Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (18 page)

Under the leadership of Bruce the Everest Committee put together what they believed to be a very strong team.  This time George Ingle Finch was to be included, as was Mallory, considered indispensable to the operation.  The climbing team was further strengthened by the inclusion of two other formidable Alpinists of the day, Maj. (later Col.) E. F. Norton and Dr Howard Somervell.  Younghusband considered these four men to be at the absolute ‘zenith of their powers’ and held out high hopes for the success of the team.  Two other members of the 1921 expedition were included in 1922, namely Morshead and Gyalzen Kazi, an interpreter in 1921 and subsequently the Sirdar or head of the Sherpas in both 1922 and 1924.  General Bruce’s cousin, Capt. Geoffrey Bruce, was brought in to be one of the three transport officers; the veteran climber and explorer Dr Tom Longstaff was invited to be medical officer and chief naturalist; Dr Arthur Wakefield as another medical officer.  Bruce appointed Lt. Col. Edward Lisle Strutt as deputy leader to the expedition and Colin Crawford and John Morris to help Geoffrey Bruce with transport matters.  The predominance of climbers as opposed to surveyors on this expedition pleased Mallory and he felt more confident of their chances of success.  Although he was no great friend of Finch he respected his climbing abilities and felt he would be a strong member of the team.  Mallory also instinctively liked and trusted General Bruce who, he felt with good reason, would prove to be a supremely efficient expedition leader which would free Mallory to concern himself only with matters to do with the mountain. 

One of the most significant changes to the expedition was the decision by the Everest Committee to supply it with bottled oxygen.  The two scientific members of the expedition, Finch and Somervell, both strongly favoured its use and were convinced of the benefits of using supplemental oxygen at altitude.  They had both taken part in experiments at Oxford University in decompression chambers.  This involved them exercising, stepping on and off a chair carrying a 35-lb load, in a decompression chamber where the pressure was lowered to simulate the effect of an altitude of 23,000 feet and their performance was monitored.  Finch performed well, but Somervell ‘appeared to waver after his fifth step’.  He denied feeling any ill effects but ‘his insistence was taken as a sign that he was exhibiting the quarrelsome characteristics known to be one symptom of hypoxia [oxygen deficiency], and oxygen was forcibly administered.’ But the tests were crude and the sceptics were loath to attach any great importance to them. Finch noted in his diary that Somervell had suffered during the decompression tests at an altitude of 23,000 feet and decided that he would advocate the use of the artificial gas only above that altitude.

The proportion of oxygen in the air remains unchanged at altitude, remaining a constant 20.93 per cent.  What changes is the atmospheric pressure, which decreases as the altitude increases.  This causes problems for the body, which has difficulty making the necessary gaseous exchanges in the lungs.  At 18,000 feet, roughly the altitude of Everest base camp, there is only half the atmospheric pressure that is found at sea level.  At Everest’s summit, 29,028ft, the pressure drops to only one third of that found at sea level and at this level the body is unable to survive for any great length of time.  The level above 25,000 feet is therefore known, dramatically but accurately, as the Death Zone.  Such exact information was not available in the 1920s but the scientists were well aware of the problems of performance at high altitude. There had been studies into oxygen depletion at altitude in the late nineteenth century conducted on balloonists.  This research was known to the Mount Everest Committee and Hingston, the 1924 expedition doctor, refers to it at some length in his post-expedition paper submitted to a joint meeting of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society in October 1924 and later published in
The Fight for Everest
.  He noted that balloonists in Paris in 1875 made a rapid ascent to nearly 28,000 feet with catastrophic results:  ‘they were provided with oxygen but unable to use it.  Tissandier [the balloonist] fainted at 26,500ft, and when he recovered consciousness the balloon was descending and his companions were dead.  The balloon had reached an altitude of 27,950 ft.  This was a rapid ascent with no acclimatization.  The result was death between 26,000 and 28,000 ft even when sitting quietly in a balloon.’  Such a rapid ascent does not of course allow for acclimatization, another major factor in performance at altitude, but it did lead the scientists of the day to conclude that they were uncertain whether breathing would be at all possible on the summit of Everest.

