Mountaineers did not set out to write books, but did so in response to achievements or to record disaster. Here are the stories of the men who are drawn to the mountains and feel, as Robert Macfarlane (Mountains of the Mind) put it, ‘something between lust and fear’ that draws them. George Mallory, writing to his wife Ruth in 1921, said: ‘Everest has the most steep ridges and appalling precipices I have ever seen. My darling, it possesses me.’ Look at Kilimanjaro from Amboseli, at Aconcagua from the 5,000m Base Camp, at Rakaposhi from the mellow Hunza Valley or, most tellingly, at the Eiger from Kleine Scheidegg and you will know the lust and the fear if you are susceptible.
Maurice Herzog went to the Himalayas as a highly respected mountaineer from Chamonix with no literary training, but wrote one of the classics of the genre. Heinrich Harrer was a dare-devil young Austrian alpinist when he attempted one of the two pinnacle challenges of his generation, the North Face of the Eiger.
The other challenge was Everest. Here Wade Davis records the 1924 Mallory led Everest expedition; it could be a long time before another so compelling and meticulously researched account of any expedition is written.
The first confirmed ascent of Everest is recorded in expedition leader Sir John Hunt’s book in the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, who made that first ascent with his climbing partner Tensing Norgay.
The W. E. Bowman piece is in an entirely different category.
‘Victory is ours if we all make up our minds not to lose a single day, not even a single hour!’
MAURICE HERZOG
Annapurna (1951)
Maurice Herzog (1919–2012) represented the finest tradition of French Alpinism. His objective for a 1950 expedition to Nepal was the first ever ascent of an 8,000-metre mountain, Annapurna. It took more than twenty days to get near the mountain from the last road and when they reached the area, no one knew how to find the mountain as they had no accurate maps and the name Annapurna meant nothing to the local Nepalis. After some failed sorties, they succeeded, as he describes here.
They had no idea how to attempt the mountain or even where to start. Their efforts all but failed, but eventually he and Louis Lachenal spider-crawled up the last rock and ice band to the summit. In a state of numbed serenity they had long since lost understanding of the damage being done to their bodies. ‘All sense of exertion was gone, as though there was no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity. These were not the mountains I knew; they were the mountains of my dreams.’
The terrible toll that the mountain took on Herzog all but killed him; indeed many times he asked for death instead of the pain when most of his fingers and toes had to be amputated on the way down. But he had possessed and been possessed by Annapurna and that was enough.
An astonishing sight greeted me next morning. Lachenal and Rébuffat were sitting outside on a dry rock, with their eyes riveted on Annapurna. A sudden exclamation brought me out of my tent: ‘I’ve found the route!’ shouted Lachenal. I went up to them, blinking in the glare. For the first time Annapurna was revealing its secrets. The huge north face with all its rivers of ice shone and sparkled in the light. Never had I seen a mountain so impressive in all its proportions. It was a world both dazzling and menacing, and the eye was lost in its immensities. But for once we were not being confronted with vertical walls, jagged ridges and hanging glaciers which put an end to all thoughts of climbing.
‘You see,’ explained Lachenal, ‘the problem . . . is to get to that sickleshaped glacier high up on the mountain. To reach the foot of it without danger of avalanches, we’ll have to go up well over on the left.’
‘But how the hell would you get to the foot of your route?’ interrupted Rébuffat. ‘On the other side of the plateau that we’re on there’s a glacier which is a mass of crevasses and quite impossible to cross.’
‘Look.’
We looked hard. But I am bound to admit I felt almost incapable of following Lachenal’s explanations. I was carried away on a wave of enthusiasm, for at last our mountain was there before our eyes.
This May the twenty-third was surely the Expedition’s greatest day so far!
‘But look,’ insisted Lachenal, his knitted cap all askew, ‘we can avoid the crevassed section by skirting round to the left. After that we’ll only have to climb the icefalls opposite, and then make gradually over to the right towards the Sickle.’
The sound of an ice-axe distracted our attention for a moment; it was Ajeeba breaking up ice to melt into water.
‘Your route isn’t direct enough, Biscante,’ I told him. ‘We’d be certain to sink up to our waists in the snow: the route must be the shortest possible, direct to the summit.’
‘And what about avalanches?’ asked Rébuffat.
‘You run a risk from them on the right as well as on the left. So you may as well choose the shortest way.’
‘And there’s the couloir too,’ retorted Lachenal.
‘If we cross it high enough up, the danger won’t be very great. Anyway, look at the avalanche tracks over on the left on your route.’
