSO. His regiment subsequently took up a peace-keeping role in Greece, and this earned him a CBE.
Transferred after the war to Germany, he continued climbing in the Alps. Here one of his climbing partners was Basil Goodfellow, the secretary of the Himalayan Committee who in 1952 was wracked with uncertainty about the wisdom of committing next year’s Everest expedition to the leadership of Eric Shipton. Goodfellow recognised in Hunt qualities the expedition needed: leadership skills in forming a team, organisational ability, a quick intelligence that could sum up what a situation required, fierce determination, extensive climbing experience – and Hunt’s Himalayan experience exceeded that of any potential member apart from Shipton’s.
Hunt expressed delight when sounded out privately in July 1952 about the possibility of a role such as deputy leader, but the situation was awkward. Shipton had already accepted the position of leader, with Charles Wylie as his deputy. How did one add a second deputy leader and, for that matter, one who had met neither the Himalayan Committee nor Shipton? A meeting set up at short notice between Hunt and Shipton illuminated the yawning gap between their visions for the 1953 expedition. Shipton’s preferred style of organisation was relatively informal, relying on inspired improvisation to solve the climbing problems; the expedition was not a race, not a competition, not a situation in which national drum-beating played a part. Hunt, on the other hand, saw 1953 as the last chance for the British to make the first ascent of their mountain; and for this to happen, planning had to be intensively focused on every detail. The mood of the Himalayan Committee was that every possible step to achieve success must be taken. The prestige of England was at stake.
The axe fell at a meeting of the Himalayan Committee on 11 September, when Shipton was surprised to notice that ‘Leadership of the Expedition’ was an item on the agenda. It was an embarrassment for the committee too, but they had come to the decision that Hunt would be no less than co-leader. This was an awkward compromise. It might perhaps have worked with Shipton as the éminence grise beside Hunt the planner, but Shipton’s response was to tender his resignation. It was a sad end for a man who aroused great affection in those who came to know him.
Looking back on the leadership controversy, Shipton admitted that he was ‘not an efficient organizer of complicated projects’:
Even so, the chagrin I felt at my sudden dismissal was a cathartic experience which did nothing to increase my self-esteem. I had often deplored the exaggerated publicity accorded to Everest expeditions and the consequent distortion of values. Yet, when it came to the point, I was far from pleased to withdraw from this despised limelight; nor could I fool myself that it was only the manner of my rejection that I minded.5
Hunt chooses his team
There could be no mistaking the intensity of John Hunt’s planning when he sat down at an Everest desk heaped with correspondence in the premises of the RGS in South Kensington. Top of his list was selection of the team. For a start there were the five who had proved themselves in 1952: Charles Evans, Tom Bourdillon, Ed Hillary, George Lowe and Alf Gregory. Tenzing Norgay would lead the Sherpas and also be a lead climber. Charles Wylie was Transport Officer and Organising Secretary. Mike Ward, instigator of the 1951 reconnaissance expedition, was appointed doctor, reserve climber and assistant physiologist. Three Himalayan newcomers were Wilf Noyce, George Band and Michael Westmacott. Griff Pugh was physiologist and adviser on food and fluid intake. James Morris was correspondent for The Times; Tom Stobart was movie cameraman.
Ed received his invitation in late October:
Dear Hillary, I believe that Eric Shipton has written to tell you about the change in the leadership of the 1953 Everest expedition … it is most unfortunate that it should have happened in this way, and very bad luck on Eric Shipton. However, you will, I am sure, agree with me that there is only one way of looking at it – we must go ahead with the planning with a firm determination to get to the top. This is an interim letter to tell you that I am busy with the selection of the party and that I very much hope that you and Lowe will be ready to join the party …
Yours sincerely, John Hunt
He replied on 2 November:
Dear Hunt, Thanks for your letter. We were naturally very disappointed when we heard that Eric Shipton was no longer leading the party to Everest next year. Quite apart from personal feelings on the matter we owe Shipton a great deal of gratitude for his generous inclusion of New Zealanders in his two last expeditions.
However, as you say, the main thing is to climb Everest and in this effort we can assure you of our wholehearted co-operation. We appreciate very much your invitation to be members of your party and will do our best to more than justify our inclusion.6
Evidence of Hunt’s planning ability was not long in appearing, for the post brought a series of detailed plans which Ed ‘reluctantly had to admit seemed to hit the nail on the head every time …’7
A letter which invited him to be part of a three-man planning group secured Ed’s loyalty and untiring hard work for the whole of the expedition.
Dear Ed … Planning. I hope that you, with Charles Evans, will accept the job of being part of a small planning group or if you prefer it, my counsellor in the making of plans. I shall, of course, call on advice from other members of the party as necessary; but I do not intend to make a habit of having full Party meetings to discuss plans, as this becomes too controversial and too unwieldy …8
The ‘proposed expedition appointments’ included:
Leader and planning: Hunt, assisted by Evans and Hillary.
Transport: Wylie
Oxygen: Bourdillon, assisted by Evans
Medical and hygiene: Ward assisted by Evans
Physiology: Pugh assisted by Ward
Messing: Pugh assisted by Band9
Ed was flattered by the proposal:
Dear Hunt, Your letter arrived yesterday and was, I must admit, something of a surprise even though a very pleasant one. I accept the responsibilities with much pleasure. I find that as the weeks pass and the time shortens before my departure for India that my enthusiasm for the task continually increases. It will be a great thrill to get to grips with the mountain.10
On 5 November, Hunt had released a 10-page Basis for Planning which proved to be a remarkably accurate blueprint for the expedition.11 Its opening sentence read: ‘The ultimate aim of the Expedition … is the ascent of Everest during 1953 by a member or members of the party …’
As Hunt himself said, this might be self-evident, but he was emphasising
that there was only one goal that mattered. It was not making a film, or writing newspaper articles or books, or doing physiological research. It was getting to the top. He was aware that on Cho Oyu neither the expedition leader nor its members seemed to be clear about their aims. In 1933 and 1936, Finch had tartly commented that the goal seemed to have been to climb as high as possible on Everest without using oxygen. And in 1938 the object had been to prove that a small expedition could place its climbers almost as high on the mountain as a large expedition. What became apparent in 1953 was that its leader had an intense singleness of purpose, knowing that he and his expedition would be judged solely by whether a climber reached the summit of Everest.
A table shows how much the British had learned from the Swiss.
Swiss Spring 1952 British Spring 1953
Climbers 9 12
High-altitude Sherpas 14 28
Oxygen 20,000 litres 193,000 litres
Weight of stores & equipment 4 ½ tons 7 ½ tons
Arrive in Namche 14 April 25 March
Man-days on & above South Col 18 33
