Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (30 page)

The general’s health was beginning to give some concern and there is a definite change in the atmosphere within the expedition at this point.  All the contemporary records betray the concern they all felt at the prospect of Bruce possibly not being able to continue on the march.  Hingston and MacDonald arranged for him to proceed at a lower altitude and the others made their way over the next pass, following the first party, to Gantza.  There was relief that evening as the general was clearly feeling better and ‘had some good stories for dinner’..

The march from Yatung to Phari took them as far as the Tibetan plain.  They walked and rode through impressive gorges where the going was rough but the views spectacular.  The trees were now predominantly birch and their trunks glowed gold in the sunshine.  The great white pyramid of Chomolhari, the first great peak in Tibet from the Sikkim district, dominated the view.  As they came out of the gorge onto the plain they saw three or four herds of Tibetan gazelle and kyang, or wild asses, grazing before them, some of them within 300 yards.

With the prospect of the long trek across the plains, Sandy became increasingly anxious about the question of his mount.  His pony had been causing him some problems, not least as it was very frisky and ran away with him at every opportunity.  MacDonald tried to sell him another pony but that one was equally full of oats.  The  Tibetans frequently expressed concern that their little animals would not hold his weight but eventually he found one which seemed to fit the bill; however, it ran away with him when he challenged Mallory to a race.  This caused the whole baggage train to stampede, which must have been a spectacular sight.  In an effort to get the pony to stop he ended up pulling the saddle right over its head.  ‘I must get a crupper fitted as I did that three times today’, he wrote in his diary.  In fact he did not have time to fashion himself a crupper because he was obliged to spend the afternoon testing and comparing the different cookers that were under consideration for the higher camps.  He concluded that the meta cooker gave by far the best results.  He had also been busy working on dymo torches and sewing the zip fasteners he had brought with him onto his sleeping bag.   That evening they drank the health of the Oxford Boat Race crew in some of General Bruce’s 140-year-old rum.

One of the most important aspects of the march for the party was the matter of post.  Information from home was always received with great enthusiasm and on occasions where the post did not get through or an expected letter did not arrive, it could cause great disappointment.  Sandy had asked all his friends as well as his family to write to him on the expedition and on 30 March he received his first letters from home which had arrived via the SS California.  He immediately sent off the three letters he had written to Milling, Audrey Pim and another friend from Oxford.  Communication with home was as important to him as it was to the others, not least when the morning after they had drunk to the crew he received a cable telling him that Cambridge had won the 1924 Boat Race by four and a half lengths.  I really get a sense of his frustration at not being able to ask hundreds of ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘what on earth was going on’ type of questions.  He wrote in his diary: ‘I still can’t get over Oxford being beaten by 4½ lengths – I would like to have some details of the race.’  A post mortem of Oxford’s defeat not being possible, he had nevertheless given vent to his surprise at dinner that evening and the other members of the second party had been very sympathetic.  Bruce wrote in his dispatch to the Times from Phari: ‘Unfortunately we have to condole with our representative of the Oxford eight on his crew’s defeat in the Boat Race, although it is perfectly clear to us why the race was won by the Light Blues.  All are confident of the result of the next race.’

In his job as mess secretary, Sandy was trying his very best to communicate with the porters.  As Norton pointed out, the lack of Hindustani did present several problems when he was trying to communicate the more intricate workings of a cooker. ‘Mr Irvine, for instance, knows the Hindustani for jam already, and the resultant permutations and combinations are somewhat quaint and usually end in the summoning of Captain Bruce or Mr Shebbeare to get to the bottom of the matter.  It is curious that some of the least qualified for interpreting are the most persistent in their efforts.’  Sandy’s efforts at communication, however, were sometimes well rewarded and he did succeed in greatly speeding up the process of erecting the mess tent.  He spent an entire morning on the problem ‘drilling coolies to pitch it quickly – finally I made a rectangle of chord [sic] with diagonal marks all along rope for positions of pegs.  If this doesn’t get too tangled it should enable all pegs to be put in the right places straight away & tent pitched quickly.’  Once again a simple solution proved to be extremely effective and he noted with satisfaction the next evening ‘The mess tent was pitched perfectly after our drill yesterday.’  As an encore he finished putting the zip fasteners on his sleeping bag.

