Edmund Hillary--A Biography

by Michael Gill

  The expedition was led out of its entrapment by John Claydon in the Auster float plane. After a risky take-off down a dog-leg shaped pool in the pack ice, he was able to find a lead to the north and then east and so into open water. Without this vital reconnaissance, which on 20 January was already almost too late, the expedition would have failed before it had even reached a site for its Shackleton Base. Once north into these leads, they were soon travelling in open water but they had lost a crucial month.

  On 30 January they found a landing site in Vahsel Bay on a mile-wide bench of thin sea ice adjoining an ice slope leading up to the ice shelf that would be a secure site for their hut. Their troubles were not over yet. Two days after unloading had begun, a storm from the north forced Theron to stand out to sea while big waves flooded supplies stacked on the ice edge. When the wind dropped and the ship moored alongside again, the men worked around the clock emptying the holds and towing its contents to the foot of the inland ice slope. There was still hauling to be done from sea ice to hut site, but on 7 February the north wind again forced Theron to head for the open sea, this time without a chance to return.

  As those aboard, including Ed, drew away from the eight small figures waving forlornly from the ice, the enormity of the tasks confronting the wintering party were apparent. The consequences of losing that month in the pack ice were now starkly clear. That was when the whole party would have sledged supplies to the hut site, built the hut, stored a supply of seal meat for the dogs for winter, and set up the instruments for the scientific programme. Now all this had to be done by only eight people in colder and less stable weather. An overhanging worry was a storm that would break up the sea ice and threaten the loss of supplies not yet moved to high ground. The storm came on 20 March and blew for seven days. By the end of it, 300 drums of fuel, a tractor, most of 25 tons of coal, a boat, most of the dog food and many engineering stores had been lost to the floor of the Weddell Sea.

  The winter the eight men endured was grim even by Antarctica’s demanding standards. Their story is told in Eight Men in a Crate, based on the diary of medical officer Rainer Goldsmith. Antarctic enthusiasts liked to see the Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) as the last expedition of the Heroic Era, and right from the beginning these eight men earned their place in this august company.

  The Ross Sea Party builds Scott Base

  As Theron sailed back to Montevideo in February 1956 Ed could be thankful for Fuchs’s invitation to join him in this brief encounter with the harsh Antarctic. In his diary he noted that the number of Ferguson tractors for Scott Base should be increased from two to four, and fitted with Norwegian full tracks. His experience had shown that although the TAE tractors worked well dragging loads across flat ice, their small halftracks were useless on steeper slopes. By contrast, the full tracks of Weasels or Sno-Cats coped with ease. On a trip to London later in 1956, he and Bob Miller visited the Ferguson factory in Norway which made full track vehicles for use in the Arctic, and ordered them for Scott Base. Planning continued in New Zealand throughout the rest of the year. Ed and Louise’s first daughter, Sarah, was born on 29 June.

  In December 1956 the New Zealand party sailed south into the Ross Sea in a wooden ship that had begun life in 1944 as an American netlayer before being bought by the British for the Falkland Islands Survey. After a decade she was on the discard list, but a refit in Southampton and a renaming to Endeavour was enough for the New Zealand Navy to buy her for transporting people and freight to the yet unbuilt Scott Base. On the voyage from the UK to New Zealand she had leaked badly in the Bay of Biscay, causing damage to expedition supplies. Now she survived a fearful storm south of New Zealand, but on 3 February Ed noted in his diary, ‘Land ahead, Erebus and Terror … It was wonderful in the warm sun and fresh air speeding along through the blue seas and all the time the two great peaks getting closer and closer …’7

  The land was Ross Island, on the south coast of which the Americans had built McMurdo Base adjoining the Ross Ice Shelf. Based on his study of Scott’s records of 50 years earlier, Fuchs, in London, had suggested that the best route for his expedition as it dropped off the Polar Plateau would be the Ferrar Glacier, which came down to the west coast of McMurdo near Butter Point. Fuchs also believed this would be the best site for Scott Base, a recommendation supported by geophysicists because it would be free of magnetic interferences from Mt Erebus.

