Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (37 page)

The day after his foray up to the North Col Sandy remained in Camp III mending the broken primus stoves.  Late that afternoon he learned from Norton that six oxygen appliances would be required early the following morning.  They would be taken to Camp IV in preparation for a summit attempt on or around 28 May.  This was news indeed for Sandy and he stayed up until midnight working away at the sets, desperate to have them ready and fully functioning.  The following morning he was up early again working feverishly until Odell and Geoffrey Bruce left Camp III.  The late night, early morning and extreme cold had taken its toll on Sandy and he was ‘feeling seedy’.

One of the most unpleasant aspects of life at Camp III was the cold.  Everybody complained of it in their letters and diaries.  Norton described it as a truly horrid spot.  It was sited on the moraine on the edge of the East Rongbuk glacier so that the ground underfoot was of rough stones.  In 1922 these stones had been warmed by the sun and there was a gentle trickle of drinking water available.  In 1924 the stones were always covered in fresh snow and deadeningly cold.  Every drop of water they required had to be melted over the primus stoves and the aching cold of the ground left their feet numb.  Before turning in to their tents at night they had to make an effort to warm them up: ‘as the moraine was too rough and the glacier too glassy to admit of a tramp, we used to carry out that military manoeuvre known as “double mark time” on a flat stone, sometimes for ten minutes’, wrote Norton ‘and even then, perhaps without much effect.’  The night of 22 May was the coldest night recorded to date at Camp III, -24 °F or – 30 °C.  Sandy’s feet were so uncomfortably cold that he had to get up four times in the night to attempt to warm them, in vain.  The low temperatures they were experiencing were nothing in comparison to what the Arctic and Antarctic explorers had had to put up with.  The very great difference, however, is that at altitude the intense cold is a very serious matter.  The body has much less strength to fight it, the lack of oxygen greatly exacerbates the feeling of cold and the risk of frostbite is very real.   Few of the men at Camp III got any sleep at all that night. ‘The eiderdown sleeping bag is a wonderful invention,’ wrote Norton in his dispatch to the
Times
the next day, ‘but it has its limitations.’

Odell and Bruce only got half-way up to Camp IV when they decided that the snow was too unstable and it would be dangerous to proceed.  Meanwhile Hazard, who had been up at the North Col for two days in miserable conditions and who was expecting to be relieved by Odell and Bruce, headed down from Camp IV with eleven porters, leaving Phu, the cook, in Camp.  Hazard and his men were spotted descending the ice chimney by Bruce and Odell and this further confirmed their view that to proceed would have been a mistake.  What they did not know at that stage was that Hazard was accompanied by only eight of his twelve men, the other four being marooned in Camp IV.  It appeared that Hazard had gone first across the dangerous traverse, rendered infinitely more so by the new, deep snow, and eight men had followed him, crossing one at a time, but the remaining four had lost their nerve as they saw the snow slipping below their feet and had been afraid to go further.  They had turned back to Camp IV and hidden in their tents.  This was an extremely serious situation and Norton was truly afraid that they might lose the men if he did not mount a rescue.  Not only were they stranded with very little food, but they were also ‘prey to the superstitious terrors to which those of their race are always prone on the big snow mountains’.  Hazard reported that at least two of them were suffering from frostbite and that one of the food loads had been dropped down the mountain, so that their rations were woefully inadequate.  Norton surveyed his troops and concluded ‘the whole party at Camp III was already in a bad way.  Mallory and Somervell were both suffering from very bad high-altitude throats.  Odell had had hardly any sleep for several nights; Irvine had diarrhoea and Hazard had just had a very trying three days.  The porters were for the most part quite unfit, morally and physically, for further efforts at present.’  Norton called a conference and discussed the situation with the climbers.  Sandy wrote in his diary that evening, ‘Norton decided that we must again retreat.  Norton, Somervell, George and I are due to get off early and fetch the 4 down from the col.’  In the event, Sandy felt too ill to join in the rescue the following day but he clearly felt guilty at not being able to accompany them: ‘A lot of snow fell in the night so the col will be very dangerous.  I hope they get on alright.’