The second party caught up with the first in Phari on 5 April where they encountered their first severe setbacks. The members of the 1922 expedition had had little positive to say about Phari.  It had been bitterly cold and the town unbearably dirty.  General Bruce thought it somewhat improved since 1922 but Sandy was pretty taken aback by the squalor and wrote in his diary: ‘I was very much impressed by the dirtiness of the whole place & also the smell.  As each batch of Yaks left a crowd of natives rushed after to collect any Yak dung that might be forthcoming; this they put in the baggy part of their coats or carried it in their skirts … The whole of the camp site (the only level bit near water) is about 6” deep in sling.  Is suppose it’s very wholesome really!’ He was not the only person who had something to say about Phari.  Shebbeare was equally scathing:  ‘Phari is supposed to be the dirtiest place in the world & I should think it is.’  The alleys ‘in places, almost knee deep in filth.  The houses are dark, smokey rabbit warrens and the people are black with grime.’

There were endless transport problems in Phari.  Each region of Tibet was under separate jurisdiction and the provision of transport and food had to be negotiated with the Dzong Pen, the man who governed the region.  It was to the Dzong Pen that the transport officers Geoffrey Bruce and Shebbeare would go with the expedition leader, in this case Norton who took over from the general half way through the negotiations, to work out a deal for the loan of transport animals. There was invariably a certain amount of haggling, even though the arrangements had been worked out in advance.  In Phari the negotiations plumbed new depths and it took a great deal of patience and determination on the part of Shebbeare and Geoffrey Bruce to get the Dzong Pen and his men to agree to the rate they wished to pay.  A rate, the general had pointed out to the Dzong Pen before he left, that had already been agreed in Lhasa.  Norton was deeply frustrated.  ‘The anticipated transport trouble materialised with a vengeance.  The Phari Dzong Pen & Gembus [men] obstructing in every way.’  Shebbeare, who had spent nearly three days negotiating the loan of 300 transport animals was even more outspoken in his diary. ‘With a few honourable exceptions we found the Dzong pens shifty customers, ready to promise anything, and their gembus useless parasites probably too extortionate to have any control.  The Phari Dzong pen & his hangers on were the worst we met, living on the trade route this might have been expected on the analogy of the inhabitants of sea ports.’   It took Shebbeare and Geoffrey Bruce nine solid hours to get all the loads on the move.

Not only were they having to contend with grim conditions and truculent Dzong Pens, but the general’s health was showing no signs of improvement.  In addition, Mallory was suffering from severe stomach pains which Somervell suspected might be appendicitis and Beetham had contracted a bad bout of dysentery.  It was a watershed for the expedition in terms of the health of the party.  Hingston elected to escort the general via a different route to see whether the effect of a lower altitude and slightly warmer conditions would improve his condition.  This left Norton in temporary charge of the expedition and Somervell as the only remaining medical officer tending to Mallory and Beetham.

While these negotiations were taking place Sandy was busy working away, his tent having taken on somewhat the appearance of a workshop.  ‘My tool box has been worth its weight in gold already’ he told Lilian, ‘everyone is bringing things to be done.  There’s not another tool of any kind except 1 doz screw drivers – not even a hammer on the whole expedition, so its lucky I got them to give me a free hand in getting tools’.  He was still trying to salvage what remained of the broken oxygen frames and it became clear to him soon after Phari that he would have no option but completely to rebuild what Siebe Gorman had sent. By the time the expedition had been on the road for two weeks, Sandy had repaired his own watch, Mallory’s camp bed, Beetham’s camera, had fitted crampons to Mallory’s boots, and designed tin shades for the lamps (the cardboard ones were prone to catch fire very easily). 

