The Conquest of the
third pole
May 1953: For
over 30 years men had been trying to reach the highest point on the planet but
no one had succeeded in making it to the summit of Mount Everest- till two men
took it upon themselves to disprove the myth of the mountain’s invincibility.
June 1st
1953, Evening: A message was
received at Buckingham Palace and presented to Elizabeth, the Queen-to-be, in
the red dispatch box of state affairs. Red signifies urgent news. What could be
so important on the eve of the coronation of the Queen of the Great Britain?
The Next morning hundreds of thousands were on their way to see the future
monarch drive down to Westminster Abey in her golden carriage. And what a scene
there was out there on the streets. Loudspeakers were blaring, newspaper
headlines were victoriously trumpeting the news, and people were singing in
excitement. And now Everest too! The Crowning Glory! Hillary had done it! For
the first time in history man had reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest
point on earth, a triumph achieved under British Leadership. Two Global Events
had coincided; the young queen’s coronation-the first to be covered by the new
medium of television and watched over many continents-and the ascent of
Everest-an event that took place far away from the glare of publicity for there
were as yet no TV Cameras on the slopes.
37 years later, in 1990, Edmund Hillary got a call at home
in New Zealand from his son: “Where are you now?” asked the father. “On the
peak of Everest” came the answer. But in 1953, when Hillary stood on the
summit, the world had to wait two whole days to get the news. It was the 2nd
of June by the time the news reached Buckingham Palace via courier runners and
radio and was then subsequently broadcast to the rest of mankind. And how this
news actually arrived forms a bizarre chapter in the history of communication.
Behind it lies the big story of the first ascent of the Mount Everest by Edmund
Hillary and Tenzing Norgay-two men who came from two very different worlds.
MARCH 1953, THE
HIGHLANDS OF NEPAL- The People of this tiny nation had never seen anything
like it before, two marching columns, with a total of 350 porters and 13 tonnes
of equipment, were weaving their way towards Everest. The expedition hoped to
realize a long-cherished dream and finally scale the highest mountain in the
world. After the conquests of the North Pole and the South Pole, this was the
last major destination on earth.
A Dozen expeditions had already been to Everest since 1921
and all had failed. 13 people had died
on the mountain. Earth would not be fully conquered till this summit was
scaled.
APRIL 22ND
1953, MOUNT EVEREST BASE CAMP-5,400M- Ten Europeans and 39 sherpas gathered
together at the lowest of the nine camps on the mountain. A few members of their team were already on
their way up, preparing the route.
One of them was 33 year old Edmund Hillary. He had seen a
mountain for the first time when he was 16 years old, on a school skiing trip
in New Zealand. “ It was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced”, he
recalled. Hillary was a bee-keeper by profession and a mountain climber by
passion. This 6’4” giant of a man had plenty of strength. He climbed mountains”
because it was fun” and the ascent of Everest had been his dream since his
first visit to the Himalayas in 1951.
The British feared this would be their last chance to be the
first to scale Everest. The following year a French expedition was planning to
come, and thereafter a team from Switzerland. It was nor or never. Besides,
Elizabeth was to be crowned on the 2nd of June. The conquest of the
“ Third pole” would make a wonderful coronation
gift to the Queen-and in the process show humanity that Great Britain was still
a world power.
Colonel John Hunt, 42, was selected as the leader of the
expedition by the British Himalayas Committee. He prepared for the undertaking
with military precision. He used the wind tunnels and decompression chambers of
the Royal Air Force and tested equipment in Switzerland under high alpine
conditions. An unparalleled expense in men and materials was invested in this
ninth British attempt at scaling the peak. In the event, however, it was a tiny adapter that went
missing that almost wrecked the entire mission.
James Morris was the official reporter for the London Times
on the team. Morris landed in the country where there were hardly any
telephones-the nearest one was 290 Km away. Besides which, he had competitors
on his tail. The Times was sponsoring the British Expedition and therefore,
strictly speaking, should have had exclusive reporting rights. But the Sherpas
were not aware of this-and so it was very difficult to keep the rights of the
Times Exclusive. Two reporters from Daily Mail and from the Reuters news agency
were crawling around at the foot of Everest; In addition, any number of
journalists were lurking about in Kathmandu, running their own establishments
there.
Morris knew that any reports he might send via radio from
Kathmandu to England would be easy to intercept.
So who would be the first to report the news of the victory
of failure of the expedition? Morris could send his reports via the British
Embassy who would radio the news to London, but there is 300 KM between Everest
and the embassy at Kathmandu. Morris therefore hired runners, who would
traverse the passes and rope bridges and convey his reports on the progress of
the expedition almost on a daily basis to Kathmandu. But even under the most favorable
of conditions, the fastest courier needs six days to cover this stretch- and it
would another two days for the report to finally appear on the pages of the
Times. It was also quite like that Morris would eventually not have this much
time at his disposal, if the news of the victory were to reach the newspaper in
time for the coronation.
The last chance for the British was also the last chance for
Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. As Sirdar he was the leader of the
porters, the head Sherpa of the expedition, and it was his responsibility to
organize the transportation of baggage and supplies. And no one had been to
Everest as often as he had.
In the 1920s, when Tenzing was still a child, three British
expeditions had attempted to climb the mountain, using porters recruited from
the Sherpa community at the foot of Everest. This was how the Sherpas got to
know that Everest was the tallest mountain in the world. When the expeditions
ended and the Sherpas returned to their villages, they told of strange
things-like the “ English Air”, which the crazy Britons carried in steel
bottles on their backs.
In 1924, when Tenzing was ten years old, the porters came
home and reported the disappearance of two British Climbers, George Mallory and
Andrew Irvine. “I heard their names and never forgot them” he later reminisced.
As a yound lad, Tenzing grazed herds of yak up in the
meadows at heights of 5,000 m. He could cut open a yak’s jugular and mix the
blood in his food. It gave him strength. What he could do was read or
write-there were no schools in Sherpa Land.