It was probably no bad thing that Sandy did not accompany them.  Under those circumstances and in such appalling conditions Norton, Somervell and Mallory were absolutely reliant on their mountaineering knowledge and skills.  They trusted each other completely and had, after all, the experience of climbing high together in 1922.  Sandy’s inexperience might have hampered rather than helped their rescue, although his brute strength and courage were sorely missed.  As the three climbers left Camp III for the North Col, Norton ordered Hazard and Sandy to evacuate camp leaving only Odell and Noel
in situ
should there be casualties to assist down the glacier.

Norton realized that in using three of the strongest climbers, who might well be expected under different circumstances to be resting up before their summit bid, he would be jeopardizing their future attempts by attempting such a dramatic and exhausting rescue.  But they had no option.  ‘Personally’, Norton wrote later, ‘my one fixed determination had all along been that we must on no account have any casualties among our porters this year, and here we were, faced with the very real possibility of losing four men; for it must be admitted that our chances of rescuing the marooned porters did not appear rosy at this time.’

What followed that day was one of the most dramatic rescues on Everest to date.  Norton and Somervell, encouraged and at times chided by Mallory, made their way up the steep snow slopes and into the chimney from where they negotiated the snow traverse.  From there they could see Phu standing on the edge of the shelf.  After some communication problems they managed to establish that all four men could descend under their own power although one man, Namgya, had very badly frostbitten hands.  This was a huge relief.  Norton acknowledged that despite the fact they had come prepared with a stretcher they could never have negotiated the steep descent carrying a man.  The traverse was in a very dangerous, unstable condition and Somervell insisted that he should be the one to cross it to the porters, while Mallory and Norton belayed him on the rope.  He moved slowly, diagonally upwards across the traverse, pausing occasionally to cough painfully.  After one of the coughing fits, Norton saw him rest his head on his arm in exhaustion, the slope so steep he recalled that ‘the mental picture I have of him as he did this shows him standing almost upright in his steps with his elbow resting on the snow level with his shoulder.’  Eventually Somervell reached the end of the 200 foot rope, still some ten yards short of the ridge where the men were huddled together.  After a brief consultation at the tops of their voices he persuaded the men to take a chance over the first ten yards to the safety of the rope.  The first two men did this and passed along the rope to Mallory and Norton.  The last two made the mistake of leaving together with the result that a big patch of snow below them gave way and sent them flying down the slope on their backs.  ‘For one paralysing second I foresaw the apparently inevitable tragedy, with the two figures shooting into space over the edge of the blue ice cliff, 200 feet below.’  By a miracle their fall was broken by the depth of the new snow but they were out of reach of the rope and too petrified to move.  In a moment Somervell realized that the only option was to unrope himself, and pull them to the safety.  He held the very end of the rope in his hand, leaned forward, arms outstretched and grabbed the porters by the scruff of the neck, pulling them towards him, to ‘apparently gather them to his bosom in a paternal manner worthy of Abraham’ as Mallory observed.  They stumbled along the rope to the spot where Mallory, Norton and the other two were standing, while Somervell roped up again and made his way back to the same spot giving ‘a fine object lesson in mountain craft … balanced and erect, crossing the ruined track without a slip or mistake’.  The team made their way down the ice chimney and across the snow slopes to the safety of the glacier where they were met, three-quarters of a mile outside camp, by Odell and Noel with hot soup.  The relief they all felt at the successful outcome of the rescue was tempered by the extreme discomfort at having to spend a further night in Camp III.  The following morning a bedraggled and exhausted party limped into Camp II. 

Sandy, accompanied by Bruce, had made his way down to Camp II whilst the rescue above him was under way.  He was feeling extremely unwell and the castor oil he had dosed himself up with had had little effect.  He struggled into Camp II where he flopped into a tent, unable to get down to Camp I.  Later that day, he and Bruce received a note from a porter informing him of the successful retrieval of the porters and he wrote in his diary, ‘A note came through to say that they had nearly lost two men from slipping off the N.C. but in the end had arrived at Camp III safely at 8 pm very tired and Somervell obviously knocked up.  Noel had come to meet them on the glacier with a huge thermos of soup.’

