Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  Finch’s triumph left Mallory unsettled. He had to make one final stab at Everest. ‘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?’ Mallory’s assessment of his rashnesss was accurate. When he departed with Finch, Somervell and 14 porters on 3 June the monsoon season was upon them – as they discovered on waking one morning to find a fresh fall of snow on the hill above. For Finch, who had not fully recovered from his last ascent, this was a peril too far. Instructing the others in the use of oxygen, he returned to camp. Mallory and Somervell declined to follow him, and instead led the porters upwards. On the slopes of the North Col the inevitable happened: the fresh snow gave way beneath them in an avalanche that carried nine porters over a cliff and into a crevasse. Only two men survived. A length of rope protruding from a packed mass of snow marked their companions’ grave.

  It was an unpleasant coda to what had been, in many respects, a successful year. Somervell, in particular, felt the loss of these men who had done so much to help them, with little enough reward, and whose names most people would never know. ‘Why, oh why could not one of us Britishers have shared their fate?’ he cried in anguish. Mallory was equally moved: ‘I’m quite knocked out by this accident,’ he wrote to a friend. ‘Seven of these brave men killed, and they were ignorant of mountain dangers, like children in our care. And I’m to blame ... Do you know that sickening feeling that one can’t go back and have it undone and that nothing will make good?’

  He was to blame, as many people did not hesitate to point out in the subsequent evaluation of the expedition’s achievements. One eminent member wrote: ‘Mallory is a very good, stout hearted baby, but quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything, including himself... [He] cannot even observe the conditions in front of him. To attempt such a passage in the Himalaya after new snow is idiotic. What the hell did they think they could do on Everest in such conditions even if they did get up to the North Col?’ What indeed? As for Somervell, he was ‘the most urbanely conceited youth I have ever struck – and quite the toughest... He was honestly prepared to chuck his life away on the most remote chance of success.’ In contrast, Norton received unanimous acclaim: ‘a huge success in every direction ... Always on for any job and always did the job well.’ Finch, too, was given his due share of praise, albeit in a backhanded way: ‘We so dreaded [him] that we were relieved to find his manners very passable: his temper agreeable: his mountain knowledge not overrated. He had very bad luck on his climb. With any reasonable conditions he would have stood on top of the final ridge. With luck he would have got to the top. But he is very Australian.’

  With these accolades, it might have been expected that Norton and Finch would be included in the next expedition – set for 1924 – and Mallory and Somervell, if not left behind, then at least reconsidered. Britain’s mountaineering establishment, however, moved in mysterious ways. They selected Norton without a moment’s hesitation, not only for his mountaineering but for his organizational skills. But Finch, they learned, had used photographs of Everest while lecturing in Switzerland in June 1923. He had, it was true, signed a standard form assigning all pictorial and written results of the 1922 expedition to the Mount Everest Committee. But given that he had taken the pictures himself, that he had used his own camera, that he had not been the official expedition photographer, and that the agreement was in any case too restrictive to be legally binding, he saw no reason why he should be barred, a year after the event, from making money from his own photographs. The Mount Everest Committee saw it otherwise. General Charles Bruce voiced the general prejudice: ‘He’s torn it now ... I think this action on his part definitely rules him out of the next expedition ... What a swine the man is.’ On these piffling grounds Finch was dropped. The same perverse reasoning worked in favour of the bad boys, Mallory and Somervell. The latter, everyone agreed, had shown exceptional stamina and should definitely be part of the 1924 expedition. As for Mallory, his social standing and mountaineering skills were sufficient for him not only to be selected but to be a member of the selecting panel.