In the lonely mountain summers Tenzing had a lot of time to
look at Chomolungma, the Goddess of
Mother of the Earth- the name given to the mountain by the Sherpas, While the
other Sherpas wondered why people risk their lives at risk to climb a peak of
rock and ice, Tenzing grew firm in his determination: he wanted to be the first
Sherpa who was more than just a porter for the white sahibs. He wanted to stand
on the summit of Everest one day in his own right.
In 1953, 1936, 1938, Tenzing worked as a porter for three
British Everest expedition- they all failed The other Sherpas were happy to
just return home safe and sound, but not Tenzing; he wanted to reach the top.
For him, it as like a “a fever in the blood”. In 1947, he climbed with the Canadian
mountaineer, Earl Denamn. In 1953, Tenzing became the Sirdar for two Swiss
Everest expeditions; with labored breath he crawled on all fours towards the peak
and set a new height record by reaching 8.600 m. Non one had suffered so much
and toiled so hard on Everest as he-and survived. Now, at 39, his strength was
beginning to fade. “It is now or never”, he told himself.
APRIL 24TH
1953, BASE CAMP, 5400M- The 52 man British expedition began ferrying
equipment and supplies. The first obstacle on the way to the top was just above
the Base camp: the icefall of Khumbu Glacier. Huge towers of ice, some as tall
as large houses, loomed in front of the porters. Deep crevasses yawned between
the icy titans. The frozen blocks, balanced precariously one on top of the
other, could tumble at any time and crush the climbers, Everybody had to get
through this chaos, including the Sherpas with their loads.
A flat glacier valley five kilometers long opens up the
above the icefall. The British Christened this “Western Cwm” after the Welsh word for valley.
The Swiss call it the “Valley of the silence”. At its end, the valley forms a
wall of ice and beyond it lies the South Col and the Summit Ridge.
Down below at Base Camp, Tenzing supervised the
transportation, divided up the baggage and assigned porters, hurried everyone
along, and settled disputes. Then it was onwards up through the icefall, each
porter with a load of 20 to 30 kg on his back. The Sherpas had the difficult
task of hauling up tonnes of equipment; all that the British carried was light
baggage, One the icefall had been negotiated, an Advance Base Camp was set up at a height of 6.400 m
and this gradually became the nerve center of the expedition.
Meanwhile Times reporter James Morris was sitting on a
veranda in a little town of Namche Bazaar- 50 km of Everest. He was busy
devising a secret code on a piece of paper, for Morris had a problem,. In the
six days that it would take his runners to get to Kathmandu, the competition
had ample time and opportunity to intercept the messages.
His rivals were not interested in his routing reports on the
progress of the expedition, so these he could send in a normal unecrypted text,
But the real news- had Everest been conquered or not?- this was what the world
was waiting for. Initially, Morris had formulated a classic one-word
secret-code, which would sound like nonsense to outsiders” gooliwog”: was to be
the password for a successful ascent of Everest.
However, the man from London then discovered an Indian army
outpost in Namche Bazaar. Nepal had allowed India the use of this base as an
early warning station following the march of the Chinese into Tibet in 1950. A
powerful radio transmitter was available here-the only one of its kind for
miles around.
The radio transmitter brought about a total change in
Morris’s plans. It was only 50 KM from the base camp to the army outpost and if
he was able to use the transmitter, he would save atleast five days. So Morris
struck up an acquaintance with the Indian Commanding officer, helped him out
with a supply of aspirin and the officer declared himself ready to convey a
message to Kathmandu.
The Times reporter, however, expected his rivals to wiretap
even this message. But if an Indian officer were to send a coded message to a
foreign embassy, it would be tantamount to high treason. So there was no way
that Morris could use the secret code he had earlier developed for his
couriers. He had to find new code in
plan text-one which, to the Indians, would appear to be an innocuous message.
Thus” Snow conditions bad” meant “ Everest Scaled”.
Similarly, there was an innocent sounding phrase for the name of every member
of the expedition- “awaiting better conditions” for instance was the code for
Tenzing. Morris sent this new code to Kathmandu via a reliable runner.
MAY 7TH,
ADVANCE BASE CAMP-6400 M- The leader of the expedition, John Hunt, gathered
the team together in one tent to outline his plans and announce his decision
about who would go all the way to the top-and who had to be satisfied with just
preparing the route and looking after supplies.
So, once the South Col was reached at a height of 7,900 m,
and there were sufficient tents, sleeping bags, oxygen cylinders, provisions
and cooks, the first Summit Team would set off. This team comprised of two
Britons, Charles Evans, 34, and Tom Bourdillon, 28. If they did not succeed in
their mission, Hunt; plan provided for a second Summit Team to set forth:
Hillary and Tenzing. But that time, enough material would have reached the
South Col to enable the second team to set up a camp further up much closer to
the Summit.
This was not a particularly convincing plan, no doubt the
two British climbers, Evans and Bourndillon, got the first chance, but they had
to climb directly from the South col, made the ascent terribly arduous. In
principle, Hillary and Tenzing had a much better chance of reaching the top for
they would have another camp, the ninth one, set up a a height of 8,500 m. This
would make things much easier for them.
Hunt was clearly worried that the summer monsoon could break
early that year in May itself-bringing with it many weeks of bad weather. This
probably explains why he wanted to make one first quick dash. Thereafter, the
two strongest and most experienced climbers could try their luck, even though
they were not English.
Tenzing was upset. He felt that a Sherpa should have been
assigned a place in the first team as well, for this attempt, as all others
before it, would not have been possible without the men from Nepal.
MAY 20TH,
CAMP VII, 7,300 M, EVENING- Four small tents stood on a small platform high
above the Western Cwm, in the middle of the long ice wall which extends all the
way to the South Col below the summit. The Englishman, Wilfird Noyce, 34, had
been assigned the task of opening up the route from the camp to the South Col.
