Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (46 page)

 ‘He visualised always the last ascent would be made with oxygen and the success or failure would depend on his analysis of what could be achieved with it and what couldn’t’, Harry said. ‘He seemed to be looking forward to a phase when it was going to take every bit of guts he had to put one foot in front of another and nothing was too much trouble.  He was determined this was the target, to climb Mount Everest.  He was prepared to give it everything he’d got; without any doubt at all.   It’s the outstanding impression I have.  I was just a school boy but obviously very interested and it seemed to catch his attention, the fact that I listened to every word he said.’ 

I couldn’t help thinking how similar Harry’s response was to that of Peter Lunn in Mürren four months later.  Both of them felt the same ease in Sandy’s presence and fondly remembered the patience he showed in giving them his full attention for as long as they wanted it.  He had a rare talent for getting the best out of young people and giving them confidence to talk to him although he was an adult, as Geoffrey Summers’ daughter Ann has confirmed. 

According to Harry, Sandy had been staying up in the Lake District for a week walking and climbing on his own.  He had been over to Wasdale Head and had climbed Scafell Pinnacle, telling them that he had found Scafell very tough indeed.  He had also climbed on Great End, at the other end of the Scafell range, which has some steep crags and interesting climbing.  This was news to me as I was not aware that Sandy had done any climbing following his return to England after the Spitsbergen expedition but Harry Abraham’s recollections filled in a gap.  The introduction to the Abraham family came from Geoffrey Summers, not just from Odell as I had previously supposed.  Geoffrey was a close friend of George Abraham and had often stayed with him in Keswick and climbed with him.  Harry was always amused by the fact that Geoffrey would arrive in the newest model of Rolls Royce and once he was taken for a spin, which he described as the ‘worst example of a drive in a Rolls Royce’ he could ever imagine.  George and Geoffrey shared not only an interest in climbing but also in photography and it is not difficult to see why he recommended Sandy to head for Keswick after returning from Spitsbergen to visit the Abrahams.

Sandy left the Screes, the Abraham home, after supper and Harry never saw him again. But the visit made a great impact on him and he recalled the scene in the hall when they took leave of him. ‘I can see him now.  He put his hands on my shoulders and looked up at my father and said; “If we get to within about a couple of hundred yards, however hard work, if we get that near and we can see the highest point clearly, we shall go for it.   And if it’s a one way traffic, so be it.”  He turned round and I was too excited to wish him luck.’

Sandy went out and walked down the garden steps to catch the bus back to the King’s Head in Thirlspot where he was staying.  Ashley Abraham had been quite as impressed by Sandy as had been his son and as they came back into the house he turned to Harry and said  “You heard what he said? He’s a very, very strong young man”.  ‘My father was a very good judge of character, of people,’ Harry added ‘and he looked at Sandy Irvine as if he’d have been proud to have him for a son.  He was tremendously taken with him.  “That’s the sort of chap you want to grow up into”’ Ashley had said to him as he closed the door.

Ashley Abraham took Harry up to the Isle of Skye in 1928 where they met Benthley Beetham.  Four years after Sandy and Mallory had died on Mount Everest Harry remembers his father and Beetham talking very calmly and seriously about Sandy. ‘My father and Benthley Beetham were in no doubt at all.  It was simply their nouse, they reckoned the two of them got up.  Sandy would have gone on his own, that’s the impression left with Ashley Abraham and Benthley Beetham and this was in the calm talk of 1928, four years after I met Sandy Irvine.’

This interview was one of the least expected developments and gave a most vivid picture of Sandy.   It reminded me – as if I needed reminding – what a lasting impact he made on the people whose paths he crossed.  Harry’s recollection enabled me to see Sandy from yet another perspective and brought home to me his iron determination to be selected for the expedition.