  To give the Committee its due, there were very few people other than Mallory and Somervell whom they could have chosen (apart from the reviled Finch). The elasticity and strength of youth were important factors in an attack on Everest, as was experience of the mountain itself. Nobody else of that age fitted the bill so perfectly. Indeed, the Committee was so strapped for climbers that, when it completed the 1924 roster, it chose a man with virtually no mountaineering qualifications at all. ‘Sandy’ Irvine was a Cambridge engineering undergraduate, a rowing ‘Blue’, resourceful, robust and with an apparently endless supply of good humour. An adventurous youth, he had joined a university expedition to Spitsbergen in the summmer of 1923 (without any previous Arctic experience) and had performed so well that his more experienced mentors had been flabbergasted. He seemed not to know the meaning of fear, and was willing to try anything.* In his energy and determination to succeed he displayed a brand of innocent optimism that had been in short supply since 1914 and which endeared him to the veterans on the selecting panel. Most importantly, he was practical and inventive, possessing a technical ingenuity that was foreign to those with whom he would climb – Germany was at that time the prime exponent of mechanical climbing aids – and these skills would be useful, for the 1924 expedition was going to take oxygen.

  The establishment’s dislike of oxygen had lessened since 1922. The alpinist Sir Douglas Freshfield, President of the Royal Geographical Society, favoured the use of new technology. He drew uncomfortable parallels between Everest and the Poles, noting that Britain’s unwillingness to use skis and dogs had been the cause of its many failures in both the Arctic and Antarctica. If one was to insist on the physical purity of an ascent, without any artificial aids, one might as well ban goggles, protective clothes and sturdy boots. And why not caffeine, nicotine and food into the bargain? ‘So long as the summit of Everest is gained, who cares whether it is with or without the use of oxygen?’ he declaimed. Mallory, though he did not say so outright, shared his views. After Finch’s success in 1922, he was now a convert to what Tibetan porters called ‘English air’. On the steamer to India, and on the 300-mile journey to Tibet, he made a point of befriending Irvine.

  When the expedition reached Everest the spirit of fair play overrode the banalities of technology. Mallory – now the climbing leader as well as the leading climber – agreed with Norton that attempts should be made, as in 1922, with and without oxygen. He himself was in favour of ‘English air’ but could not deny the others their desire to reach the summit without it. So concurrent parties would leave for the summit, staggered as in a school handicap. The oxygenless men were to start from an undetermined Camp VI and the oxygenated ones from a proposed Camp VII. Nobody had ever spent a night higher than Camp V, but Mallory was sure that Camps VI and VII could be achieved.

  During the journey to Tibet Irvine established himself up as a jack-of-all-trades. Erecting a workshop tent, he mended countless bits of gear: cameras, tripods, tables, stools, torches, beds, saddles, ice-axes and crampons. When the cardboard lampshades burned he constructed new ones from tin. When people mentioned the difficulties of the North Col he produced a 60-foot rope ladder. While the others discussed routes, Irvine inspected, dismantled and reconstructed the oxygen kit – which was woefully bad. Of the 90 cylinders they had been issued, 15 were empty and 24 leaked; their tubes were uniformly fragile. ‘Ye Gods!’ Irvine wrote home. ‘I broke one today taking it out of its packing case.’ He tinkered with the valves and connecting tubes to make them more reliable, and turned the apparatus on its head so that the delicate connections pointed downwards rather than being at shoulder level where they could be broken – as Geoffrey Bruce’s had been in 1922 – by a chance blow against rock. He was not much of a conversationalist, but everyone agreed that his presence was a
bonus.

  Norton and Somervell led the first, oxygenless, attempt, establishing Camp VI at 26,800 feet and departing on the morning of 5 June for the summit. Rather than follow the ridge, they attempted a face climb through a gully – the Great Couloir – that ran from the Rongbuk Glacier to bisect the North-East Ridge at the final pyramid. This meant a shallower ascent over uncertain terrain, whose rocks offered fewer handholds. But in Norton’s eyes it was preferable to the ridge, which was not only exposed but interrupted by two difficult faces, to which they gave the names First and Second Steps. The weather was fine and nearly windless, but in the thin atmosphere they moved slowly. As Norton later recalled, his simple aim was to take 20 paces without stopping for a rest: the most he ever managed was 13. It was bitterly cold and, despite being wrapped in layers of tweed and woollens, they shivered so fiercely that Norton wondered if he was suffering an attack of malaria. (Finch had experimented with goose-down-insulated jackets in 1922, but they were considered far too radical by the British.) Also, the chilled air made them cough continually. This was a phenomenon they had encountered before; by midday, however, when they were almost at the Great Couloir, Somervell was hacking so fiercely that he told Norton to proceed on his own. Norton was not gone long. The snow in the Great Couloir was too deep and too soft, so he continued up the rocks on one side. By 1.00 p.m. he was at 28,126 feet, and the summit was less than 1,000 feet away. He was certain he could reach it, even without oxygen – a point on which he was later adamant – but he was less sure that he could do so and climb back to safety before nightfall. Also, he was beginning to see double, having made the mistake of removing his goggles earlier in the day. The risk was too great. Turning back, he rejoined Somervell and started down for the North Col.