For 17 days, since the May 3rd, he and a dozen
other members of the team had been working their way through the Western Cwm
and then up the ice wall. They had set up once camp after another. They had not
shaved for two weeks, had not had a proper wash or a change of clothes. The
Sherpas had the onerous task of making tea. The tents were a mess of a jumble
of clothes, remains of food and drops of tea, oxygen apparatus and ropes. At
night they would all just crawl into their sleeping bags bundled up quickly
like mummies.
If Noyce had to pee at night, he had to pee himself out of
his sleeping bag, feel his way out into the snow and go around behind the tent.
This was a dangerous undertaking for one wrong step could mean plummeting down
the crevasse and plunging into the valley below ( just such a mishap led to a
Taiwanese climber falling to his death in 1996).
Would it have been better to use the urine bottles which Colonel
Hunt had devised for the climbers? But how was that to work inside a sleeping
bag? Their mountain boots also had to find a place within the sleeping bags,
otherwise they would freeze.
The nights brought about fits of coughing. The dry mountain
air parched throats and dried out noses, almost all the team members suffered
bronchitis and acute breathlessness on account of the thin air. Even down here
they could hear the “roar of a thousand tigers”, as Tenzing described the
storm, which snarled through the South Col 600 m further up. And that was there
they were headed the very next day.
Hunt called Tenzing and Hillary “a roped party”, because the
two worked in perfect unison. Hillary was constitutionally strong and
ambitious. Tenzing experienced, determined and cautious. With great effort
Tenzing had even managed to learn some English. No doubt he was also happy that
Hillary, the New Zealander, did not sport the Sahib attitude of the English. The two formed
a good, well tuned partnership of convenience, friendship would come much
later.
MAY 25TH,
CAMP VIII, SOUTH COL, 7,900 M- The next day, Team 1 was set off from here
for the summit. They were now four linear kilometers away from the Advance Base
Camp-and 950 vertical meters from the summit,. It was a truly desolate spot, just
a few rocks, some snow accumulated from the storm” The coldest and loneliest
place on earth” according to Tenzing. Possibly also the windiest, being so
close to the jet streams below the stratosphere. In addition, winds from Tibet
rush through here as if escaping from a Jet nozzle and then speed down the
other side towards the Indian Ocean.
Even today most teams climb Everest from the South Col side.
South Col is known as the Death Zone. The air-and with it the oxygen content-is
reduced to about a third of its concentration at sea-level. At this altitude
the body starts losing strength, even while lying down. Every movement costs
energy- energy which cannot be recharged or replenished. A terrible place, and
the toughest 950m of terrain still lay
ahead of the climbers.
MAY 26TH,
CAMP VIII, 7.30AM- Team 1 left the South Col for the summit. A Few hours
later, some 600 vertical meters below, Team 2 comprising Hillary and Tenzing,
supported by George Lowe and Alf Gregory, left Camp VII on the way to the South
Col. The four had slept at the lower cap to avoid tarrying too long in the
Death Zone. High up above, Lowe could just about make out two tiny specks at
the summit pyramid of Everest: Evans and Bourdillon. They were moving fast.
Lowe pointed out to them excitedly. Tenzing remained Silent.
Hillary and Tenzing reached the South Col first, followed
shortly thereafter by Lower, who at that moment could see Evans and Bourdillon almost
at the South Summit.” They are up, my God, they are up!” called out Lowe. Tenzing again, remained Silent.
1.0
PM- Team 1 was standing on the South Summit of
Mount Everest-8751m- no one had ever been up so high before. The peak was just
another 100 vertical meters away, a linear distance of 350 m. But, the two had
problems. Due to a malfunction in the regulator, Evans was getting hardly any
oxygen supply. Bourdilon wanted to carry on, if necessary alone.
Evans estimated that Bourdillon would need about five hours
to get to the summit and back. Their reserves of oxygen would not last that
long, besides which they would have to climb down in the dark. Evans reminded
Bourdillon of his wife, “If you carry on, Tom, you will never see Jennifer
again”.
That worked. The two turned around and with their last
reserves of strength dragged themselves back to the South Col. Now Team 2 had
its historic chance. Everest is not a difficult mountain to climb. The normal
route to Matterhorn, for instance, is far more complicated and technically more
challenging. But the terrain at Everest is treacherous throughout and requires
continuous concentration, particularly during the descent when climbers are
tired and oxygen reserves are low. Many passages are so steep that one false
step could mean a plunge into the abyss.
And then of course there is the altitude. Headaches and
insomnia are routine here, but can be extreme enough to mentally disorient a climber.
The build up of fluids in pulmonary or cerebral odemas is another persistent
and mortal threat at these heights.
Using oxygen can of course fool the body and give it the
impression that it is many thousand meters below. But oxygen does not help
against the cold and the storm. A squall at a wrong moment, glacier glasses
that get fogged up, an oxygen valve that gets frozen-all these can mean death
at this altitude, As Rob Hall, a mountaineer from New Zealand, said, “ With
enough determination, any bloody idiot today can get up this hill. The trick,
however, is to bet back down alive”.
Hall went up five times, but he made it down only four
times.
Everest is 237 m higher than the second highest mountain,
K2, and this height makes a world of difference: if Everest were these 237m
lower, it would probably have been scaled in 1924 by Mallory & Co. On the
other hand, if it were another 237m higher, its conquest would still remain a
challenge-not for mountaineers but rather for engineers. For Everest lies
exactly at the borderline of those extreme conditions which, under ideal circumstances,
determined men can still somehow manage to survive. But when are conditions
here ever ideal?
MAY 27TH,
SOUTH COL, 7900M- There were still six days to the coronation. A snow storm
was raging outside. Hillary and Tenzing were curled up inside their tent. They planned to carry on the next
morning, to build another camp 600m further up. Four team members were to help
them carry up the tents, sleeping bags, and oxygen bottles. Another two Sherpa’s
lay in the tent, immobilized. Altitude, storms, exhaustion, bronchitis and
intestinal catarrh had thrown their plans into disarray. This meant a load of
almost 28kg per person; a murderous burden. Difficult enough to manage on the
plains, how was it to be done at 8,.500 M?