By the time Norton and his men arrived into Camp II that afternoon Sandy was up and about, feeling much better.  He, Mallory, Bruce and Shebbeare walked down to the relative comfort of Camp I.  Sandy was trying some rubber-soled boots. He had only come down twice on the surface of the glacier, which was at its most slippery stage, and was pleased with the performance of the boots.  Shebbeare, particularly, was amused by Sandy’s seemingly incessant desire to try out new things.  The warmth and lower altitude did them all a great deal of good but their mood was subdued when they received news from Base Camp that the cobbler with the frostbitten feet had died. 

The next morning Sandy and Shebbeare scrambled up some rocks above the camp searching for the hermit’s cell that was reputed to be there, but failed to find it.  On their return they met Norton and Somervell who had arrived from Camp II and Hingston who joined them shortly afterwards from Base.  The meeting that followed lasted two hours and was inconclusive.  A second set back so late in the season was considered by all to be a very grave disappointment.  The onset of the monsoon, they felt sure, was imminent but they could not bear to give up now and clung to the belief that Norton held, namely that there would have to be a fortnight of good weather before the monsoon proper would begin.  Bruce, Norton and Shebbeare put their heads together and concluded that out of the fifty-five porters they had started with, only fifteen were fit to go up the mountain again.  Such a drastic reduction in porter numbers meant that a revised summit plan had to be considered and to Sandy’s great disappointment it did not include him in either of the first parties.  Bruce’s plan, which was eventually adopted, was to drop the oxygen attempt as the apparatus was heavy and required many more porters than were available.  There would therefore be two attempts, a day apart, both without oxygen.  Mallory doubted that he personally would be strong enough to climb high again, but he had more experience than anyone else so he agreed to make the choice of the two climbing parties.  As Geoffrey Bruce was the only really fit man among them he chose him to be his partner and Somervell and Norton to make up the second party.  Sandy wrote to Lilian that evening ‘We have now reorganised our plans and I hope to be in the 1
^st
or 2
^nd
party.  Geoff is considered the fittest & I’m next but neither being experienced climbers we can’t make a single party between us.  So George Mallory & Geoff; & Norton and Somervell will probably make the 1
^st
two parties, Odell and I have to be reserve.’

This letter, which belongs to the find of May 2000, points up something I had not really understood before.  When Hingston declared Geoff Bruce to be the fittest man and Sandy the second fittest, that meant that he deemed the others, Norton, Somervell, Mallory, etc to be less fit still.  This revelation puts paid to many of the arguments proposed in the more recent past that Mallory’s choice of Sandy as his partner for the final climb was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  Ever since Sandy and Mallory first met the idea of the two of them being members of the same summit party had been clear in Mallory’s mind.   Now, faced with a non-oxygen attempt and the declaration by Hingston that Bruce was the fittest of the climbers, Mallory had no option but to drop Sandy and climb with Bruce although I do not believe this was his preferred option.  When Norton invited Mallory to choose the make-up of the second climbing party, there was again little choice.  Norton and Somervell had climbed together in 1922, Mallory knew they were strong enough to go high without oxygen, whereas Sandy was still untried above the North Col, and thus this decision was more or less taken out of his hands.

It must have been a very bitter moment for Sandy as he saw the chance of his summit attempt slipping away.  He put a brave face on things however and added in his letter ‘Afraid there’s not time for more as the post is just going and I have to go up to Camp II to make a rope ladder for them!’  This rope ladder appears to have been entirely Sandy’s idea. As usual, his fertile and inventive mind had been working all the while and it struck him that if it were fixed in the ice chimney above Camp III it would greatly help the porters carrying loads up to the North Col.  On 28 May he set off up to Camp II, recording a fast time of 1 hour 35 minutes.  He brought with him a dozen large tent pegs and ‘spent all afternoon making the ladder.  Every third rung was wood, the rest rope, the splicing of which was very hard on the hands.’  The following day Odell and Shebbeare helped him and by evening they were able to show Norton, Somervell, Bruce and Mallory a 60 foot masterpiece.  Norton was impressed, especially after it had been installed and proved such a useful aid.  ‘Like all the work of the well-known firm of “Odell and Irvine” this proved a most complete success.’