A History of Porters on Everest: Part 4

Previously we discussed how a diplomatic incident led to the Tibetan government putting a ban on foreign expeditions.

In this post we discuss the return of climbers to Everest and the first indications of a route from the Nepali side of the mountain. Exploration of this route would have to wait until after WWII and will the be the subject of the next post.

Unfortunately, it is during these years that the sources remain rather quiet regarding the efforts of porters on the mountain. When starting this series, the intention was to shine a greater light on the accomplishments of porters and guides and their impact on the history of mountaineering on Everest. We feel that it would not be conducive to the story to ignore these years and, hence, this post will be more of a general recap of the decade.

The 1930s: A Return to the Goddess

Following the Affair of the Dancing Lamas, climbers were banned from attempting Everest from the north side of the mountain. With Nepal also being closed to foreigners during this time, there were no expeditions for eight years. It wasn't until August 1932 when the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, finally granted permission for an expedition, on the condition that all the climbers taking part were British. This reversal of policy had been won, in large part, by the combined work of the India Office, the government of India and Lt-Col Weir, the British political agent in Sikkim. There was a sense of urgency amongst the British, due to an increasing concern that the Germans, having recently mounted expeditions to both Kangchenjunga and Nanga Parbat, might be looking to Everest.

1933 Everest Expedition

For the 1933 expedition, Hugh Ruttledge was selected a party leader, a choice which surprised everyone including himself. At forty-eight, he was not to undertake any climbing on the upper reaches of the mountain but was entrusted with a managerial role. When selecting his expedition team, Ruttledge was interested in inviting climbers with prior experience on Everest. While Noel Odell (the last man to see Mallory and Irvine alive in 1924) and T. H. Somervell (1922 and 1924 Everest Expeditions) were not available, he did manage to recruit E. O Shebbeare and C.G Crawford who had been members of the 1924 and 1922 expeditions respectively. The other members of the expedition who had Himalayan experience included E. E Shipton, who, with P. Wyn-Harris made the first summit of Nelion (5,188m), one of Mt Kenya's twin peaks. Interestingly, several of the top British rock climbers were passed over with Ruttledge himself saying "we must beware [the] north British school of rock climbers" as although "individually they are probably good men, but they are a corporation with [a] contempt for everyone outside their own clan".

The party left England by sea in late January and after brief stops at Gibraltar (where the famous Rock of Gibraltar "offered a climbing problem or two") and Aden, the party arrived at Bombay. They had spent the duration of the voyage planning their strategy, as well as learning Nepali, in which Crawford was already proficient. After travelling overland through India, they reached Darjeeling, where porters were selected for the expedition. Two Sherpas from Ruttledge's 1932 Nanda Devi (7,816m) expedition, Nima Dorje and Sanam Topgye had travelled to the Solukhumbu to alert potential applicants to the existence of the expedition. Llakpar Chedi, Lewa and Nursang were chosen as sirdars, that is a local leader for the Sherpa and porters.

After acquiring provisions and porters, the expedition set out for the long journey to the north side of Everest. Various exhibitions were staged along the way, such as a football match and boxing display. Longland even put on a display of pole-vaulting using a bamboo pole, which was photographed by Smythe, and can be seen below.

Longland pole vaulting at Tengkyre Dzong, 1933.

The only other incident of note on the journey was when Lopsang Tsering fell of his pony and broke his collarbone. While not a grievous injury, the anaesthetic administered by Greene caused his heart to stop beating, and his life was only saved by a combination of resuscitation and coramine, a powerful stimulant.

Base camp was established at the same position as previous expeditions. Unfortunately, at this point the party discovered that several team members were unwell. Crawford was suffering from bronchitis, Wyn-Harris with influenza and the porter, Ondi, with double-pneumonia. They all descended to Ronbuk and, despite their ill-healt, they still managed to assist with setting up the lower camps. Camp I and II were established using local Tibetan labour from Shekar Dzong in order to rest the high-altitude porters. The remainder of the camps were established relatively easily with the support of the porters, apart from a disagreement about the position of Camp V which led Ruttledge to ascend to Camp IV to "straighten out the position". Camp V was fixed on the May 22nd, with the climbers passing the remains of George Finch's tent, a remnant of the 1922 expedition. The weather deteriorated over the next two days and with no sign of the party above Ruttledge, Wager, Wyn-Harris, Longland and Crawford set out to investigate. On the way up they passed Smythe who informed them that Camp V had been abandoned and that the rest of the climbers were descending. The terrible conditions on the descent led to several Sherpas suffering frostbite, with Lakpa Chedi and Passang both losing fingers. Dsa Tsering managed to save the life of E. St. J. Birnie after he lost control during a glissade.