Team I was to leave the south col that day. It was not
possible for Tom Bourdillon to spend another night in the Death Zone,. Just
after setting off he fell headlong into the snow. He somehow pulled himself together,
then collapsed again and could carry on only by crawling on all fours.
Expedition leader Hunt, who could have helped him descend, was determined to
remain at the South Col, for just in case Hillary and Tenzing too were
unsuccessful, he was thinking of attempting the summit itself.
A fierce argument ensued between Hillary and Hunt; the
expedition was almost at the point of breaking up. Finally Hunt went down along
with Borudillon and Evans.
MAY 28TH,
CAMP IX, 8500 M- It was the highest camp in the work. No man had ever set
up base so far up in the stratosphere. Hillary and Tenzing were alone, the
others were down below at the South Col. Here there was place just for two and
they sat munching sardine biscuits and drinking lemonade.
With an ice pick they had scraped together a platform of
boulders and ice, just big enough for the tent. One side of the tent terminated
at the ledge just where the southwest wall of Everest plunged down steeply.
They had nothing with which to anchor the tent properly. So they placed the
heavy oxygen bottles on the ground sheet. This may have been enough for a
camping trip at a trout stream, but it was unlikely to be sufficient on the
roof of the world, so they had to rely primarily on their weight of their own
bodies.
Inside the tent, Tenzing started up the stove. Hillary
checked their oxygen supply; it was enough for five and a half hours- too
little to get to the summit and back again. But they did have one large special
bottle- nine kilos in weight, which they had planned to use during the night to
come. A particular type of adapter, however, was required for this bottle, an
adapter which connected the oxygen bottle to the respiratory mask, an adapter
which they themselves had carefully packed in that morning. But where was it
now? It was nowhere to be found.
13 tonnes of equipment, an avalanche of goods and materials
beyond compare, and yet only one adapter! So What now? The scene was set for
the final push to the summit; the camp location was favorable, the weather was
fine, Was it all to fall apart now because of one small component? The dream of
a dozen expeditions, the hopes of an empire-all gone?
Nothing helped, the bottle remained closed. Hillary and
Tenzing now had less oxygen for the night-as also for the day of the summit, instead
of the anticipated four litres of oxygen per minute, they had to make do with
just three. And who knew what demands the mountain would make on them?
But first they had to get through the night. They huddled up as best they could,
with Hillary stretching out his long legs over Tenzing. Soon the storm rolled
in from the north, from Tibet. The first blast was initially just a buzz among
the boulders above them, then the wind gripped the tent, threatening to lift if
off and toss into the abyss with them inside.
The two braced themselves on all fours against it.The squall
abated, a final rustle and sigh and then it was over.
Neither of them spoke a word. Ten minutes later it began all
over again. If the storm had turned out to be stronger than them, no one would
ever have known. They were the loneliest men on earth.They had absolutely no
contact with their team down in the camps below.
Slowly they got used to the attacks- Are you freezing?-
Hillary asked. “ Yes” Came the answer. Freezing despite vest, woolen vest,
Shetland pullover, woolen shirt, woolen longhorns, two pairs of woolen socks,
down jackets, down pants, windcheater, storm trooper trousers, and three pairs
of gloves one on top of the other. Tenzing also kept his boots on.
Sometime during the night the wind died down and the two
dozed off. Would they be the first on the summit? Or had someone already been
there, only no one knew about it? To date there is much speculation about whether
or not Gorge Mallory had scaled the peak in 1924. On those days, all expeditions started out from the other
side of Everest, from Tibet. In 1921, whilst on his first expedition, Mallory
wrote to his wife, Ruth: We have paved the way to the summit for anyone who
would like to take on the challenge of this highest off all adventures?
Mallory went again in 1922, with the second English
Expedition. An avalanche claimed 17 men, seven Sherpas died.
The third attempt was in 1924. Mallory set off from the
highest camp on 8th June with his partner Andrew Irvine. In puttress
and a suit made of gabar-dine, Mallory wanted to leave behind a photo of his
wfe Riuth at the summit. The two were set at 12.50 pm, as they made their way
along the north-eastern ridge towards the summit- much behind scheduled. No one
ever saw them again.
Mallory’s Marble white body was found in 1999 at a height of
8,300 m.
INNUMERABLE BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN about whether the two
reached the summit or not. To achieve, that they would have had to cross the
“Second Step”, a steep face of rock at a height of 8600m. Reinhold Messner
finds it difficult to believe that Mallory reached the summit. Others point to
the one article that was ultimately not found on the mountaineers’ frozen body,
the photograph of his wife. This leaves them to conclude that he did indeed
manage to leave it at the summit.
Though Mallory may have reached the pinnacle, he certainly
never made it down. For only a man who is not drive to scale the summit at any
cost, who approaches the mountain with all due respective, who has the strength
to turn back when he still has time, only such a man can make it down alive.
Lying in this sleeping bag, Tenzing was thinking of another
very bad night, a night almost exactly a year ago. On that trip, he was
climbing with the Swiss mountaineer, Raymond Lambert and they had pitched a
tent only a 100 below their present location. Tenzing and Hillary had passed by
the frame of that same tent on their way up the previous afternoon.
Lambert was as strong and bulky as a bear. His feet were
merely stumps, since his toes had been lost to frostbite in the Alps. His
mountain boots were therefore extremely short and custom built. And on these
stumps he wanted to scale Everst.
Lambert spoke only French, Tenzing not a word of that Language. But the
two understood each other right from the start most of the time a glance was
enough to communicate. The two were a born team- and Tenzing, then 38, was at
the peaks of his prowess and Strength.
On that trip, a year previously, the two had eaten and
rested where now only the remains of the tents stood. Initially, they had
wanted to just pitch the tent and go down again because they were not really
ready for the summit ascent. But the weather was good, the route lay clearly
before them, So they decided to attempt in the next morning. The night was
terrible- no sleeping bag, no mattress, no stove. Nothing spoke in favor of his
final dash, other than sheer determination.
