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by William E. Siri

Other mountains share with Everest a history of adventure, glory, and tragedy, but only Everest is the highest place on earth. More than two-thirds of the earth’s atmosphere lies below its summit, and for an unacclimatized man without oxygen, the top of the mountain is more endurable than outer space by only two or three minutes. The primitive, often brutal struggle to reach its top is an irresistible challenge to our built-in need for adventure. But more than this, Everest became, with the first attempt to scale its ridges, a universal symbol of human courage and endurance; an ultimate test of man’s body and spirit.

The discovery in 1852 that Peak XV was the highest mountain in the world emerged from a page of routine survey calculations. When a clerk in the Trigonometric Survey of India offices excitedly informed his superior of his discovery, a careful check of his calculations, which were based on observations made three years earlier, confirmed his claim and the summit was set at 29,002 feet. (Careful modern observations have settled on an elevation of 29,028 feet, the value now generally accepted.) Peak XV now rated more distinction than a file number and was given the name Mount Everest after the first Surveyor-General of India, Sir George Everest. There was no way then of knowing that the Tibetans long ago recognized it as the greatest of mountains and called it Chomolongma, Goddess Mother of the World.

For sixty-nine years following the clerk’s exciting discovery little more could be learned about Mount Everest. It stood astride the Nepalese–Tibetan border, remote and inaccessible. Nepal and Tibet were tightly sealed against foreigners and hostile to intruders. From India, Mount Everest was all but hidden from view by lesser but nearer peaks.

Not until 1921, after years of negotiation, was permission coaxed from the Tibetan government and a reconnaissance expedition launched from Darjeeling. The route circled 400 miles over the high, windy Tibetan plateau to reach the north side of Mount Everest at the head of the Rongbuk Glacier. In the course of this first reconnaissance the most famous of early Everest climbers, George Leigh Mallory, found the key to the route on Everest by his discovery of the East Rongbuk Glacier, from which the North Col (23,000 feet) could be climbed. All succeeding British expeditions before World War II were compelled to make the long, exhausting trek across the Tibetan plateau to the north side of Everest. The first full-scale attempt on Everest was launched by the British the following year. For this early period of high-altitude climbing Geoffrey Bruce and George Finch performed an incredible feat in climbing to more than 27,000 feet before they were turned back by wind and exhaustion. The 1922 expedition ended in failure and tragedy, but the route to the summit of Everest was now clear. Spring of 1924 saw another strong British climbing party struggle to the North Col and force its way up the Northeast Ridge of Everest. For the third time Mallory, whose name was to become almost synonymous with that of the mountain that obsessed him, returned to Everest determined that nothing could turn him back. E. F. Norton and T. H. Somervell, however, were to make the first summit attempt and in doing so reached a new record height of more than 28,000 feet, which placed them at the Great Couloir directly below the summit.

Mallory and his young companion, Andrew Irvine, now made their bid for the summit, with N. E. Odell climbing one day behind them in support. From the highest camp at more than 27,000 feet, Odell saw Mallory and Irvine briefly as they ascended a prominent step high on the main East Ridge before the scene was obscured by clouds. At that point they were unaccountably four or five hours behind schedule. The winds that took over Everest that afternoon continued without let-up for days. In a remarkable tour de force, Odell searched the whole route from the North Col to more than 27,000 feet for signs of the missing climbers before he was driven back by the storm.

Speculation on the fate of Mallory and Irvine continues to this day. Did they fall and now lie entombed in the Rongbuk Glacier? Did they perish from cold and exhaustion high on the East Ridge? Or did they reach the summit? It is tempting to think they did and that they still lie frozen in bivouac where they were overtaken by darkness and storm on the descent. It is possible they made the same decision as that made later by Hornbein and Unsoeld to push on to the summit despite the late hour and difficulties. If they did, they were less lucky than the Americans. Perhaps on forty-nine nights out of fifty the cold winds raging over Everest make such a decision fatal.

A lapse of nine years brought a new generation of British climbers to Everest. Two successive summit teams in 1933 were turned back, like their predecessors, just beyond 28,000 feet. Only a reconnaissance was possible in 1935 because of frustrating delays in securing permission from Tibet. In 1936 a powerful expedition was defeated by storms and avalanches before it ever set foot on the mountain. Two years later, two summit attempts by the 1938 British expedition were again frustrated by the seemingly impenetrable barrier at 28,000 feet. The first chapter of the struggle for Everest’s summit was brought to a close by the outbreak of World War II.

