by Michael Gill
But against these negatives, there were some strong positives. World Book had justification for their funding in the publicity given to the yeti and the drama of the climb on Makalu. Peter Mulgrew’s life had been saved by the resolution of Tom Nevison, Leigh Ortenburger and a handful of Sherpas – Urkien, Pemba Tharkey, Siku and Pemba Tenzing – carrying a tent, a stove, a few bottles of oxygen and in the end Peter Mulgrew himself.
The scientific programme had been an unqualified success. The Silver Hut expedition became one of the classic studies in high-altitude physiology. West, Ward and Milledge wrote a textbook, High Altitude Medicine and Physiology, now in its fifth edition. And John West, who became an authority on altitude physiology, in 1998 published a fascinating account combining a history of the subject with science.21 He dedicated it To Sir Edmund Hillary who, with Griffith Pugh, introduced me to high-altitude physiology through the Silver Hut expedition in 1960.
– CHAPTER 24 –
Three new careers
It was a subdued Ed Hillary who walked down-valley from Makalu Base Camp with Jim Milledge and five Sherpas. He seemed to be reassuring himself when he wrote in his diary, ‘I’m not too worried about the climb – my work is mainly done.’1 When he’d retired unwell to Base Camp, Peter Mulgrew had come down too, offering to leave Makalu so as to be with Ed as he took his low-altitude route back to Khumbu, but Ed refused the offer. ‘I’m very fond of Peter but think he should go as high as possible on this climb for his own sake in the Navy.’2
For five days Ed convalesced impatiently in the grassy alp that had been the French base camp at 15,300ft. The weather was fine in the morning but snowing in the afternoon. They had a radio which picked up that the first assault party was on its way to Camp 4: ‘Rather feel that Mike should have waited for better weather,’ said Ed in his diary. Two days later, when the first assault had turned back from Camp 6½, Ed’s anxieties were deepening:
Radio communication hellish. We don’t really know what’s happening. I feel in my heart that the attack isn’t going to be quite the same without me to direct and urge it. I hope I’m wrong but everything sounds rather disorganised.3
This was Ed and Jim’s last day of communication with the camps on Makalu for a fortnight as they moved south-west over a snow-covered Shipton Pass and across a series of forested gorges. Every day it rained, sometimes heavily, and with thunder and lightning. There were leeches everywhere but also masses of rhododendrons in flower and occasional big views back to Makalu. At Sedua they found fresh food – curd, potatoes, spinach and a roast chicken each. In the thicker air of 8000– 12,000ft, Ed’s old fitness was coming back.
But on 26 May when they at last made radio contact with both Silver Hut and Makalu Camp 2, they heard the first scraps of information that the expedition had gone awry:
To my distress heard that Mike Ward had pneumonia, Tom Nevison had been ill and poor old Peter had frostbitten hands and feet plus a touch of what is probably pulmonary embolism. Have no idea how bad Peter is or where he is but hope to goodness he isn’t too bad. Funnily enough I’d had a premonition about Peter for the last 3 or 4 days and been worried about it.4
On 29 May, the anniversary of Everest, Ed climbed the Namche hill and walked on to Changmatang where he found Desmond Doig in residence. It was he who passed on the news that Mulgrew, Ward and Ang Temba had been helicoptered to Kathmandu that morning. At least they were alive – though the severity of Peter’s frostbite and general condition was still unknown.
Meanwhile, there was a school to be built from the prefabricated aluminium sections that had been flown into Mingbo and carried down to Khumjung. Wally Romanes, just arrived over the high route from Makalu, applied his building skills and within a week Khumjung had a school. A thin skin of aluminium was hardly warm in winter but it kept out the monsoon rains and the wind. It was a humble start to Ed’s career running an expanding aid programme that continues to this day.
By mid-June the school had been opened by the reincarnate lama of Tengboche and was in daily use. The Silver Hut had been disassembled and its pieces stacked at Changmatang, awaiting the arrival of Tenzing Norgay, now director at the Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, to whom the hut had been donated for the institute’s high training base in Sikkim. A few days after leaving Khumjung for Kathmandu, Ed met Tenzing on the trail.
Reached Seti Gompa at 1.30pm and settled in when there was a shout and there was Tenzing looking as spick and span as ever and accompanied by a lovely Sherpa girl, who was his cousin. It was great to meet him. What a handsome, charming chap he is!5
He arrived in Kathmandu on 23 June, and went immediately to Shanta Bhawan Hospital. He was horrified by his first sight of a gaunt Peter Mulgrew, lethargic from the pethidine injections required to control the pain in his feet.6 Ed sent a telegram to Louise, strongly recommending that Peter’s wife June come to Kathmandu as soon as possible, and a week later she was there. He wrote to Louise:
June arrived in at 4pm looking very bright and fresh … Pete will be in hospital, or at least bedridden, for 3 or 4 months I would think. I think she’ll find him both better and worse than she expected. I’m sure his feet will horrify her – they’re pretty black and wizened up. But his lung is vastly improved and he has more energy and drive. He still has to have painkilling drugs every couple of hours to subdue the pain.7
Ed was right that Peter had a long hard path ahead of him, a time when he was immeasurably helped by June’s nursing and emotional support. In mid-July he was back in a New Zealand hospital being told that his feet could not be saved and that bilateral below-knee amputations were the only option. He soon mastered his new limbs. He took up sailing, and very quickly became one of the country’s top skippers in the one-ton class. Peter was also highly successful in a new career in business. Although he never again had quite the easy pre-Makalu banter and wit, his abilities and determination never left him. He wrote about his experiences in No Place for Men.