Using a candle, they melted a little snow for a few drops of
water to parch their burring thirst. They hugged each other for warmth throughout.
“We huddled together the whole night” Lambert wrote later. But even this did
nothing to help against the ground cold. It was a wonder they survived the
night at all.
At Six the next morning, they crawled out of their tent,
half frozen, and began the ascent. In five hours they managed to climb just 200
m. They crawled a bit on all fours and looked around. But it was impossible.
They had set a new height record but they were still 250 m short of the summit.
They may yet have reached it, may still have won the
greatest prize, but they knew that they would never be able to make it down
again. So, in silence, they turned around and started back down while they
still had the strength to do so.
The Swiss climber came again in the autumn of 1952 and again
he and Tenzing set off in the lead group. But the winter storms were settling
in with temperatures of -40 Degrees C and these kept them away from the South
Col. They gave up. Lambert, the bear with the small feet, presented Tenzing
with his red shawl as a farewell gift.
Then Tenzing fell victim to malaria. He lay in hospital in
delirium, was unconscious for a while. Two expeditions in one year, the cold,
the exhaustion and two roles at one time- Sirdar and mountain climber. This was
all just too much. He lost 16 pounds, but managed to survive.
MAY 29TH, CAMP
IX. 8,500M- At four in the morning, Hillary opened the Tent Clear Skies, no
wind, only -27 Degree C, ideal weather. Tenzing stuck his head out. “
Thyangboche!” he cried. 5000 m below, the monks of the Thuangboche Monastery were
already at their morning rituals. Among them was Peter Jackson from the Reuters
news agency. He had stationed himself there several weeks ago, keeping a vigil
on the summit.
Hillary’s boots were frozen stiff. He had taken them off at
night .That was careless on his part. The two now spent an hour warming his shoes
over the stove. One precious hour lost! Crampons were bucked on, ropes secured,
oxygen masks put in place and valves turned on, goggles were not to be forgotten
and the 13kg racks with the two steel bottles were strapped to their backs. It
was 6.30am. Tenzing wore Lambert’s red shawl. Then they set off.
On the way, they came across crusted snow, the terror of all
mountain climbers. This is deep powder snow under a frozen crust. Sometimes it
can take the weight of a climber, but at other times, it does not and then the
climber sinks down deep and must extricate himself laboriously and gingerly.
Soon Hillary and Tenzing encountered an unending stretch of powder snow. The
Entire slope could have give way at any moment., Somehow they managed to
breathe, even with the limited supply of oxygen of three litres per minute. By
nine O clock they were standing on the South Summit of Everest at a height of
8,751m, the height record set by Team 1. Now only 100 vertical metres,
approximately 250 linear metres, separated them from the summit.
This was the spot where 43 years later, during the Everest
Catastrophe of 1996, the New Zealander Rob Hall lost his life. He sat here one
while night and one whole day, crippled by exhaustion, cold and lack of oxygen.
He spoke to his team mates far below via satellite radio. They urged him to use
the oxygen bottles which they know were there at the South Summit. But Hall was
no longer able to control his movements. He spoke to hi s heavily pregnant wife
at home in New Zealand- I Love you, Sleep well my sweetheart. And then he
slowly froze to death.
A wildly jagged ridge of snow lay ahead of Hillary and
Tenzing, which wove its way to the main summit A Quick check on oxygen levels,
a gulp of water, and then they stepped onto the summit ridge. The snow was
solid!. Hillary was happy; he could cut in steps here with his ice axe. They
were on the crest of the earth. To the right and left of the ridge were immense
drops, thousands of meters down into the depths, Slowly the supply of oxygen
started to dry up. Frozen saliva had blocked the oxygen mask. A couple of
knocks with the hand and the masks were clear again.
The only obstacle that could still cost them the summit was
a vertical rock wall several metres high( this was later to be named the “
Hillary Step”). Huge cornices of ice hung down from the rock, and in between
was a fissure.
Hillary somehow wedged himself into the crack. “With my face
to the rock, I Thrust my crampons in the ice, searching with my fingers for the
smallest hold, the slightest unevenness in the wall, and slowly levered myself
upwards. I managed to move forward so the ice held and finally I crawled out of
the fissure onto the ledge of the cliff” He had made it.
Snow capped cornices lay before him now, one following the
other like frozen waves. After each cornice the mountain dropped away a few
meters till the next, somewhat higher cornice appeared. Hillary cautioned
himself not to be careless now.
How long would the oxygen still last? He continued further.
For two hours, Hillary continued to chip and cut steps and his arm began to
ache. Would this ridge never end?
Hillary went around another hill top. Beyond that, the ridge
Dropped away. Down and Down and down it went: it dropped away on all sides!
The Summit of Mount Everest- They were still 10m below the
absolute peak. Hillary said that they looked around,” astounded”. All the
hardships, all the fear, all the tensions fell away from them. Tenzing smiled-no
mask in the world could hide that-and then, finally, they took the last few
steps to the top.
11.30AM, EVEREST
SUMMIT, 8848M (or 8850m as established in 1999). Hillary held out his hand
to Tenzing,” in good Anglo-Saxon fashion”. But a handshake was not enough for
Tenzing. “ I Threw my arms into the air and then clasped them around Hillary
and we thumped each other on the back till we were out of breath despite the
oxygen”.
Hillary clicked a few photos, among them one that has become
famous. Tenzing holding his flag bedecked ice pick in the air. They looked, in
vain, for traces of Mallory. Tenzing unwound the flags from the ice pick and
pitched them into the snow. His daughter nina had given him a blue pen- he put
that down along with some chocolate- an offering to the Goddess.
After a quarter of an hour, they started on the long climb
down. “ Thuji Chey,” said Tenzing, “ thuji chey, Chomolungma”. I am
gratefulllllll, Mother Goddess of the Earth. He later gave the red shawl, which
had now been to the summit, back to Lambert.