From Phari the expedition moved up onto the Tibetan plain where they encountered cold and wind of exceptional ferocity.  Norton had commented in 1922 on the single most memorable characteristic of the Tibetan plain: ‘It is hardly necessary to note the wind – that well known feature of Tibet.  Morning usually breaks still & sun is so hot one can strip & wash in frozen stream & have breakfast in the open.  By about 9 the wind (generally S.W.) is blowing bitterly keen off the snow mountains & increases in force until it begins to die down again at sunset when night is generally still. This wind, as I said before, is like a toothache – one can’t forget it’ and he did not like it any better in 1924.

The Tibetan plain is one of the highest land plateaux on earth.  It lies at about 14,000 feet with passes of 17,000 to 18,000 feet a regular feature.  Its vastness is almost impossible to comprehend with horizons tens of miles away in every direction.  Although there is practically no vegetation on the plateau, the colours of the sand and rock, the hues created by the light, the sky and the clouds produce the most beautiful panorama of browns, purples and blues.  On the plains they saw herds of kyang and Tibetan gazelle ‘looking as sleek and round as if their chosen habitat were the finest pasture in Asia’.  To the south they could see the snow capped peaks of  Pauhunri, Kanchenjunga and Chomiomo.  Ahead of them the great gravel plain, windswept with sand blowing around in great dust devils held little appeal.  Norton described it as the ‘very abomination of desolation’.  There was little respite from the wind and the temperature at night plummeted to thirty-four degrees of frost, that is –2˚ F or - 20˚C.  Sandy wrote to his mother ‘for the last 5 days we’ve been travelling over absolute sand & stone desert not a sign of vegetation or shelter (varying from 15,500 to 17,800 ft) with a burning dry sun & half a gale blowing; the coldest wind I’ve ever known, 22, 28, 34, 20° of frost 4 nights running with this wind is enough to chill anyone’.  At Phari he had made a further effort to buy a pony but had thought the one on offer was too expensive and frisky.  He was therefore allocated a mule, a decision he regretted somewhat as it was extraordinarily uncomfortable to ride which meant he was forced to make the march over the plateau on foot.

On this part of the trek the new mess tent, designed by Norton, came into its own and was a great comfort to the party. It was commented on and admired by everybody.  Mallory was as impressed as anyone and wrote to Ruth: ‘The mess-tent also is a great improvement on last year’s : there is ample head room, and the mess-servants can pass round without hitting one on the head with the dishes; the tables are wooden (three-ply wood varnished), and it is supposed that messes will be wiped off without difficulty; and they fit conveniently round the poles.’  The tent was taken down every morning before breakfast, which was usually taken in the open before the wind got up, and packed onto the back of two mules, christened Jack and Jill and dispatched with the earliest loads.  This way it was amongst the first to arrive at the next camp and could be pitched quickly, using Sandy’s template, giving the party somewhere to escape from the wind after their day’s trek.  It was crossing the passes on the plateau that they encountered the first serious altitude and Sandy made particular note of his performance both in his diary and in his letter home from Kampa Dzong.  To Lilian he wrote:

The altitude has had no very ill effect yet provided I go slowly I find I go up hill at about 17000 at about 2 miles per hr & breathing-in on every left foot.  On the level at about 3 m.p.h. I breathe every other left foot & down hill every 3rd.  I can hurry up hill for about 30 seconds, but have to pant tremendously after that.  Lifting heavy boxes & driving in refractory tent pegs are much the most exhausting pastimes!

In his diary entry for that evening he noted that there had been a biting head wind amounting to almost half a gale which he found very tiring when he was trying to climb to 17,000 feet.  As soon as they reached the top of the first pass they saw another, equally high about five miles away so they dropped down about 1,000 feet and found a sheltered corner which was quite warm in the sun.

We had tiffin of 2 biscuits & a few raisins here, and most of us went to sleep for a bit. After an hour or so we started up the 2nd pass & found the top was not the top & after another hour or so we reached the top under awful wind conditions only to find another pass about 5 miles further on. All 3 passes were just under 17,000 ft. I noticed that I was breathing in every time I put my right foot down going uphill, every other time on the level & every third time when going downhill gently.

Mallory was less affected by the altitude than any of them and stormed up and down the passes, much to Sandy’s frustration as he was unable to keep up.  Norton, who had initially been very pleased with his performance, had to admit that he was unable to keep up with Mallory either.