There were two summit attempts following the establishment of the camps, and it should not come as a surprise that they were unsuccessful. The main point of interest was during the first attempt, when Wager and Wyn-Harris discovered an ice axe sixty feet below the north-east ridge. They collected the axe after their failed summit bid and, upon closer inspection, they realised it has almost certainly belonged to Sandy Irvine, who, together with George Mallory, had disappeared nearly a decade previously. Unfortunately, this did nothing to determine whether they had been able to summit.

1933 Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition

While not a climbing expedition, 1933 also saw the first flight expedition to Everest, financed by Dame Fanny Lucy Houston and organised by Stewart Blacker. There were two aircraft, both modified to include enclosed observer positions and equipped with oxygen and heating; however, the pilot cockpits remained open. The planes were piloted by Sir Douglas Douglas-Hamilton and David McIntyre on both flights of the expedition. For the first flight, observer Lieutenant Colonel Latham Blacker accompanied Douglas-Hamilton and cinematographer Sidney Bonnet accompanied McIntyre. During the flight Bonnet lost consciousness due to a faulty oxygen mask. Unfortunately clear photos of the mountain could not be obtained because of the dust. Another attempt was made a few days later which proved more successful, and the pictures captured assisted Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on their first successful climb in 1953.

1935 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition

The 1935 expedition was planned at short notice as an expedition to scout potential routes for a 1936 expedition. Eric Shipton was chosen to lead the expedition following his successful discovery of a route into the Nanda Devi Sanctuary the previous year. Nanda Devi, which sits in what was the Garhwal District in Northern India, is surrounded by a ring of mountains referred to as the Sanctuary. All attempts to find a route into the Sanctuary had previously failed, despite decades of attempts. In 1934, Shipton, with Bill Tilman, Ang Tharkay, Pasang Bhotia and Kusang Namgir had discovered a route into the Sanctuary through the Rishi Ganga gorge, which allowed Tilman and Noel Odell to reach the summit for the first time in 1936 as part of an Anglo-American expedition.

The British were caught unprepared when the Tibetan government gave permission for expedition since 1935 and 1936, and so it was decided to launch a reconnaissance expedition due to timing and budgetary constraints. In February 1935, Shipton gave a speech about Nanda Devi at a Royal Geographic Society meeting, which was extremely well received. Of particular interest to the Mount Everest Committee was the fact that Shipton's expedition had only cost £287 due to his preference for a lightweight style rather than the traditional large-scale expeditions. As Shipton would not be able to reach the region until July, the traditional start of the monsoon, the team would first have to determine the snow conditions before climbing higher than base camp. Due to its status as a "reconnaissance" expedition, the summit was explicitly off limits and no supplementary oxygen was to be used. The expedition was also able to reduce costs by avoiding the extravagant lifestyle of earlier British expeditions, so despised by Shipton. He even went so far as to consult a nutritionist for advice on a high calorie diet which could be paired with locally sourced food. This diet, which included lentils, dried vegetables, powdered milk with the addition of cod liver oil, vitamin C and iron tablets was in stark comparison the caviar, foie gras, quail eggs and lobster on the 1933 expedition. Shipton himself even later commented that "[in 1935 he] went too far the other way; it was bad policy to force people who were quite unused to rough food to make such a complete break with their normal diet".

Upon reaching Darjeeling, the expedition employed fourteen Sherpas; however Shipton decided he required a couple more. One of the additional Sherpa was a completely inexperienced nineteen-year-old who was chosen by Shipton on account of his attractive grin. This boy was none other than Tenzing Norgay, and although none of them knew it at the time, he would go one to make the first ascent of Everest in 1953 with Edmund Hillary.

After reaching the Ronbuk Monastery, the party ascended the East Ronbuk glacier to reach the foot of the North Col on the 8th of July. From here they began their ascent, and they came across the remains of Maurice Wilson, the British solo climber who had gone missing the previous year, and buried him in a crevasse. Wilson's expedition is the subject of a supplementary post and hence we will not discuss it here. After discovering that the route to the top of the Col was proving to be too dangerous in the monsoon snow, the party split up to take part in what Shipton termed a "veritable orgy of mountain climbing". This "orgy" led to the summitting of twenty-six peaks over 6,100m (20,000 feet), which was as many as all the previous expeditions combined.