Hillary and Tenzing had thought that a few papers would
publish the news; that the mountaineering community would probably sit up and
take notice. They simply had no idea
what was brewing, no inkling of the nationalistic furore that would ensure over
the question of which of them had set foot on the summit first. Nor had they
any clue that people would sing with joy on the streets of London thanks to
their Feat. Nor could they imagine that in the years before Tenzing’s death in
1986, they would become fast friends.
5.30 PM, SOUTH COL,
7900 M- Hillary and Tenzing were back with their team. Wilfrid Noyce, who had
been designated to lead a third summit team if necessary, now gave up his
summit ambitions and tried to communicate this great achievement to the Advance
Base Camp four linear kilometers below. The method of communication he used was
as old as the Stone age; he laid down two sleeping bags to form a T-Shape. “ T”
Stood for Top, and this was the agreed sign for Victory at the summit. Noyce
and Sherpa laid themselves down on the sleeping bags to ensure that they did
not flay away in the storm. They remained like this for ten minutes till it got
too cold for them. But the Advance Base Camp was covered by cloud and the
message never got through. There were still 95 hours to the Coronation.
May 30th,
2.00 PM, ADVANCE BASE CAMP, 6400 M- The Times reporter James Morris, who
had never been on a mountain, had joined a roped party and worked his way up
through the Khumbu Icefall. That morning they had seen the entire South Col
team descend. Just then All India Radio announced that the attempt on Everest
had failed.
Shortly thereafter Hillary and Tenzing reached the camp.
Only now did the team learn of their victory. The mountaineers hugged each
other. The Sherpa welcomed Tenzing with folded hands. Hillary talked and
talked: “ No more steps to cut, No more
ridges to cross. What a relief! Isn’t that right, Tenzing”
And then he just sat there and smiled and ate an omelette.,
“It was beautiful to see “ noted
Morris, “ How he sat there in his moment of triumph, before the shackles of
fame encircled them. In the evening Morris started on his way down to Base
camp. With the darkness was coming on, he slithered as fast as he could through
the ice blocks down the slopes of the greatest of mountains, to deliver the
report for the coronation of the queen”.
He checked the code one last time, and then despatched his
messensger. “Take this to the Indian in
Namche Bazaar. Run alone, be quick and be quite”. There were still 65 hours
to go. As day broke, Morris sprinted into the valley. At the Thyangboche
Monastery he met Peter Jackson, his rival from Rueters. A Truly British
dialogue took place
Jackson: “ Well, Well”
Morris : “ Ho Hum”
Jackson : “ It really would be a pity if they have not
managed it this time around”.
Morris “ Sad, really Sad,. But there are always the French”.
“ Ah well”.
And Morris went on his way.
This most vital of all message
was now carried like an Olympic Torch by a runner over a distance of 50KM to
Namche Bazaar where an Indian officer, using a bicycle Dynamo, radioed the
message to the Indian Embassy at Kathmandu. From there it was conveyed to the
British Embassy, then sent half way across the world to Whitehall in the
British Foreign Ministry and onto the London Times, and ultimately conveyed
over the phone to Sir Allen Lascelles, Private Secretary of the Queen, to end
up as a note in the red dispatch box. And in the morning, people sang and
danced on the streets of London. They were still suffering the after effects of
the war but on that day they had cause to celebrate; their queen was being
crowned and Britain had conquered Everest.
DEEP
SEA CHALLENGE
After
two months of testing DEEPSEA
CHALLENGER on shallower dives, Cameron was
poised above the deepest place on Earth. No one had imagined diving in seas
this rough. A key safety system had failed. But it was now, or never.
Storm season was rolling in, and time was running out. Rough seas kept delaying James Cameron’s dive to Challenger Deep, lowest spot of the Mariana Trench, at nearly seven miles below the surface. When the swells subsided just a little, the ship’s captain gave the go-ahead. Cameron climbed into the capsule and watched a crew member seal and lock the 400-pound hatch. In this exclusive account, he describes the intensity and wonder of his white-knuckle ride to the bottom.
05:15, March 26, 2012 11° 22' N, 142° 35' E
(WSW of Guam, Western Pacific)
Predawn in a pitch-black sea. My sub DEEPSEA CHALLENGER heaves and lurches as huge Pacific swells roll above me. We’ve all been up since midnight, starting our pre-dive checks after a couple of restless hours of sleep, and the whole team is running on adrenaline. These are the roughest conditions I’ve dived in so far on the expedition. Through my external cameras I can see the two divers just outside my tiny cockpit getting whipped around like tetherballs as they struggle to rig the sub for descent.
The pilot’s chamber is a 43-inch-diameter steel ball, and I’m packed into it like a walnut in its shell, my knees pushed up in a hunched sitting position, my head pressed down by the curve of the hull. I’ll be locked in this position for the next eight hours. My bare feet rest on the 400-pound steel hatch, locked shut from the outside. I’m literally bolted in. People always ask me if I get claustrophobic in the sub. To me it just feels snug and comforting. My visual field is filled by four video screens, three showing views from the external cameras, one a touch screen instrument panel.
The sub, painted electric green, is hanging upright in the swells like a vertical torpedo aimed at the center of the Earth. I tilt my 3-D camera, out on the end of its six-foot boom, to look up the face of the sub. The divers are getting into position to release the buoyant lift bag attached to the sub, holding it at the surface.
I’ve had years to contemplate this moment, and I won’t say there hasn’t been dread in the past few weeks, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. But right now I feel surprisingly calm. I am wrapped in the sub, a part of it and it a part of me, an extension of my ideas and dreams. As co-designer, I know its every function and foible intimately. After weeks of pilot training, my hand goes to a specific control or switch without thinking. There’s no apprehension at this point, only determination to do what we came out here for, and childlike excitement for what’s ahead.
Let’s do this. I take a breath and key the mike. “OK, ready to initiate descent. And release, release, release!”
