A second attempt, this time with the benefit of oxygen, followed a few days later. Faced with less favourable conditions, the second party did only marginally better, reaching 27,300 feet. A third and final attempt ended in disaster when an avalanche killed seven porters. In shock and dismay, the British expedition admitted defeat.

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Two years later, veterans of the 1922 expedition re-entered Tibet, confident that the lessons gained from the previous failures were adequate assurance of success. From the outset the third expedition met with more extreme weather than had either of the previous two. It took a superhuman effort just to reach the customary jumping off point on the North Col, and by the time a camp had been established there the entire expedition had nearly reached the limit of its endurance. It seemed that all the advance planning had been derailed by the weather, but, unwilling to return to England without making a try for the summit, the climbers pushed on upward and established two additional camps, the highest of which was at 26,800 feet.

On 6th June, E. F. Norton climbed to within 900 feet of the summit before giving up. Two days later, George Leigh-Mallory and Andrew Irvine made another attempt but never returned to camp. Members of the next major expedition to Everest, in 1933, found an ice-axe at 27,600 feet that apparently marked the site of a fatal accident.

The ruler and spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, viewed the tragedy as a sign that the spirits who lived on the mountain were angered by the European intrusion and he again closed his country’s border for nearly a decade. During the frustrating interval the mountain became an obsession with British climbers, who felt they had a personal score to settle. A new generation of mountaineers, including Eric Shipton, Hugh Ruttledge, and Frank Smythe, stepped forward to take the place of the Everest pioneers.

Eric Shipton later remembered that when British climbers returned to the mountain in 1933, none of the members of the expedition seriously questioned their ability to reach the summit, but again Everest threw an obstacle in the confident team’s path. Monsoon weather, which usually does not begin until June, arrived three weeks early, bringing with it some of the worst conditions ever encountered on Everest. The wind and snow drove one of the native porters temporarily out of his mind. Convinced he was dead, he refused to walk, pointing out to the others that a corpse had never been known to do so.

Both the 1933 expedition and another smaller attempt made two years later met with no more success than any of the previous efforts. In 1936 the early arrival of the monsoon again dashed the hopes of a major expedition. By 1938 enthusiasm for further attempts was beginning to wane in some quarters and the Alpine Club’s Everest Committee was undergoing financial difficulties. A small expedition mounted that year by climbers who paid part of their own expenses did nothing to alter the now-familiar result of the Everest expeditions.

The 1938 effort was the last before the Second World War diverted Britain’s attention away from the Himalayas, but this interval marked a decisive turning point in the British campaign against Everest. Following the War, the Tibetan border was again closed, but Anglo-Nepalese relations underwent a renaissance. Thus the southern route to Everest, never before attempted, was opened for exploration.

In 1951 a reconnaissance, comparable to the 1921 exploration to the north, probed the southern approaches to Everest in search of a feasible path to the summit. A practical route was discovered, but contrary to the northern slope, the most difficult part of the southern ascent was at a relatively low altitude, where ice that had fallen from above was twisted by the shifting surface of a glacier into deep crevasses and towering ledges.

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