Further study into the subject had been undertaken by the air force whose pilots were suffering as a result of oxygen depletion.  Professor G. Dreyer, who had been a consultant to the Air Board on the subject of the use of oxygen at high altitude had expressed his views even before the 1921 Reconnaissance expedition left Britain: ‘I do not think you will get up without it’. he had pronounced, ‘but if you do succeed you may not get down again.’

We now know that it is possible, as proven by a number of climbers over the years, most notably Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, who made the first oxygenless ascent to the summit in 1978, that it is possible to reach the summit of Everest and return safely without the use of supplemental oxygen.  As early as 1924 a staggering height of just over 28,000 feet was achieved by Norton and Somervell without oxygen, which record stood until Messner and Habeler’s ascent.  However, all this was to come after the 1922 expedition.

The use of bottled oxygen, or artificial air, was a deeply contentious issue from the outset and there was ignited a furious debate, that raged for many years.  The pro-oxygenists argued that the mountain could not be climbed without it whilst the anti-oxygenists believed it to be unsporting to make use of an artificial aid to climb the mountain.  Mallory belonged to the latter camp although he was less outspoken than some critics in 1922, commenting that climbing with such a weight and a mask over one’s face held little charm. There are still those who will argue that the only true ascents of Everest are those made without oxygen, but it is widely recognized that it is by no means possible for everyone attempting the summit to try without it. 

The first symptom of oxygen deprivation is an increased respiratory rate.  The body fights to gain sufficient usable air and the heartbeat rises to 140 beats per minute.  This, for many, is peak heart rate and thus the act of merely breathing exhausts the climber, for exercise can only effectively be carried out when the heart rate is below peak, although there are certain endurance athletes and elite climbers who be able to go on and on performing at maximum heart rate.  The little research that had been carried out prior to the 1922 expedition had led to a basic understanding of the value of acclimatization but a real understanding of the problems of altitude did not exist.  This lead to a misreading of the symptoms of high altitude sickness and there was little comprehension of the effects of dehydration.

In 1922 the highest point reached to date was 24,500 feet, some 4500 feet lower than the summit of Everest.  Scientists were still sceptical as to whether it was possible to go higher and survive in the thin air.  Following the Oxford tests in Professor Dreyer’s decompression chambers, Finch was convinced it was imperative that the expedition be supplied with oxygen.  He was annoyed by what he regarded as ‘slipshod thinking’ by the anti-oxygenists, pointing out in a slightly spurious argument that the climber made us of several adventitious aids such as warm clothing, caffeine and anti-glare sunglasses – so why not oxygen?  He concluded: ‘if science could prepare oxygen in tabloid form or supply it to us in thermos flasks that we might imbibe it like our hot tea, the stigma of “artificiality” would, perhaps, be effectively removed.  But when it has to be carried in special containers, its whole essence is held to be altered, and by using it the mountaineer is taking a sneaking, unfair advantage of the mountain!’

He had an ally in Percy Farrar on the Mount Everest Committee and it was agreed to set up an oxygen subcommittee, which would comprise Finch, Farrar, Somervell and another climber-scientist P. J. H. Unna.  The oxygen apparatus supplied by Siebe Gorman for the 1922 expedition was adapted from the standard apparatus used by the Royal Air Force.  It was cumbersome, heavy – weighing some 33 lb – and complicated to use with tubing over the shoulder that frequently caught and snagged in front of the climbers’ stomachs when they were ascending steep pitches.  In addition, the heavy oxygen bottles were prone to serious leakages.  All in all the apparatus did not hold any great attraction for its users and Younghusband was not at all convinced that the benefits outweighed the disadvantages of having to carry so great a weight.  He wrote later: ‘I confess that when I saw and lifted the complete outfit for a climber I was aghast at the idea of anyone being saddled with such a load.  But if the men who would have to be carrying it were not deterred it was not for me to raise objection.’ Arthur Hinks, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Secretary to the Mount Everest Committee, was an outspoken sceptic.  Hinks was a geographer but had little, if any, knowledge of field work and what was involved in mountaineering.  He frequently put people’s backs up with his opinionated comments, seldom more so when he wrote, anonymously, in 1922:

A section of the climbers had convinced themselves or had been convinced that they would never reach the summit without it [oxygen].  The committee, feeling bound to supply whatever in reason might be demanded, cheerfully faced the large expenditure required.  It is more than likely that some of the climbers will find it impossible to tolerate the restraint of all this apparatus, and will develop new and interesting varieties of the ‘claustrophobia’ that afflicts men shut up in pressure chamber or the diving dress.  And this will be a good thing, because it seems to us quite as important to discover how high a man can climb without oxygen as to get to a specified point, even the highest summit of the world, in conditions so artificial that they can never become ‘legitimate’ mountaineering.