The lead diver yanks a lanyard, freeing the lift bag. The sub drops like a stone, and in seconds the divers become toy figures far above on the churning surface. They dwindle and fade, leaving only darkness. A glance at the readouts shows that I’m dropping at almost 500 feet per minute. After a lifetime of dreaming, seven years developing the sub, grueling months of construction, and the stress and emotion of the voyage here, I’m finally on my way to Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the world’s oceans.
05:50, Depth 12,500 feet, Speed 3.5 knots
I pass the depth of Titanic in only 35 minutes, going four times the speed of the Russian Mir submersibles we used in 1995 to film that famous wreck for the movie. At that time Titanic seemed to me to exist at the most extreme depth imaginable, and going there was as exotic as traveling to the moon. Now I give a jaunty wave as I pass that depth as if I’m going down my driveway past the mailbox. Fifteen minutes later I pass 15,617 feet, the depth of the battleship Bismarck. While I was exploring that wreck in 2002, the bulb of a floodlight imploded with the force of a grenade going off just outside our Mir’s hull. That was my first experience with a deepwater implosion. If DEEPSEA CHALLENGER’s hull fails, I won’t feel a thing. It’ll be a CUT TO BLACK. But that won’t happen. We spent three years designing, forging, and machining this little steel sphere. I trust our engineering and the engineers who put it all together.
The external temperature is reading 35°F, down from 85° at the surface. The pilot’s sphere is cooling rapidly, its inside now covered with big drops of condensation. My bare feet, pressed against the steel of the hatch, are freezing. In the confined space it takes several minutes to put on wool socks and waterproof booties. I pull on a watch cap to protect my head from the cold wet steel pressing down on me, and yeah, OK, to look more like an explorer. In the darkness outside, the only indications of movement are particles of plankton racing upward through the sub’s lights, as if I were in a car driving in a blizzard.
06:33, 23,200 feet, 2.8 knots
I’ve just passed the maximum operating depth of the deepest diving manned submersible in the world, the Chinese Jiaolong. Minutes ago I passed the maximum depths of the Russian Mirs, the French Nautile, and the Japanese Shinkai 6500. I’m going deeper than any other piloted sub in existence can go. And all those other subs were the products of government-funded programs. Our little green torpedo was built privately, in a commercial space sandwiched between a plumbing supply wholesaler and a plywood shop in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Our team members, most of whom had never worked on a sub before, came from Canada, China, the United States, Australia, and France. This was a passion project for dreamers from all over the world, who believed they could do the impossible. Today we’ll see if we can.
06:46, 27,000 feet, 2.5 knots
I’ve just gone below the depth of my previous solo record dive in the New Britain Trench, off Papua New Guinea, three weeks ago. It seems incredible that I still have 9,000 feet to go. Time seems to stretch. I’ve gone through every item on my descent checklist, and I have nothing to do during this long, quiet fall through limbo but think and watch the depth numbers tick higher. The occasional hiss of the oxygen solenoid is the only sound. I look at my feet on the hatch and think about the massive force pushing in against it. If the sub springs a leak, the water will drill in like a laser, cutting right through anything in its path—myself included. I think about how that would feel. Would it hurt? Does the question have any meaning if you’re alive for only another second or two?
07:43, 35,600 feet, 0.5 knots
Another hour has passed, with the sub slowing during the final 9,000 feet. I’ve dropped some shot ballast, steel ball bearings released by an electromagnet to trim the sub’s buoyancy. I’m almost “neutral,” neither heavy nor light, descending very slowly on thrust alone. The altimeter indicates the bottom is 150 feet below. The cameras are all rolling, the lights aimed straight down. I’m gripping the thruster controls, white-knuckled, peering at the blank screens.
One hundred feet ... ninety ... eighty ... I should be seeing something. Seventy ... sixty ... Finally, I see a ghostly glow reflecting from the bottom. It looks as plain as an eggshell, with no detail, no scale reference to judge distance. I give a tiny braking burst with the vertical thrusters. Five seconds later the faintest downwash hits the seafloor, and the nothingness below me ripples like a silken veil.
I’m not sure yet if there really is a solid surface. Taking a hand briefly off the thruster controls, I aim the spotlight outward across the landscape. The water is gin-clear. I can see far into the distance: nothing. The bottom is utterly uniform, devoid of any character but the absence of character, of dimension and direction. I’ve seen seafloors in more than 80 deep-ocean dives. Nothing like this. Nothing.
07:46, 35,756 feet, zero knots
I nudge the sub downward, closing the gap to the bottom. On the boom camera I see the foot of the vehicle sink in about four inches before it stops. I’m down. The descent has taken two and a half hours. A cloud of the finest silt I’ve ever seen rises up in silken tendrils like cigarette smoke, hanging almost motionless. Then, a voice from seven miles above me: “DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, this is surface. Comms check.” The voice is faint but eerily clear. Our calculations suggested there wouldn’t be any voice comms at all this far down.
I glance at the depth gauge and key the mike. “Surface, this is DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. I am on the bottom. Depth is 35,756 feet ... life support’s good, everything looks good.” Only now does it occur to me that I might have prepared something more memorable, like “One small step for man.” At least I’ve got my watch cap.
Long seconds tick by as my message races up from the bottom of the world at the speed of sound and the answer comes back down. “Copy that.” The ex-Navy man on comms is even more matter-of-fact than I am. Military training. But I can visualize them all grinning and clapping up there on the ship. I know my wife, Suzy, will be glued to the telemetry screen, deeply relieved. I feel a surge of pride in the team, in their accomplishment. Most of the guys who built the sub are up there in that control room, scarcely believing yet what they’ve achieved. The sub is a tangible manifestation of their imagination, their knowledge, and their will. Infused with their collective spirit. In a sense they are all down here, with me.