‘There’s something in that,’ admitted Lachenal.
‘So why not go straight up in line with the summit, skirt round the seracs and crevasses, slant over to the left to reach the Sickle, and from there go straight up to the top?’
Rébuffat struck me as being not very optimistic. Standing there, in the old close-fitting jersey that he always wore on his Alpine climbs, he seemed more than ever to deserve the name the Sherpas had given him of Lamba Sahib, or ‘long man’.
‘But,’ went on Lachenal, ‘we could go straight up under the ice cliff and then traverse left and reach the same spot …’
‘By cutting across to the left it’s certainly more direct.’
‘That should be quite feasible,’ agreed Lachenal, letting himself be won over.
Rébuffat’s resistance yielded bit by bit.
‘Lionel! Come and have a look …’
Terray was bending over a container and sorting out provisions in his usual serious manner. He raised his head: it was adorned with a red ski-ing bonnet, and he sported a flowing beard. I asked him point-blank what his route was. He had already examined the mountain and come to his own conclusion:
‘My dear Maurice,’ he said, pursing up his lips in the special way that marked a great occasion, ‘it’s perfectly clear to me. Above the avalanche cone of the great couloir, just in line with the summit …’ and he went on to describe the route we had worked out.
So we were all in complete agreement.
‘We must get cracking,’ Terray kept saying in great excitement. Lachenal, no less excited, came and yelled in my ear:
‘A hundred to nothing! That’s the odds on our success!’
And even the more cautious Rébuffat admitted that ‘It’s the least difficult proposition and the most reasonable.’
The weather was magnificent; never had the mountains looked more beautiful. Our optimism was tremendous, perhaps excessive, for the gigantic scale of the face set us problems such as we had never had to cope with in the Alps. And above all, time was short. If we were to succeed not a moment must be lost. The arrival of the monsoon was forecast for about June 5th; so that we had just twelve days left. We would have to go fast, very fast indeed. I was haunted by this idea. To do so we should have to lengthen out the intervals between the successive camps, organise a shuttle service to bring up the maximum number of loads in the minimum time, acclimatise ourselves and, finally, maintain communications with the rear. This last point worried me. Our party was organised on the scale of a reconnaissance and the total supply at our disposal was only five days’ food and a limited amount of equipment.
How was I possibly to keep track of the thousand and one questions that buzzed round in my head? The rest of the party were all highly excited and talked away noisily while the Sherpas moved about the tents as usual. Only a couple of them were here, and there could be no question of beginning operations with just these two. So the Sahibs would set off alone and carry their own loads: in this way we should be able to get Camp II pitched the next day. When I asked the others what they thought they enthusiastically agreed to make this great effort, which would save us at least two days. Ajeeba would go back to the Base Camp and show the people there the way up to Camp I, which would have to be entirely re-equipped since we were going to take everything up with us for Camp II. For Sarki there was an all-important job: he would have to carry the order of attack to all the members of the Expedition.
I took a large sheet of paper and wrote out:
Special message by Sarki, from Camp I to Tukucha. Urgent.
23.5.50
Camp I: Annapurna glacier.
Have decided to attack Annapurna.
Victory is ours if we all make up our minds not to lose a single day, not even a single hour!
‘And there the “Spider” waits’
HEINRICH HARRER
The White Spider (1958)
I, an acrophobe who loves mountains, have many times sat underneath the compellingly forbidding sheer North Face of the Eiger (Eigerwand in German), forcing myself to imagine the horror of being up there, exposed and helpless for escape.
Harrer’s book is the history of attempts on the North Face of the Eiger. The denouement of The White Spider is Harrer’s own successful first ascent of the North Face on 21–24 July 1938 with his Austrian and German co-climbers Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg and Fritz Kasparek. In the following passage he describes the eponymous feature that looms large in the apprehension of Eiger climbers.
On the ‘Spider’ in the Eiger’s North Face I experienced such borderline situations, while the avalanches were roaring down over us, endlessly. This sector of the Eiger’s upper wall has won its name from its external likeness to a gigantic spider. Seldom has an exterior attracted a name which at the same time suits the inner nature of the object named so completely. The ‘Spider’ on the Eiger’s Face is white. Its body consists of ice and eternal snow. Its legs and its predatory arms, all hundreds of feet long, are white, too. From that perpetual, fearfully steep field of frozen snow nothing but ice emerges to fill gullies, cracks and crevices. Up and down. To left, to right. In every direction, at every angle of steepness.
And there the ‘Spider’ waits.