Careers with World Book and Sears
Ed’s relationship with World Book was by no means over. During the rest of 1961, he and Desmond Doig wrote the book of the Silver Hut expedition, High in the Thin Cold Air. Then in January 1962 the whole Hillary family moved to the USA for a year. World Book’s payback for its considerable investment in the expedition was only partly the publicity associated with the yeti and the attempt on Makalu. The other half was an in-house public relations exercise which involved Ed travelling throughout North America and meeting the company’s sales force, many of them teachers or housewives selling encyclopedias in their spare time.
At the beginning of each week, Ed would leave his rented house in Chicago to climb aboard a plane destined for cities where he would give lectures at banquets and meet the sales staff. They called themselves ‘World Bookers’ and he was told that he shook the hands of 17,000 of them. ‘I was meeting some of the ordinary people of America and I found it easy to like their warmth, generosity and interest,’ he wrote.8 They were unassuming people, hard-working; in some ways they were like the people back home.
An outcome of the relationship with World Book was that Ed at last had offered to him a directorship in a large company, in this case the Australasian branch of World Book. With it for 10 years came an annual income of $10,000 before it tailed off as hard-copy encyclopedias began to be replaced by computer technology. World Book also became generous backers of Ed’s development projects in Nepal. It was a good relationship.
Another career and important source of income materialised in January 1962 when the giant firm Sears Roebuck invited Ed to join its Ted Williams Sports Advisory staff as its representative for camping equipment and outdoor clothing. From now on, school-building expeditions would be fitted out with Sears tents and clothing bearing a label with a big tick and the name Hillary – an endorsement from the conqueror of Everest. The first one-year agreement was for a modest $1000, but this increased over the years to the useful sum of around $40,000 per annum.9
Ne
ither Ed nor Louise were big spenders. Luxury goods had no appeal, and for the rest of his life Ed would live comfortably within his income without feeling he had to deprive himself of anything. Growing up as a beekeeper on Percy Hillary’s payroll did not lead to conspicuous consumption. At the end of 1962, he and Louise had accumulated a surplus of US$20,000. He asked advice from a successful stockbroker he’d met. ‘Give it to me and I’ll double its value every seven years,’ the broker said, and he did. It was a little piece of capitalism for which Ed developed an affection.10
Keep Calm If You Can
In the American midsummer the Hillary family went on a grand camping holiday in a Ford station wagon dragging a Sears camper-trailer. The distance was 16,000 kilometres and involved driving from Chicago to San Francisco, up the west coast to Alaska, then back through Canada. The book of the journey which launched Louise as an author was called Keep Calm If You Can. She had been married for nearly 10 years, most of them filled with the torrid business of raising three small children almost single-handed. The book opens with ‘An Explanation’ that sets the scene for her laid-back, self-deprecating good humour, and a view of Ed that displays irony as well as respect for his energy and imagination. She introduces their three children.
I’m just a common ‘garden variety’ sort of wife. The cabbage kind, not the long-suffering pioneering type; there’s not enough backbone for that. I just follow along with the ideas of my husband and because of his sometimes unusual interests I get led into many scrapes, strange situations and strange places.
Why am I writing a book, and what is it all about? The answer is easy, I was bullied into writing it … As a family we are enthusiasts for adventure – the children have had this instilled into them almost from the day they were born …
Peter, our eldest, loves all this. He’s a capable young fellow and becomes unusually co-operative with the family packing as he whistles gaily in a nerve-shattering tireless manner. He is tall, bony and wiry, with sandy-coloured hair, grey eyes and a turned up nose. He always loves a good joke and rushes into every task like a large tractor tearing down a concrete wall …
Sarah was five and a half years old when she left New Zealand. She had already been to school for four months and had in that short time absorbed a considerable amount of education, for she is a studious and determined young lady. She loves pretty things, especially clothes and flowers. She is always singing when there is a lull in the general family din, mercifully drowning some of her brother’s whistling. Peter and Sarah look quite alike. They have the same colouring and the same turned up noses, but there the resemblance ends.
The last member of the family is Belinda, age three. With great blue eyes and rosy cheeks she is the cuddliest of them all. She was too young to help very much or chat intelligently to people we met, but she is a very contented person who spends her days playing quietly or picking flowers. In our large untidy Auckland garden, arum lilies, nasturtiums, jasmine and morning glory grow in uninhibited profusion all the year round. Nobody cares how many flowers Belinda picks, so she picks a lot.