  They reached Camp VI, where they collapsed the tents and weighted them with stones before continuing to Camp V. Here the slope was safe enough for them to unrope and begin a series of glissades. Somervell was still coughing badly. What had started as a dryness in the throat had developed into an obstruction of some kind; after a while he began to lag, and then he stopped altogether. Norton, whose mind was wandering from lack of oxygen, assumed he had paused to sketch the view. In fact, Somervell was on the point of asphyxiation. The mysterious lump in his throat had dislodged itself and now prevented him breathing. Sinking to his knees, he hammered on his chest with both hands, and at last the thing came free. He spat it into the snow, coughed a bit of blood, and ran after Norton. ‘I once more breathed really freely,’ he exulted, ‘more freely than I had done for some days.’ At some point he had over-exerted himself and had inhaled too deeply for too long; his airways had become frostbitten, and the lump he coughed up was the dead mucous lining of his larynx.

  It was dark by the time they reached the North Col, so they made their way through the crevasses by torchlight, shouting down to Camp IV for an escort. A reply came back that help would be with them soon – also some oxygen. But it wasn’t oxygen they needed, it was water. At that altitude it took so long to melt snow that they had done so only when strictly necessary. Dehydration, rather than hypoxia, was their problem. In Norton’s words, ‘I remember shouting again and again, “We don’t want the damned oxygen; we want drink.” My own throat and voice were in none too good a case, and my feeble wail seemed swallowed up in the dim white expanse below glimmering in the starlight.’

  Back at Camp IV the pair had every reason to congratulate themselves. It was only by an avoidable accident that Somervell had stopped before the Great Couloir; had they been together they might have bivouacked on a ledge and reached the summit the following day. The distance involved was 902 feet – four or five hours’ climbing at most, judging by their earlier speed, with perhaps another hour for unseen difficulties. Using the same route and the same equipment, and given the same conditions, there was no reason why a similarly fit team should not do better.

  Mallory and Irvine were next. On 7 June, with four porters, they left for Camp VI. For support they had Noel Odell, a competent mountaineer and geologist who had shown on previous climbs a complete indifference to the absence or presence of oxygen – when given a set of bottles he took a few sniffs and then, finding it made no impact, had handed it to his porter – and who was to wait for them at Camp V. Mallory and Irvine, however, were taking no chances. They donned Irvine’s refined oxygen apparatus and left Camp VI early on 8 June, having sent their four porters back with two notes, one for Odell and another for the cameraman, John Noel, who was waiting at the North Col to capture their triumph on celluloid. The note to Odell said they’d lost their stove and had forgotten their compass. The one to Noel read: ‘We’ll probably start early tomorrow (8th) in order to have clear weather. It won’t be too early to start looking for us either crossing the rock band or going up skyline at 8.0 p.m. Yours Ever, G. Mallory.’ He meant ‘a.m.’ Already hypoxia had taken hold.

  Unlike Norton, Mallory decided to follow the ridge, preferring the technique that he knew to an icy scramble up the rocks of the Great Couloir. He and Irvine travelled light, carrying two oxygen cylinders apiece, a light lunch, a couple of waterproofs and a Kodak Vestpocket camera to snap the view from the top. Whether from genuine confidence or from misjudgement, they seemed to believe that the climb would only take a few hours. So certain were they of reaching the summit and returning to Camp VI before dusk that they did not bother with a Camp VII. There were no obvious hazards in view: as Mallory wrote in his letter to Odell, ‘Perfect weather for the job!’