But without doubt the most exciting find of all was once again linked to Mount Everest. In March 2001 my cousin John Irvine was having a clear out when he chanced upon an envelope at the very back of a drawer and underneath a pile of papers.  It had A.C.I. written on it in pencil.  He rang me to tell me he had found this package and he thought I might be interested in some negatives which had, amongst other things, a photograph of Sandy on his motorbike on Foel Grach above Llanfairfechan.   There was also a faded typewritten note in a frame, which had come from Sandy’s workshop at Park Road South.  It read:

Police Notice

Any person entering this abode is liable to

a fine of 2/- (unless special permission is

obtained from the caretaker).

Any person found borrowing anything & not re-

placing it exactly as it was found is liable

to a fine of not less than 1/6 & costs.

By order

Caretaker Lilian Irvine

Owner A C Irvine

After Sandy’s death the notice had hung in Kenneth’s workshop and then, finally, in John’s.  Sandy was protective of his own property but it seemed to run in the family as Hugh had complained bitterly in a letter to his mother from Shrewsbury ‘Sandy has probably pinched all my scarves and shoes...’.  Only Mrs Killen, the housekeeper, and Lilian had keys to the workshop. 

A letter from Sandy to Lilian written on 24
^th
June 1923 from Oxford carried the surprising news that Sandy had performed well in ‘Schools’, the end of year examinations at Oxford.  ‘I don’t think my own tutor ever expected it,’ Sandy wrote to Lilian cheerfully, ‘he always said that he thought I could pass Chemistry but was very doubtful about the Physics; as it was he tells me the examiner who corrected my Chemistry was much impressed with the way I answered the big questions which were more ‘finals’ standard than ‘prelim’ standard and which they do not expect to be attempted by most people.  Personally I found them the easiest because I could deduce or invent what I didn’t know while the usual prelim questions are all hard facts which one knows or doesn’t know!’  He had gained 87% and was within two marks of the top candidate, with which he declared himself delighted but added wryly ‘the only draw back is that now they will expect much more from me than if I had only just scraped through!’ 

The envelope also contained a handful of climbing photographs amongst the negatives, taken it would appear, by Sandy on an expedition in North Wales.  The brothers had no form of climbing protection other than two belts buckled together with which Hugh was photographed hauling Kenneth up onto Adam and Eve on Tryfan’ summit. 

I asked if there was anything else and John told me that there were two type-written letters from Everest Base Camp, dated 30
^th
April and 18
^th
May 1924 which began ‘My dear Peter…’  I almost jumped out of my skin.  In May 2000 I had found an exchange of letters between Willie Irvine and Arnold Lunn, who taught Sandy to ski Mürren.  In one of them Arnold thanked Willie for returning the letters Sandy had written to his son Peter from Base Camp.  The original letters that Arnold had sent to Willie were later destroyed in the Second World War and when I first met Peter in 1999 he told me of his great regret that they had ever been taken from him.  I had therefore just wondered in May 2000 whether Willie might have had the letters copied and that I would find them.  In the event they did not come to light and I had to tell Peter so.   I had no proof that a transcript had ever existed but what had given me hope were the copies of George Mallory’s letters home to Ruth from Tibet.  Willie was such a meticulous historian and he valued source material so highly that I was certain that he would have had the contents recorded before returning the letters to Arnold Lunn.  He had.  And they had reappeared.  They had been saved for posterity by Kenneth.  It was a moment to savour.

All of a sudden I was catapulted back to 1924 Everest Base Camp where Sandy sat scribbling away in order to catch the post which was due to leave the following day.  ‘My dear Peter,’ he wrote, ‘Just a line to tell you how the expedition is getting on. You will have heard the disaster about General Bruce having to go back.

‘We arrived here yesterday in miserable weather but today has been perfectly wonderful and everyone working like niggers sorting out stores for the high camps.