After this brief introduction we must start on our journey. As Peter said in a letter to a school friend – ‘We left New Zealand in a plane and stayed up all night and woke up in Honolulu.’11
On the Worthington Glacier Sarah made a decision about her future.
‘I like glacier climbing,’ she said.
‘That’s good,’ we replied absent-mindedly.
‘If I get good at it,’ said Sarah musingly, ‘I’ll be famous like Daddy.’12
At the end of the book, Louise reflects on their year of travel:
This had undoubtedly been the happiest experience of my life. Children are such wonderful ambassadors … Through them we made friends with bus drivers, New York ballet dancers, London hotel housemaids, a Roman heiress, a Jesuit priest, an Indian beggar, and hosts of others. In fact, I decided, travelling en famille was almost as easy, and certainly much more fun than travelling by oneself.
Peter had the last word: ‘Mum, let’s do a world trip again next year!’13
No career in fiction
An unexpected find in the Hillary archive was an unpublished novel,14 or rather a 45,000-word novella, Call Not to the Gods, by Gary Sankar – a play on the majestic peak Gaurishankar in the Rolwaling Valley, still unclimbed in the 1960s. Ed’s interest in developing his career as a writer was based on the financial success of the two books he had written prior to 1962: High Adventure, which provided him with three-quarters of his income between 1955 and 1958; and No Latitude for Error. Without these and later the salary/retainers from World Book and Sears, Ed would have had trouble supporting his family.
Call Not to the Gods is mentioned in a letter to Louise in April 1965:
I showed my novel to Milton at the publisher’s and he was very complimentary, said he would be happy to publish it based on just the first three chapters. So I may make a go of it after all. Anyway, I intend to see if I can finish it by September. I feel rather pleased about his reaction and don’t think he’s just trying to be friendly. He talks in his usual calm way about film rights and all that stuff…! Anyway he wants to show the chapters to others in the firm. It would be fun if I could make some money from novels and be nice and independent …15
Here is a synopsis.
Himalayan explorer John Fenton is celebrating the end of an expedition when his Sherpa, Pemba, announces, ‘I have a memsahib to see you … and she won’t go away!’
She is Dr Jennifer Wakefield, an anthropologist who during an interview with a venerated Tibetan Rinpoche learns that while escaping from Chinese soldiers he concealed the legendary Dzong treasure in the ruins of a derelict monastery. She asks Fenton to accompany her to recover the treasure.
At first he turns down her request but when he discovers that she has innocently hired a known villain by the name of Nami, he realises he must help her. He meets Tschering Rinpoche.
‘I have seen my country overrun by an invader, its monasteries destroyed, its priests and leaders tortured and killed. These treasures represent a thousand years of Tibetan history. I have told the Doctor memsahib where to find this treasure.’
‘As I have a habit of doing,’ says Fenton to Jennifer, ‘I made up my mind on the spot. I’ll go with you but with one proviso. You’ll have to agree that I’m in charge and be prepared to accept my final say-so when there’s a decision to be made.’ They set off, ‘looking at ridge after ridge rising up to the jagged giants of the Himalayas, a dozen old adversaries. Jennifer’s long legs carried her easily and well, and with a neatness of movement that promised endurance and toughness. Her black hair was swept behind her head in a severe fashion but she seemed more feminine than I had known her. Flushed and perspiring she flopped down beside me.’
They climb high into the mountains where a few Sherpas are driving their shaggy yaks down from the high pastures. They don Tibetan clothing and behind a train of fifty laden yaks cross the Nangpa La into Tibet, and pass unnoticed through the Chinese garrison.
They come to their destination, the village of Yirnak with its ruined monastery perched 2000 feet up a rock face. A narrow track winding up a cliff is the only access but in a line of steep cracks up the precipice behind, Fenton can see a climbers-only route up which they can escape with the treasure.
Jennifer takes them to the seventh carved stone in a mani wall facing the sunrise and here they find three black yak-hair bags filled with treasure. Fenton goes for one last look at the courtyard when suddenly he is face to face with Nami! ‘I’m not really a great believer in violence but I do make a fair job of it when I get started. I clipped him under the chin and laid him out cold.’ They sleep out on a ledge, Jennifer on Fenton’s shoulder.
Next day, as they head for the Nangpa La, they see soldiers fanning out to cut them off. Fenton splits off to act as a decoy while Pemba and Jennifer climb a concealed snow gully. ‘She reached out in the dark and found my hand. “Come back, John,” she said softly an
d I felt her lips on my cheek.’
Then the Chinese are shooting at them. In deteriorating weather Fenton creeps up on a soldier, lays him out with his ice-axe and takes his automatic weapon. In a gully he keeps his pursuers at bay by rolling rocks down on them. Catching up with Jennifer and Pemba he leads them into the concealment of the storm. They have escaped and successfully recovered the treasure.
The publisher’s final assessment is not in the record and Ed wrote no more adventure stories for publication. Gary Sankar’s story might have appealed to children but it would not have entered the feminist canon. Its chances would have been better in the early years of the last century.
– CHAPTER 25 –
Repaying a debt