  Odell climbed from Camp V and caught a last glimpse of them at about 1.00 p.m. It was misty, but the clouds parted briefly, allowing him a clear view of the ridge. ‘My eyes became fixed upon one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow-crest beneath a rock-step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock-step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud.’ Continuing to Camp VI, he left some food for the two men’s return, then descended (as instructed by Mallory) to await their arrival at Camp IV. On the journey down he was struck by the speed with which he was able to cover the distance between Camps V and IV – it took a mere 30 minutes. From this he drew two reassuring conclusions: that oxygen was not strictly necessary in order to make good time; and no matter how long it took Mallory and Irvine to reach the summit, their margin of safety was considerably greater than anticipated. If, say, they reached the top with only an hour to spare, they might still be able to return to Camp VI before sundown.

  That night the occupants of Camp IV kept watch for lights or distress flares to show the whereabouts of Mallory and Irvine. They saw nothing, but in itself this was not a cause for worry: the sky was clear and the moon bright enough for the pair to have made a night-time descent; and anyway, in addition to forgetting his compass the absent-minded Mallory had also left behind his torch and lantern. They kept their binoculars trained on Camp V throughout the morning of the 9th, but saw no signs of movement. By midday Odell could stand it no longer and went to investigate. He spent that night at Camp V, and on the morning of 10 June departed for Camp VI. He did so alone, having sent his two porters back on the previous evening, and in a mood of growing despair. If Mallory and Irvine were alive and fit they should surely by now have returned to Camp V; if they were still at Camp VI they must be ill or wounded; and if they were not at Camp VI they were certainly dead. It was two days since they had left for the summit, and the night of the 9th had been so cold that Odell had been unable to sleep despite wearing all his clothes and being wrapped in two sleeping bags. Nobody could have survived those conditions in the open. His hope was that they were at Camp VI. Perhaps one of them had broken a limb. Perhaps they were waiting for rescue. But when he reached Camp VI it was exactly as he had last seen it, except that a tentpole had collapsed. For two hours – without oxygen – he followed the route Mallory and Irvine had taken, searc
hing without success for their bodies.

  As he went, Odell was overwhelmed by the power and majesty of the mountain. ‘This upper part of Everest must be indeed the remotest and least hospitable spot on earth,’ he wrote, ‘but at no time more emphatically and impressively so than when a darkened atmosphere hides its features and a gale races over its cruel face ... I realised that the chances of finding the missing ones were indeed small on such a vast expanse of crags and broken slabs.’ Wherever the remains of Mallory and Irvine might be, they could only be found by a large group of determined men, and the chances of that were slim. The current expedition was played out, and it was unlikely that another would be despatched, at great expense, to scour the great bulk of Everest for two small bodies. He returned to Camp V, where he laid out two sleeping bags in a ‘T’, the prearranged signal to show that Mallory and Irvine were dead, then he turned for one last look at the peak. ‘It seemed to look down with cold indifference on me, mere puny man, and howl derision in windgusts at my petition to yield up its secrets – this mystery of my friends.’ At the end of June the 1924 Everest expedition slunk back to India, from where it caught a ship to Britain and took a long, introspective look at its failings.

  Physically, they had been right to withdraw: when doctors examined the survivors they found that most members of the high-altitude teams had dangerously enlarged hearts and had suffered some degree of frostbite to their throats. They had also done some remarkable things. They had proved that, with acclimatization and a degree of fitness, it was possible to go higher without oxygen than had been believed feasible: Norton’s climb had set a record – only 902 feet to the top! – and possibly Odell’s had too. But what of Mallory and Irvine? It was impossible to blame anyone but themselves – or Everest – for their deaths. What had happened to them, though? Had they summitted the mountain and died on the way down, or had they fallen before they reached the top? If they had been at the Second Step when Odell saw them, then they might have done it; and if their bodies could be found, the film inside the little Kodak camera would reveal all. But the whereabouts of their bodies remained a mystery.