Every climber who picks his way up the North Face of the Eiger has to cross it. There is no way round it. And even those who moved best and most swiftly up the Face have met their toughest ordeal on the ‘Spider’. Someone once compared the whole Face to a gigantic spider’s web catching the spider’s victims and feeding them to her. This comparison is unfounded, exaggerated, and merely a cheap way of making the flesh creep. Neither the savage wall nor the lovely mountain have deserved this slur. Nor have the climbers; for climbers are not flies and insects stumbling blindly to their fate, but men of vision and courage. All the same, the ‘White Spider’ seems to me to be a good symbol for the North Face. The climber has to face its perils on the final third of the wall, when he is tired from many hours and days of exhausting climbing and weakened by chilly bivouacs. But there is no rest to be had there, no matter how tired you are.
He who wishes to survive the spate of avalanches which sweep the ‘Spider’ must realise that there is no escape from this dangerously steep obstacle; he must know how to blend his strength with patience and reflection. Above the ‘Spider’ begin the overhanging, iced-up exit cracks; that is where sheer strength tells. But here the man who abandons patience and good sense for fear-induced haste will surely finish up like the fly which struggles so long in the spider’s web that it is caught through sheer exhaustion.
The ‘White Spider’ on the Eiger is the extreme test not only of a climber’s technical ability, but of his character as well. Later on in life, when fate seemed to spin some spider’s web or other across my path, my thoughts often went back to the ‘White Spider’. Life itself demanded the same methods, the same qualities, when there no longer seemed to be any possible escape from its difficulties, as had won us a way out of the difficulties of the Eiger’s North Face – common-sense, patience and open-eyed courage. Haste born of fear and all the wild stunts arising from it can only end in disaster.
‘Death was but “a frail barrier”’
WADE DAVIS
Into the Silence (2012)
Into the Silence is unusual in Scraps as it is written about the travellers, rather than by them; they did not live to tell their own story. It posits the certainty that these men would never have turned back and examines the circumstances of their experiences in the recently-ended world war that may have moulded this disregard for their own lives.
Wade Davis (b. 1953) considers the long argued question of whether or not the thirty-eight-year old, experienced Mallory, with his twenty-two-year-old companion, Sandy Irvine, whose major qualifications for the expedition had been an Oxford rowing Blue and a few outings with the OU Mountaineering Club, might have reached the summit that day in June 1924.
But the final proof lay in the severity of the Second Step. In 1975 a Chinese expedition had secured an aluminum ladder over the steepest and most perilous pitch. Anker’s goal was to climb without making use of this artificial aid, facing the challenge just as Mallory would have done in 1924. The initial ascent of some 45 feet he rated as moderately difficult but not extreme: no trouble for Mallory, though possibly beyond Irvine’s abilities. But the next pitch, including the crack crossed by the ladder, was vertical rock, formidably difficult. Anker tried but was unable to free-climb it; the position of the ladder obliged him to set one foot on a rung. He later graded it a ‘solid 5.10,’ a technical rating implying a rock challenge far more difficult than anything being attempted by British climbers in Wales or elsewhere in the 1920s. That Mallory and Irvine might have overcome such a pitch, a climb made doubly perilous by an exposure of 8,000 feet, defied belief. And even had they done so, it was not clear how they could have returned. Conrad and Hahn, like all modern climbers on the Northeast Ridge, counted on rappelling down the Second Step, their rope anchored to a large and prominent boulder at the top of the final pitch. The climbing ropes available to Mallory and Irvine were neither strong nor long enough for such a rappel. Had they surmounted the Second Step, Mallory and Irvine would have been forced, upon their return, to down-climb, an imposing challenge readily acknowledged by Anker, among the top technical rock climbers of the modern era, as being at the limit of his capabilities.
As Anker and Hahn crested the Second Step and began the long and still dangerous climb toward the summit of Everest, they had answered many of the essential questions. Mallory and Irvine had certainly reached the First Step; this would later be confirmed with the discovery in situ of a discarded oxygen cylinder, which Jochem Hemmleb dated positively to 1924. In all likelihood they overcame the First Step but then turned back either at the foot of the Second Step or somewhere along the ridge between the two. Perhaps in failing light or blinded by the squall that swept the mountain that afternoon, Mallory removed his goggles as he attempted to find a route down through the slabs of the Yellow Band. Tied as one, perhaps with Mallory on belay they fell together, not from the height of the Northeast Ridge but from far lower on the North Face, quite possibly within easy reach of their highest camp. Indeed, later expeditions would determine that Mallory had come to rest not three hundred yards from the safety of his Camp VI.