After centuries of isolation, Nepal in 1949 opened its border to foreign visitors. Everest was now accessible by a direct, low-level route from India, and the scene of activity shifted to Everest’s south side. Light reconnaissance parties pioneered the new trail to Everest in 1950 and 1951. They also saw that the only possible route onto the mountain was a narrow, hazardous icefall rising from the Khumbu Glacier to the high valley of ice, the Western Cwm, between Everest and the Lhotse-Nuptse Ridge. Permission for Everest was now on a first-come-first-served basis and the Swiss were ready first. On their first try in the spring of 1952 the Swiss pioneered the whole route via the South Col and they nearly reached the summit. Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay ascended the Southeast Ridge within 800 feet. In the fall they returned for another attempt but were forced by intense cold, high winds, and short days to retreat before reaching the former high point. It was as a member of this Expedition that Norman Dyhrenfurth became hopelessly addicted to Everest. Eleven years later he would organize and lead the American expedition. The following spring, 1953, the British were ready. R. C. Evans and T. D. Bourdillon made the first attempt, and might have succeeded but for the failure of their intricate, closed-circuit oxygen apparatus. They reached the South Summit, only 300 feet below the main summit, and no great climbing difficulties lay ahead. Using the more reliable though less efficient open- circuit apparatus, the next team set out from the South Col. On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit. Everest had at last been climbed.

If it lost any of the lustre it had as an unclimbed peak, Everest still remained the most alluring of goals for climbers. It was, after all, still the highest mountain in the world. Dyhrenfurth returned to the mountain in the fall of 1955 with a strong but small team, too small in resources to tackle Everest; so they turned their attention to Lhotse. Once again, as in the fall of 1952, the merciless autumn winds and cold made high altitudes untenable. When the Swiss returned in 1956, it was to make a clean sweep of Everest. In near perfect weather four men reached the summit: Ernst Schmied and Jurg Marmet on one day; Hans-Rudolf von Gunten and Adolf Reist the next. As if Everest were not enough, two members of the expedition also made the first ascent of Lhotse (27,890 feet).

Watching the AMEE parade through Those (Photo by Barry Corbet)

Two large, well-equipped Indian expeditions were to challenge Everest before the Americans arrived on the scene. Both expeditions were brutally mauled by almost continuous storms and high-velocity winds. Despite this, the first Indian expedition in 1960, with Nawang Gombu leading the summit team, forced its way to 28,300 feet. The second expedition in 1962 pushed on to 28,600 feet before it too was blown from the mountain. There was activity on the north side of Everest as well. The Chinese in 1960 launched a full-scale assault from the Rongbuk Glacier via the North Col route of the early British expeditions. The claim that two Chinese climbers, Wang Fu Chou and Chu Yin Hua, together with Kobu, a Tibetan, reached the summit has been questioned. The climbers said they arrived at the summit at 1:50 in the morning of May 25, 1960, the same day the Indian summit team on the south side was turned back by fierce winds. Other attempts of sorts have been made on the north side. Maurice Wilson, an Englishman driven by fanatical faith in a divine vision, tried it alone in 1934 and died at the foot of the ice cliffs of the North Col. An American, Woodrow Wilson Sayre, and three companions, none of whom were experienced climbers, crossed secretly into Tibet from Nepal in 1962 to make an unauthorized attempt on Everest from the north. An intense personal drive combined with a sequence of incredibly lucky circumstances that all but surpasses belief permitted Sayre to reach 25,000 feet and live to tell about it. Everest is sometimes merciful as well as cruel.

By the time the Americans arrived, Everest had been climbed by six men, possibly nine, conceivably eleven. The routes on two of its three ridges were well established. The third, the West Ridge, had been given only passing notice by earlier expeditions and dismissed as hopeless. No one knew if Americans were yet ready to climb Everest by any route, but we were determined that they would not fail, as we had on Makalu, for want of equipment, funds, and even food. The Expedition consequently was large by American mountaineering standards, but so were its aims. The addition of Lhotse and Nuptse to the original list of goals meant a large climbing team. Moreover, the Expedition was conceived and organized from the outset as a joint mountaineering–scientific venture and this added still more to the manpower, impedimenta, and cost. The aims were also made more difficult, if not expanded, by the abandonment of Lhotse and Nuptse for the unexplored West Ridge of Everest. During three hectic years of preparation, the Expedition grew constantly in size and ambitions. By the time Dyhrenfurth brought his creation to the foot of Everest, there were nineteen American members, a British transport officer, a Nepalese liaison officer, some forty-seven Sherpas, more than nine hundred porters bearing twenty-seven tons of material, and six separate scientific programmes.