  But when Ed in the Endeavour arrived in McMurdo Sound in January 1957, he found Butter Point more difficult to access than he had anticipated. The Americans, in their role of good neighbour, had sent their powerful icebreaker to open a channel through the sea ice, and that first night Endeavour tied up alongside the Glacier. This was the flagship of Rear Admiral George Dufek, commander-in-chief of America’s huge Operation Deepfreeze which had already built its main base on Ross Island close to Scott’s old hut. Dufek had at his command around the Antarctic seven shore stations, three icebreakers, three cargo ships, a fleet of Globemaster and Neptune planes, 1000 men and a budget of $250 million. In a long and distinguished naval career, Dufek had served in the Second World War and the Korean War, and had been with Admiral Byrd in the Antarctic. He came to like Ed, and during 1957–58 used his massive resources to help whenever he could. As journalist Douglas McKenzie wrote, he came to regard the whole TAE ‘with baffled affection’.8

  Ed gladly accepted an invitation to dine aboard the Glacier, where Dufek expressed his doubts about their plans. On a reconnaissance by helicopter next morning, Ed saw what Dufek meant. Butter Point was hard to reach, and once the sea ice had gone out was cut off from everywhere. A couple of days later, Ed was back in a helicopter looking at a site on Ross Island recommended by Dufek. This was Pram Point at the southernmost tip of the island where it has permanent access to the ice shelf.

  It seemed such an obvious place to build. There was room for the whole of their planned base. An airstrip for their Beaver and Auster aircraft was only half a mile away. The main ice airstrip handling flights from Christchurch was within four miles. The next day an American bulldozer lumbered over and levelled the few irregularities in the site. Five days later, the first of six huts had been built using prefabricated panels ordered from Australia to a design developed in their Antarctic bases.

  Ed wrote to the Ross Sea Committee (RSC), notifying them of the change of base site, and in return received from Bowden a letter written in a large flowing hand:

  Dear Ed, We followed the progress of Endeavour with keen interest and suffered with you all the pangs of seasickness in the buffeting you received … Now today your signal has come advising that you have decided to establish the base at Pram Point on Ross Island. Needless to say I am surprised at this change of plan. I would have thought there would be obvious advantages in being on the mainland, where you would not be dependent on, or affected by, the condition of bay ice, as well as being so many miles nearer to Ferrar Glacier. However you are on the spot and know all the factors, and will have weighed one thing up against another; and I have no doubt that you had weighty reasons for making that momentous decision … Meantime I send kindest regards and very best wishes … to each and all of your expedition and summer party and the Ship’s Company.

  God keep you all,

  Yours Sincerely, Charles Bowden9

  There is here the first twinge of discomfort as the chair of the RSC notes that his leader in the field does not necessarily follow the plan drawn up in London.

  Finding the route to the Plateau

  There was one more task before the autumn cold of March closed in, and that was to establish the vehicle route to (and from) the Polar Plateau, and fly fuel and other supplies to what became known as Plateau Depot, 280 miles from Scott Base.10 Reconnaissance of the Ferrar Glacier had shown that it was impassable for TAE Sno-Cats, but geologist Bernie Gunn had been taken on a long American flight to examine other glaciers coming down from the Plateau. He was intrigued to find that a feature marked on the map as Skelton Inlet was in fact ‘a gr
eat wide glacier … there were odd crevasses but it obviously gave relatively easy access to the Polar Plateau which none of the others did’.11 Ed had confirmed these findings on a more recent flight and now dog teams were flown in to find a route up the glacier at ground level. The scale was vast. A hundred miles of glacier and 8000 feet of height separated them from their destination. The Plateau when reached was a terrain of gently undulating ice and snow the size of Europe, and in most places the ice was more than a mile in depth.

  The ascent of the Skelton by two dog teams, one driven by Richard Brooke and Murray Ellis, the other by Harry Ayres and Murray Douglas, began on 26 January. At first they wore crampons on hard ice but as the teams advanced into the upper névé the surface changed to soft snow. On 9 February they had passed through the gap they called The Portal to reach the Plateau. Above them was John Claydon, circling overhead before coming in to land with the first supplies for a depot to be used by the crossing party in 1958. By flying around the clock, Claydon and Bill Cranfield completed their initial stocking of the depot within three days. Between the Plateau and the Pole there would be two more depots, D480 and D700, the latter 700 miles from Scott Base and 550 miles short of the Pole. Ed and his party had now completed much of what had been requested of them, and with a year to spare.