During the 1921 expedition, George Mallory and Guy Bullock had climbed an unknown col between Pumori and Lingtren, which allowed the first sighting of the Western Cwm. Mallory was not impressed and reported that he was "not sorry" he didn't need to climb up it. In 1925, Shipton and New Zealander Guy Bryant reached the same point and they were able to get take the first photograph of the Khumbu Icefall, the path to the Western Cwm. Shipton reported that the accompanying Sherpa became quite excited as they pointed to landmarks that they recognised from their homes in the Sol Khumbu.

While the expedition did not grab the public's attention in the way that previous expeditions had, it had an unlikely influence on the successful 1953 expedition. Not only was it the first expedition to employ Tenzing Norgay, but Shipton's fond memories of Guy Bryant would lead to him personally deciding to appoint a relatively unknown climber from New Zealand for the 1951 expedition and Edmund Hillary's performance on this expedition that led to him being invited back in 1953.

1936 Everest Expedition

While Shipton's light-weight approach to expeditions had led to great success the previous year and had been applauded by the "establishment", the 1936 expedition returned to the same large-scale endeavours as in the previous years. This was much to Shipton's dismay and he even considered resigning his place. Hugh Ruttledge, the leader from 1933, was once again chosen to lead the party although Frank Smythe became the de facto climbing leader. Bill Tilman and Dan Bryant had not functioned well at altitude the previous year and both men agreed to step down from the expedition. Tilman would instead return to Nanda Devi where he and Noel Odell reached the summit, which was at that time the highest mountain to be climbed.

The expedition left Darjeeling with sixty and recruited a further one hundred upon reaching Ronbuk. One of the porters recruited in Darjeeling was Tenzing Norgay, who was now establishing himself as a regular on British expeditions to Everest. While Smythe, Shipton and Warren reached the North Col on the May 9th using the same line as the previous year's expedition, heavy snowfall slowed progress and ruined the path they had cut into the ice. Another attempt was launched on May 13th which saw Smythe, having been asked to save his strength for a summit bid, appoint Rinzing to lead the climb. This event marks the first time a Sherpa had led a climb on Everest. The camps up to the top of the North Col were established by a team of ninety-six porters in only five days, compared to the fourteen days of the previous year. Portable radios were also used for the first time, with the "extreme lightness" of only 6.8kg allowing instant communication between the camps. This good fortune was not to last, as news of the monsoon's arrival in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) came much earlier than expected. This led to a mad scramble to try and reach the summit, and Wyn-Harris and Shipton managed to persuade Ruttledge to attempt the summit despite the bad weather and his better judgement. They were lucky to survive an avalanche that raced down from the North Col and Shipton later wrote that "it was a ridiculous thing to do, but we were desperate".

The 1936 expedition was perceived publicly as a failure and calls for reform of the Alpine Club were made from members of the expedition. It was argued by George Finch, a member of the 1922 expedition, that future expeditions should be planned and led by climbers, age restrictions of 25-30 be imposed and that the leadership should not automatically be military.

1938 Everest Expedition

After the perceived failure of the 1936 expedition, Bill Tilman's 1938 expedition was a low-key, low-cost endeavour which unfortunately also encountered an early monsoon. Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton, Noel Odell, Peter Lloyd, Peter Oliver and Charles Warren were all members of the expedition, with Ang Tharkay as sirdar and Tenzing Norgay making his third appearance on Everest.

Despite the deep snow, the team made record time in reaching Ronbuk, beating the previous teams by over a week. There they met up with forty-five Sherpa who had journeyed from Sol Khumbu to Tibet via Nangpa La. After establishing the usual camps, the team successfully made the first ascent of the North Col via the western route. They also managed to establish Camp VI at 8,300m. However dangerous snow conditions made ascending any higher impossible. It was eventually decided to withdraw from the mountain by descending via the East Ronbuk Glacier. During the descent, Pasang Bhotia suffered a stroke at the North Col which left him paralysed on his right-hand side. He was carried down the mountain and luckily went on to make a good recovery.

After the party descended, they returned to a Europe that would soon be engulfed by the flames of WWII. For obvious reasons, no climbing would take place during these years and after the war the Dalai Lama did not respond to requests for expeditions. In 1950, the Chinese occupation of Tibet saw the borders closed to all foreigners. This left Nepal as the only possible access point for Everest.

Coming in part five, we will cover the expeditions of the 1950s, with particular emphasis on the British 1953 expedition, which saw climbers finally stand on the roof of the world.

Image: From left to right: Ang Tharkay, Eric Shipton, Pasang Bhotia, Bill Tilman and Kusang

Credit: Bill Tilman