Mallory and Irvine may not have reached the summit of Mount Everest, but they did, on that fateful day, climb higher than any human being before them, reaching heights that would not be attained again for nearly thirty years. That they were able to do so, given all they had endured, is surely achievement enough. ‘To tell the truth,’ Dave Hahn remarked, ‘I have trouble believing they were as high as we know that they were.’ And as Conrad Anker noted, there is still one possibility, one scenario by which they might have indeed surmounted the Second Step. Had the very storms that so battered the 1924 expedition, burying the high camps and causing Norton to retreat not once but twice from the North Col, brought heavy snows of similar magnitude to the Northeast Ridge, it is possible that a drift accumulated, large enough, if not to bury the cliffs of the Second Step, at least to create a cone covering the most difficult pitches of rock. Such a scenario did in fact unfold in 1985, albeit in the autumn. Had this been the case, Mallory and Irvine might simply have walked up the snow, traversing the barrier with the very speed and ease that Odell so famously reported. Had this occurred, surely nothing could have held Mallory back. He would have walked on, even to his end, because for him, as for all of his generation, death was but ‘a frail barrier’ that men crossed, ‘smiling and gallant, every day.’ They had seen so much of death that life mattered less than the moments of being alive.
‘My highest hopes were realised’
JOHN HUNT
The Ascent of Everest (1953)
Hunt, the leader of the 1953 Everest expedition, gave the pen to his colleague Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand summiteer with Tenzing Norgay, to write the chapter of his book that describes their final steps to the highest point on Earth.
As my ice-axe bit into the first steep slope of the ridge, my highest hopes were realised. The snow was crystalline and firm. Two or three rhythmical blows of the ice-axe produced a step large enough even for our oversized High Altitude boots and, the most encouraging feature of all, a firm thrust of the ice-axe would sink it half-way up the shaft, giving a solid and comfortable belay. We moved one at a time. I realised that our margin of safety at this altitude was not great and that we must take every care and precaution. I would cut a forty-foot line of steps, Tenzing belaying me while I worked. Then in turn I would sink my shaft and put a few loops of the rope around it and Tenzing, protected against a breaking step, would move up to me. Then once again as he belayed me I would go on cutting. In a number of places the overhanging ice cornices were very large indeed and in order to escape them I cut a line of steps down to where the snow met the rocks on the west. It was a great thrill to look straight down this enormous rock face and to see, 8,000 feet below us, the tiny tents of Camp IV in the Western Cwm. Scrambling on the rocks and cutting handholds in the snow, we were able to shuffle past these difficult portions.
On one of these occasions I noted that Tenzing, who had been going quite well, had suddenly slowed up considerably and seemed to be breathing with difficulty. The Sherpas had little idea of the workings of an oxygen set and from past experience I immediately suspected his oxygen supply. I noticed that hanging from the exhaust tube of his oxygen mask were icicles, and on closer examination found that this tube, some two inches in diameter, was completely blocked with ice. I was able to clear it out and gave him much-needed relief. On checking my own set I found that the same thing was occurring, though it had not reached the stage to have caused me any discomfort. From then on I kept a much closer check on this problem.
The weather for Everest seemed practically perfect. Insulated as we were in all our down clothing and windproofs, we suffered no discomfort from cold or wind. However, on one occasion I removed my sunglasses to examine more closely a difficult section of the ridge but was very soon blinded by the fine snow driven by the bitter wind and hastily replaced them. I went on cutting steps. To my surprise I was enjoying the climb as much as I had ever enjoyed a fine ridge in my own New Zealand Alps.
After an hour’s steady going we reached the foot of the most formidable-looking problem on the ridge – a rock step some forty feet high. We had known of the existence of this step from aerial photographs and had also seen it through our binoculars from Thyangboche. We realised that at this altitude it might well spell the difference between success and failure. The rock itself, smooth and almost holdless, might have been an interesting Sunday afternoon problem to a group of expert rock climbers in the Lake District, but here it was a barrier beyond our feeble strength to overcome. I could see no way of turning it on the steep rock bluff on the west, but fortunately another possibility of tackling it still remained. On its east side was another great cornice, and running up the full forty feet of the step was a narrow crack between the cornice and the rock. Leaving Tenzing to belay me as best he could, I jammed my way into this crack, then kicking backwards with my crampons I sank their spikes deep into the frozen snow behind me and levered myself off the ground. Taking advantage of every little rock hold and all the force of knee, shoulder, and arms I could muster, I literally cramponed backwards up the crack, with a fervent prayer that the cornice would remain attached to the rock. Despite the considerable effort involved, my progress although slow was steady, and as Tenzing paid out the rope I inched my way upwards until I could finally reach over the top of the rock and drag myself out of the crack on to a wide ledge. For a few moments I lay regaining my breath and for the first time really felt the fierce determination that nothing now could stop us reaching the top. I took a firm stance on the ledge and signalled to Tenzing to come on up. As I heaved hard on the rope Tenzing wriggled his way up the crack and finally collapsed exhausted at the top like a giant fish when it has just been hauled from the sea after a terrible struggle.