‘My particular job has been to improvise the oxygen apparatus, as out of the eleven supplied not a single one was fit to use when taken out of their cases and after several days work I’ve only got four safe to use, so I have had to redesign the whole thing and throw most of the instruments or the apparatus away.  It has been a long and rather heart-breaking job with the few tools I happened to bring of my own, but it’s nearly finished now.  I hope to be able to report 6 new design and four old fit for use.’

Peter had been fascinated by all the mechanical aspects of the Everest expedition and had questioned Sandy closely when they sat together at dinner in Mürren in January 1924.  Sandy knew that Peter would be interested in what he had been doing.  This description of the work he had done during the trek is less angry than his outbursts in his diary but is nevertheless a heart felt expression of his feelings towards what he had sometimes described as the ‘infernal apparatus’.

He went on to give Peter exact details of the climbing plan:

‘Norton and Somervell are making the first non-oxygen attempt on May 17
^th
from Camp 7 at 27,300 feet.  Mallory and I are to make the first Oxygen attempt on the same day from Camp 6 at 26,800 feet.  The idea is for them to leave the North Col the day before Mallory and I and spend one night at Camp 5. 25,000 ft. and another at 27,700 while we spend only one night at 26,800.  The mountain looks wonderfully easy from here in the evening light.’

‘Mallory and I leave on May 3
^rd
to go up to Camp 3 to acclimatise and climb a bit of the way up the North Peak to try and spot camp sites.  After 3 or 4 days there we come down to Camp 1 to rest and then go up for our attempt.  Weather permitting.’

‘We are all sitting in the Mess tent writing letters for tomorrow’s Dak or eating bulls eyes to help digest the Yak meat we had for dinner tonight.  It’s great fun this expedition, you would love it if you were a bit older!’

This tiny vignette of life at Base Camp rather caught me by surprise.  I could just imagine the scene with Sandy sitting along side Mallory, Norton and Odell, all hunched over the table in the mess tent in the failing light, together but isolated in their private worlds as they committed their thoughts and feelings to letters and diaries.

Throughout this letter one can sense Sandy’s excitement at being part of the climbing team chosen to make an assault on the summit despite his frustration with the oxygen.

‘You will probably hear the result of the 1
^st
attempt before you get this letter I hope it will be to say that at any rate the Oxygen party reached the top.  I really hate the thought of it.  I’d give anything to make a non-oxygen attempt.  I think I’d sooner get to the foot of the final pyramid without oxygen than to the top with it.  Still as I’m oxygen mechanic I’ve got to go with the beastly stuff to look after it.  After all I’ve got nothing to complain about being in the first party.’ 

Did he really think that it was ‘unsporting’ to climb with oxygen or was he just aware of the fact that the apparatus was likely to fail and that that may scupper the whole attempt?  I suspect a bit of both.  Interestingly, Odell used this exact quote in his obituary in November 1924 and I do wonder whether Odell too had seen these two letters which Arnold Lunn had sent to Willie.

He signed off the first letter in high spirits ‘I’ll write sometime and tell you what the climb was like if the altitude doesn’t do me down before I get to the North Col!!  Cheerio Peter.  Did you pass the Q1 before the season was over?  Ad montem!  Sandy Irvine.’  The Q1 was a skiing examination, which Peter would be taking and it touched him deeply at the time that Sandy had remembered to ask him about it.

In the second letter, written nearly three weeks later on May 18th, Sandy described the appalling conditions the party had encountered below the North Col and detailed the injuries sustained by the team: 

‘My dear Peter,

This must be a very short letter as I am due to start up the glacier in a few minutes.

‘You will probably have seen all about our bad luck in The Times.  I spent five days up at Camp III in most terrible conditions, a gale blowing night and day with night temperatures as low as minus 21½ F.  For about three nights we had a blizzard varying between 45 and 54 degrees of frost.  The driven snow was so fine that it came through everything.  Each morning our tents were inches deep in snow.  All our porters were sick and had to be sent down.  Odell and Hazard failed to read the North Col, and after another day of it we got orders from Norton that all camps were to be evacuated.