Farrar was infuriated that Hinks had gone beyond his remit and published such comments but Hinks was unabashed.  He wrote to Farrar in April of that year: ‘I should be especially sorry if the oxygen outfit prevents them going as high as possible without it.  The instructions laid down by Dreyer say clearly that oxygen should be used continuously above 23,000 feet.  That I am convinced is all nonsense.  Wollaston agrees.  If some of the party do not go to 25,000 – 26,000 feet without oxygen, they will be rotters.’ Farrar retorted in a letter to Hinks that he was of the opinion that oxygen was not ‘any more of an artificial aid than food.’  Such public differences of opinion within the committee did nothing to assist the pro-oxygenists’ cause.  There was an air of disquiet about the oxygen apparatus which pervaded throughout the expedition, to the extent that when Finch and Bruce reached a higher point with oxygen that year than Mallory, Norton and Somervell did without, his and Bruce’s achievement remained largely ignored. 

Finch was appointed oxygen officer to the expedition and took his duties seriously.  He instituted oxygen drills on the boat to Bombay, which did not particularly endear him to Mallory.  He claimed that it would take at least two weeks to learn how to use the apparatus properly, something Mallory dismissed in a letter to Ruth as fantastic nonsense, believing it would require only two days at the outside.  Finch soldiered on with his oxygen drills during the trek across Tibet, frustrated that they usually took place after a long march when the climbers were tired and wanting rest.  He bitterly resented the others’ resistance to what he saw as the key to their success on Everest.  Not only was he having to deal with his fellow climbers’ aversion to the thought of climbing with the heavy apparatus, but he was troubled by its lack of reliability.  The cylinders leaked badly and the rubber tubing worn around the front continually snagged on rocks during experimental climbs.  General Bruce was highly wary of it, although he did arrange to have it ferried up the mountain as agreed, but wrote home to Hinks: ‘Finch is working very hard at oxygen arrangements and getting people trained in the proper use of primus stoves etc, but I myself am rather terrified at the oxygen apparatus.  It seems to me to be so very easily put out of order and also so liable to be damaged by hitting against rocks, or by catching its India-rubber tubing on rocks; also the change of bottles on steep slopes when the apparatus has to be taken off and readjusted by very weary and hungry men seems a danger.’

The 1922 expedition met in Darjeeling, as the 1921 expedition had done, and set out on the long trek through Sikkim and Tibet to Everest base camp on 22 March travelling by foot or on ponies.  The march took six weeks.  The weather was very cold and they frequently encountered blizzards.  Several caught colds and on one occasion General Bruce ordered a rest as he was so concerned for their health. Mallory was particularly concerned about the doctor, Tom Longstaff, who was showing worrying signs of ill health, and had in the back of his mind the death of Kellas the year before.  Fortunately Longstaff recovered sufficiently and reached Base Camp on 1 May with the others, where they began to prepare for their assault on the mountain. 

There are two recognized ways of climbing a mountain.  One is known as Alpine style and the other as Siege style.  The former requires the climber to carry with him everything he requires for an ascent and descent.  The latter, which has been more or less uniformly adopted for climbing Mount Everest since the 1920s, requires the party to ‘lay siege’ to the mountain.  Camps are established gradually en route for the summit and the climbers make forays from Base Camp to increasingly higher camps in order to acclimatize and give themselves the best chance of success on summit day.  This also gives the porters time to carry food, equipment, tents and bedding to the high camps in preparation for a final push.  There have been some notable Alpine-style assaults on Mount Everest, on of the most famous being that of Reinhold Messner in 1980 when he climbed the North Face of Everest alone with no support from Sherpas and with no fixed camps to aid him.