Thirty-five thousand seven hundred fifty-six feet. What the hell, I’ll round it off to 36,000 feet at cocktail parties. The next voice I hear is completely unexpected. “Godspeed, Baby,” Suzy says, sending radar love down to the most remote place on Earth. Hearing her voice, my two worlds collide in a strange but beautiful way. Suzy has been by my side throughout the expedition, hiding her apprehension and backing me 100 percent. I know it’s been nerve-racking for her.
Time to get to work. We’ve planned for just five hours on the bottom, and there is a lot to do. I turn the sub, using the cameras to peer around at the world I’ve arrived in. The bottom is flat and featureless in all directions. An alien limbo. I power up the hydraulics, open the external door to the science compartment, then deploy the manipulator arm to take my first sediment core sample. If everything goes to hell in ten minutes, at least I’ll be coming back with some mud for the scientists.
It was never enough just to build a sub that could set the world’s depth record. It was important to me that it be a science platform as well. There’s no point in exploring the least understood frontier on our planet and not being able to record data and take samples.
Core sample safe on board, I take a moment to shoot a close-up of the Rolex Deepsea watch for the Swiss firm that has partnered with us on the expedition. The watch, strapped to the manipulator arm, is still ticking, despite 16,300 pounds per square inch of pressure. In 1960, as part of a U.S. Navy project, Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard dived in the massive bathyscaph Trieste to the same depth, the only other humans to ever do so. They also brought a specially built Rolex, and it too withstood the pressure just fine.
But not everything is working so well. Moments after taking an image of the watch, I see constellations of yellow oil globules floating up across my viewport. The hydraulic system is leaking. In minutes I lose all function in the arm, and the science door as well. With no more ability to take samples but my cameras still working, I set off to continue exploring.
09:10, 35,752 feet, 0.5 knots
With short bursts of the thrusters, I’m driving north across a plain of ponded sediment, as the geologists call it. The surface is like new-fallen snow on an endless parking lot. I haven’t seen anything alive on the bottom, and only occasional amphipods floating past, tiny as snowflakes. Soon I should be encountering the “wall” of the trench, which I know from our multibeam sonar maps is not really a wall, but rather a gently rising slope. I hope I’ll find exposed rock outcroppings that might harbor life.
All my viewing so far has been through the high-definition cameras. Remembering a promise I made to myself before the dive, I decide to land the sub. There is no way I’m coming down here to the deepest place in the ocean without seeing it with my own eyes. It takes me several minutes to move the equipment out of my way and contort myself into a position where I can look directly out the window. I spend a few minutes taking in the stillness of this alien place, so far from all human experience. Human eyes have been down this deep only once before. But Walsh and Piccard dived 23 miles west of here, in another part of the Challenger Deep now called the Vitiaz Deep. No one has ever seen this place before.
All other deep seafloor that I’ve ever visited, even as deep as 27,000 feet in the New Britain Trench, was crisscrossed with the tracks of worms, sea cucumbers, and other animals. Here there is literally no sign of life. The surface is undisturbed, and has been for who knows how long. I know it’s not truly sterile—we’ll almost surely discover new species of microbes living in that sediment sample I took earlier. But I have the inescapable feeling that I’ve dived beyond the limits of life itself. And with that comes an awe, a sense of the great privilege of being here, of bearing witness to a primordial world.
Some scientists on our team think life may indeed have originated in these black hadal depths, some four billion years ago, powered by the slow, steady chemical energy generated as one tectonic plate was dragged inexorably under another, releasing trapped fluids. This darkling plain has been here for countless eons, existing whether we witness it or not. I am humbled by the vastness of all we don’t know, both down here and out in the darkness of space. I feel how tiny a candle I’ve brought in these brief minutes and how enormous the task remains to explore our world.
10:25, 35,686 feet, 0.5 knots
I’ve found the north slope and am working up along its gently undulating ridges. I’m about a mile north of my landing site. So far no rock outcroppings. In my travel across the flat trench floor I’d found and photographed two possible signs of life: one a gelatinous blob smaller than a child’s fist sitting on the bottom, the other a dark scar five feet long that might have been the home of a subterranean worm of some kind. Both were enigmatic and unlike anything I’d seen in years of diving. I took good HD images, and I’ll let the scientists puzzle over them. A couple of my batteries are dangerously low, my compass is glitching, and the sonar has died completely. Plus, I’ve lost two of the three starboard thrusters, so the sub is sluggish and hard to control. The extreme pressure is taking its toll. I press on, knowing that time is running out but hoping to get to the kind of steeper cliffs I saw in the New Britain Trench, which harbored a completely different community of animals from those on the trench floor.
Abruptly, I feel the sub yaw to the right, and I check my thruster status display. The one remaining starboard thruster has failed. Now I can only turn in circles. I can’t take samples, and I can’t explore beyond this point, so there is no productive reason to stay. I’ve been on the bottom less than three hours, far less than my planned stay of five. Reluctantly, I call the surface and tell the team I’m preparing to ascend.
10:30, 35,686 feet, acceleration to six knots
The moment when you throw the switch that drops the ascent weights always gives you pause. If the weights don’t drop, you’re not coming home. Period. I spent years designing the weight-release mechanism, and the engineers who built and tested it did a thorough job making it the most reliable system on the sub. But as you reach for that switch, you always wonder. I don’t milk it out, thinking about it. I just throw the switch.
Click. I hear the familiar shtoonk as the two 536-pound weights slide out of their tracks and plummet to the seafloor. The sub lurches, and the bottom immediately drops away into its abiding darkness. As the speed builds up, trapped sediment churns violently out of the sub’s science bay, like the ice falling off the cryogenic tanks during a Saturn V launch. I feel the sub buck and rock as it fires upward. I’m going over six knots, the fastest the sub has ever gone, and I’ll be on the surface in less than an hour and a half. I imagine the pressure coming off the sub, like a great python that was unable to crush it slowly giving up its grip. A feeling of relief washes over me as the numbers get progressively lower. I’m on my way back to the world of sunlight and air, and Suzy’s sweet kiss.
--- Special thanks to National Geographic Magazine and Deepsea Challenge site- as these articles are reproduced from them