American expeditions had been shoestring affairs in the past and doubtless will continue to be so in the future. The Everest Expedition was different for no other reason than the determination and genius of Norman Dyhrenfurth. He brought his dream of a powerful, well-equipped American expedition to reality. During the three-year struggle, I often marveled at his total dedication to the task, and even more at his eloquent persuasiveness—and astonishing success—in seeking support for the venture. Supporting his natural talent for planning and organizing the expedition was an intimate knowledge of the Himalaya possessed by few men and no other American. In the end, the expedition’s achievements matched its ambitions. James Whittaker and Nawang Gombu, and later Luther Jerstad and Barry Bishop, reached the summit by the South Col route; Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld successfully pioneered a new and difficult route on the West Ridge; and the scientific programmes brought back new insight into the nature of high-altitude glaciers and a wealth of information on man’s physiological machinery, his mental processes, and group behaviour.

The seed of the idea of challenging Everest by way of the West Ridge was planted by Dyhrenfurth early in the Expedition’s formative stage. It lay dormant until we were well on the road to the mountain, marching over the foothills of the Himalaya, before it grew into an unwavering dedication in the minds of Tom Hornbein, Willi Unsoeld, and their old climbing companions, Corbet, Emerson, and Breitenbach. Pioneering a new route on Everest excited everyone’s imagination, for a high reconnaissance of the Ridge would be a gratifying mountaineering achievement even though it fell short of the summit. But there is a vast gulf between success and the best of tries short of it. The Expedition would be a failure in nearly every sense if the whole of its effort had been expended in a courageous but unsuccessful attempt via the Ridge. The moral and contractual commitments we had accepted to make the Expedition possible made the decision clear. Until the summit was reached by the South Col—the surer way—no large-scale diversions, however attractive, should jeopardize this effort. The larger part of the team was no less dedicated to climbing Everest by the South Col than were others to exploring the West Ridge.

There was no doubt in our minds that following the ascent of Everest, the resources of the Expedition would be diverted to the West Ridge. The opportunity could not be passed over, for the Expedition possessed a rare asset: strong, skillful climbers who were totally dedicated to the task. Nevertheless, the patience of the West Ridgers would be tried in the weeks before May 1, when Whittaker and Gombu hoisted themselves and their flagpole onto the summit of Everest.

Inevitably the Expedition’s large size evoked the ancient but still favourite subject for debate among mountaineers: the merits of small versus large expeditions. The subject is heavily crusted with subjective values and consequently conducive to strong convictions, vigorous debate, and, of course, is impossible to spoil with definite conclusions. Climbers tend to be rugged individualists. To them climbing is not a sport in the true sense, least of all an organized sport. Rather, it is a deep personal experience enjoyed in its fullest only when shared with a few close companions. Large expeditions bring with them some of the trappings and restraints of organized society that the climber would just as soon leave behind.

Nevertheless, the large expeditions have, for the most part, offered the only opportunity to challenge the greatest Himalayan peaks with any reasonable expectation of success. No serious climber could resist the call to join such an expedition no matter how strong his feelings about its size and multiplicity of non-mountaineering commitments. If his convictions are strong, he cannot help feeling at times a conflict between his obligations to the leader and the highly personal satisfactions and freedoms he seeks in mountaineering.

The ascent of the West Ridge and with it the traverse of Everest constitute one of the most astonishing feats in Himalayan mountaineering history. The meeting near the summit of two successful teams from opposite sides of the mountain, and their survival of a bivouac at 28,000 feet without oxygen, shelter, or food, added both intentional and unintentional embellishments to an already unique feat. Tom Hornbein has given us a stirring account of this great episode in Himalayan climbing. Everest can be an overwhelming experience that is more complex and deeply felt than simply the exposure for several months to discomfort, exhausting effort, uncertainty, and awesome scenery. The ascent of the West Ridge as seen through the eyes and mind of Hornbein brings clearly into focus the human as well as the physical struggle that is a part of climbing a great peak. In his intensely personal story, Hornbein shows a subtle insight into the feelings and impressions, the hopes and frustrations of those who would climb Everest. Each responds differently to the experience; but the country, the mountain, and the intense struggle leave deep, lasting marks—some that are scars hard to live with, and some that a man would never wish to lose.