  Throughout this time, Ed was writing frequently to Louise.

  8 February

  My dearest Louise, Well, it’s pretty cold outside although the sun is shining and a bitter wind is blowing down off Mt Erebus. It is now 9.30pm and everyone is stopping work and having their evening cup of tea. I can hear the busy hum of voices in the mess room behind me and the strains of music from our magnificent radio-gramophone. We have such a doughty band of chaps that the field work will at least come up to the standard of the base. I sometimes find it hard to grasp that not only have we built such a fine group of buildings but that already we have found an admirable route to the plateau up the Skelton …

  Well, sweetheart, I am viewing the months ahead with very mixed feelings. I have a big responsibility here and much of it is intensely interesting and exciting and, I think, worthwhile. However I’m afraid I really do miss you terribly – sometimes I almost ache to see you again. It’s funny how our feelings have grown and developed since we were married. I have come to depend on you so much that you are never far out of my thoughts. And Sarah too after the trip to the South Island has a special little niche in my thoughts – she really was such a dear. Peter of course, the little devil, will always have a place that none of the rest of our children will dislodge … I really am a most unsatisfactory and neglectful husband, I fear, but at least I am as fond of my wife as any husband ever was …12

  21 February 1957

  I had a talk on the phone to Bunny a couple of mornings ago. He appears to have some major problems ahead and I just don’t know how he’ll get on. He wants us to put depots out much further if we can. If I could get some tractors up onto the plateau it would make an enormous difference and I’m planning to give it a go. As you know I’m rather partial to tractor transport and it will be fun to try to get something to the South Pole. I can then retire and write a series of bestsellers on my adventurous life … your Edmundo13

  Winter at Scott Base

  With the departure of the last transport for the summer, Ed’s scientists, surveyors, dog drivers, engineers and tractor drivers were left on their own with a long, dark winter ahead of them. His deputy leader was Bob Miller, a surveyor who filled many roles. With Dr George Marsh, an Englishman with Antarctic and dog-handling expertise, he explored on foot the route up the Skelton Glacier and south to Depot 700 – the depot 700 miles from Scott Base – ahead of the tractors. Miller had excellent people skills and helped keep harmony at Scott Base through the winter. Ed wrote to Louise, ‘Everyone has been working well, particularly Bob Miller who has been working like a Trojan. I sometimes feel I’m the butterfly of the outfit. I flit around from job to job and then duck off for a flight in the plane or on a visit to Admiral Dufek … I’ve come to depend on George Marsh a lot too.’14 Marsh and another Englishman, Richard Brooke, had been recruited for their expertise with dogs and to balance the two Kiwis – George Lowe and pilot Gordon Haslop – in the Fuchs team.

  Winter at Scott Base and the personalities of its inhabitants are described in an unpublished memoir, Land of the Long Day, written by geologist Bernie Gunn. He described Marsh as ‘polished, urbane, and one of the most likable and entertaining men on the expedition’. His ambition was to better the average of 20.8 miles per day achieved by Amundsen’s party on their way to the South Pole in December 1911, and he and Bob Miller achieved this when they covered 1800 miles at an average of 22.4 miles per day.

  The scientists were led by Trevor Hatherton, born a Yorkshireman but by 1957 a fully integrated Kiwi. Regrettably, the scientists hardly appear in the non-scientific accounts. They had their space, their instruments and their links to the rest of the IGY, and there was not much else Ed could offer.

  Ed’s task was to plan for the group selected to support the Fuchs crossing party. There were 12 people at Scott Base, with three dog teams, three Ferguson tractors, a Weasel, and two small planes, the larger Beaver being preferred when stocking depots. Much of this was surplus to the requirements of Fuchs’s journey from the Pole to Scott Base. With no one keen to spend an uncertain number of days or weeks waiting for Fuchs to arrive at a depot, Ed split his 12 men into four groups, of which only one, driving tractors, would link with Fuchs.

