Climbing Mount Everest

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The following year, the first major non-British assaults on Everest were made by Swiss expeditions. Though a friendly spirit of co-operation existed between the British and Swiss mountaineers, there must have been some carefully restrained feelings of satisfaction among British climbers when the Swiss failed to snatch away the prize that had eluded the Alpine Club for so long.

In 1953 British explorers returned to Everest in earnest and the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society selected John Hunt to lead the latest attempt. The veteran mountaineer had been born in nearby India and had spent much of his life in Everest’s shadow. He came from rugged stock, being a distant relation of Sir Richard Burton.

Throughout his life, Hunt seemed to find himself almost constantly in the vicinity of mountains. During his childhood, he spent many summers on holiday in the Alps, where he first acquired a taste for climbing. After graduating from Sandhurst, he received a second lieutenant’s commission in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and posted to India. While on leave from his duties, he climbed in the nearby mountains, acquiring skills and a reputation that earned him a spot in several major mountaineering expeditions prior to the Second World War. The War put a stop to his recreational climbing, but gave him new opportunities to employ his talents when he was made the chief instructor of the Army’s Commando Mountain and Snow Warfare School. Following the War, he was sent to Greece, where he trained troops on Mount Olympus.

By the time Hunt was put in charge of the assault on Everest, the Alpine Club’s frustration had turned to desperation. The 1953 expedition’s planners considered every conceivable innovation that might prove decisive. The use of oxygen was still controversial, but since the 1920s breathing apparatus had become lighter and more reliable; therefore, the practical objections to its use were no longer as valid.

Those who still protested that it gave climbers an unfair advantage must have been horrified at some of the more radical suggestions made to Hunt. Among the colourful devices suggested by well-wishers were helium balloons that could be attached to the climbers to reduce their weight, and motorized sleds on which they could ride in comfort. Other suggested that the burden of hauling oxygen to the top of Everest could be eliminated by any of a number of alternatives, including airlifting oxygen cylinders to the expedition once it had reached a critical altitude; shooting cylinders up Everest with a mortar; or doing away with cylinders altogether by substituting an oxygen pipeline, complete with ‘faucets’ at which climber could pause for a gulp of fresh air. ‘If yet another notion had been adopted’, remembered the expedition leader, ‘we might have put ourselves into pressurized suits’ and climbed the mountain ‘looking very much like advertisements for ‘Michelin tyres.’

The expedition embraced none of these recommendations, but many of its members now considered oxygen itself as essential as food and warm clothing, and not an ‘unfair’ luxury, so the less exotic breathing apparatus was welcomed.

Hunt applied his military experience to the conquest of Everest, drilling his team in the Swiss Alps, the Scottish Highlands, and the mountains of Wales. During this ‘boot camp’ the mountaineers tested a wide variety of clothing, tents, boot, oxygen tanks, and other gear. Even after the party reached the Himalayas, they devoted three weeks to practice climbs on smaller peaks. As a result, the 1953 expedition was better prepared than any of the previous efforts.

On about 12th August, the expedition established its Base Camp, the first of nine small outposts that the climbers set up on the slopes of Everest. As expected, crossing the ice-fall proved extremely difficult. For nearly two weeks they duelled with the glacier, using ladders to cross deep cracks and picks to topple upright blocks of ice. The surface of the glacier changed almost daily; new crevasses appeared, old ones snapped shut, and new snowfalls covered laboriously cut trails.

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