  A northern party of Brooke, Gunn, Warren and Douglas, with dogs, would spend four months exploring and mapping the area north of the Skelton. Ayres and Carlyon, also with dogs, would survey the Darwin Mountains south of the Skelton. The tractor party would be preceded by the Miller and Marsh dog team who would be surveying the route to D700 to steer the motorised parties away from crevassed areas. They would then explore and map the Queen Maud Mountains. Coming behind them would be Hillary, Bates, Ellis and Mulgrew who would attempt to drive tractors to D700. Not written into the plan but generally understood (if not always approved) was the intention to continue to the Pole if machines, fuel, conditions and time permitted.

  This was a far more extensive plan of exploration, surveying and geology than had originally been envisaged. Gunn described the reaction within the wintering party when the plan was pinned to the Scott Base noticeboard – and the response from Charles Bowden of the RSC:

  It was a historic document. I wonder if it survives? … its proper place is in the Scott Polar Institute. The reply from the Ross Sea Committee was a monument to bureaucratic caution and indecision. In brief, it completely rejected the plan and directed that our entire field staff should concentrate on establishing depots. ‘However,’ it concluded in a tone of pomposity that could almost be heard, ‘a limited amount of exploration may be carried out in True Antarctic Tradition, within a distance not exceeding fifteen miles of the Depots.’ There was of course no land within fifteen miles of the depots! We roared with laughter, we booed, we jeered! ‘In True Antarctic Tradition’ was to become a catchword for doing nothing! Within minutes Sir Ed had banged out a reply which said in effect, ‘The deployment of field personnel is best left in the hands of the field executive who are in a position to appreciate the problems and the capabilities of the people concerned.’ Thus did Edmund Hillary lay himself, his career, his future, squarely on the line. We used to refer to him with a touch of sarcasm as ‘Our Leader’, considering in our juvenile arrogance that we needed little leading, but a real leader is there to make difficult decisions and stand by them, and by doing so he won our respect and support.

  The greatest weight fell on our air support group, Claydon and Cranfield, with their single Beaver having to range far and wide delivering supplies to four New Zealand groups as well as fuel for the Sno-Cats of the British party. It was an ambitious plan …15

  Reinventing Ferguson tractors

  The tractors were still far from perfect, and throu
ghout the winter Ed pressed his two engineers, Jim Bates and Murray Ellis, to improve them.

  Although both were described as ‘engineers’, Jim Bates and Murray Ellis had very different backgrounds. Jim Bates had trained as a mechanic but he had an eccentric flair for invention. Gunn wrote:

  Jim Bates was the nearest approach to a mad inventor I have ever met. Craggy of face with wild black hair and unshaven chin, Bates on the trail of a new invention was something to step aside from in a hurry as electric arcs crackled and gas-jets flared. Although I doubt he had a single formal qualification, he was probably the most intelligent man on the expedition with an insight into mechanical, physical, political and social problems that few others shared. I was often sounding out the views of that unlikely seer James Bates.16

  Murray Ellis had taken an engineering degree and worked in the family business of Arthur Ellis and Co. which manufactured mattresses, sleeping bags up to Everest specifications, and down jackets. It was his father Roland, a good friend of Ed’s, who, as a committee member of the NZ Alpine Club, had launched the telegram that led to the invitation to Everest in 1951. Murray was large and strong with a nice sense of humour and a twinkle in his eye. Like Jim Bates he had a remarkable ability to fix a tractor, Weasel or other piece of machinery that had broken down. This was difficult enough in winter in the garage they had fabricated from metal fence supports and packing cases, but to do the same thing, sometimes with bare fingers, at a camp on the Polar Plateau seems miraculous. Without them, the three tractors would never have left the environs of Scott Base, let alone reached the Pole.

  The caboose, a caravan on sledge skis, was designed by Ed to provide something warmer than a tent. Although originally fitted out with five bunks, it was quickly apparent that it could take only two in reasonable comfort. One was Ed; the other, Chief Petty Officer Peter Mulgrew who had been co-opted from the Royal New Zealand Navy to manage radio communications. Wherever the party went, Mulgrew kept them in contact with Scott Base and a waiting world press. Ed had selected him from a number of Navy applicants, partly because of his skills, but also because he didn’t salute or address Ed as ‘sir’. He was small, combative, competitive, had a lively wit and a full repertoire of Gilbert and Sullivan songs. He and Ed developed an easy, bantering relationship. Ed wrote in his diary, ‘Peter is doing a first class job with the radio … he’s my most loyal supporter and will go on with me as long as I wish.’17