I checked both our oxygen sets and roughly calculated our flow rates. Everything seemed to be going well. Probably owing to the strain imposed on him by the trouble with his oxygen set, Tenzing had been moving rather slowly but he was climbing safely, and this was the major consideration. His only comment on my enquiring of his condition was to smile and wave along the ridge. We were going so well at three litres per minute that I was determined now if necessary to cut down our flow rate to two litres per minute if the extra endurance was required.
The ridge continued as before. Giant cornices on the right, steep rock slopes on the left. I went on cutting steps on the narrow strip of snow. The ridge curved away to the right and we had no idea where the top was. As I cut around the back of one hump, another higher one would swing into view. Time was passing and the ridge seemed never-ending. In one place, where the angle of the ridge had eased off, I tried cramponing without cutting steps, hoping this would save time, but I quickly realised that our margin of safety on these steep slopes at this altitude was too small, so I went on step-cutting. I was beginning to tire a little now. I had been cutting steps continuously for two hours, and Tenzing, too, was moving very slowly. As I chipped steps around still another corner, I wondered rather dully just how long we could keep it up. Our original zest had now quite gone and it was turning more into a grim struggle. I then realised that the ridge ahead, instead of still monotonously rising, now dropped sharply away, and far below I could see the North Col and the Rongbuk glacier. I looked upwards to see a narrow snow ridge running up to a snowy summit. A few more whacks of the ice-axe in the firm snow and we stood on top.
My initial feelings were of relief – relief that there were no more steps to cut – no more ridges to traverse and no more humps to tantalise us with hopes of success. I looked at Tenzing and in spite of the balaclava, goggles and oxygen mask all encrusted with long icicles that concealed his face, there was no disguising his infectious grin of pure delight as he looked all around him. We shook hands and then Tenzing threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back until we were almost breathless. It was 11.30 a.m.
‘The great question was: would the mountain go?’
W. E. BOWMAN
The Ascent of Rum Doodle (1956)
Yogistan, then as now, was neither big nor rich; indeed, it was ranked by the United Nations as number 153 in terms of gross domestic product out of not many more listed. It is also not easily accessible, being landlocked and 153 miles from the nearest other country. But it is home to Rum Doodle, a mountain which had to be climbed ‘because it is there’.
W. E. Bowman was a civil engineer from Guildford who had never climbed a mountain of any size but enjoyed hill walking in the Lake District. I have been unable to trace any of his family members to secure permission to reprint this passage and to tell them how much entertainment their relative has provided.
We spent a hungry and uncomfortable night in the station waiting room, for until the dispute with the Bang was settled our equipment could not be unloaded, and in the absence of Constant we dared not risk a night in the local hotel. At daybreak I walked over to the train, to find Constant and the Bang still at it. The former explained to me that the Yogistani word for three was identical with the word for thirty, except for a kind of snort in the middle. It was, of course, impossible to convey this snort by telegram, and the Bang had chosen to interpret the message as ordering 30,000 porters. The 30,000 were making a considerable noise outside, and Constant told me that they were demanding food and a month’s pay. He was afraid that if we refused they would loot the train.
There was nothing for it but to meet their demands. The 30,000 were fed – at considerable trouble and expense – and three days later we were able to set off with the chosen 3,000 on our 500 mile journey. The 375 boys who completed our force were recruited on the spot. Boys are in plentiful supply in Yogistan; it appears that their mothers are glad to get rid of them.
The journey to the Rum Doodle massif was uneventful. We travelled along a series of river gorges deeply cut between precipitous ridges which rose to heights of 30,000 feet and more. Sometimes we crossed from one valley to another over passes some 20,000 feet above sea level, dropping again to river beds elevated a mere 153 feet or so.
The steepness of the valleys was such that the vegetation ranged from tropical to arctic within the distance of a mile, and our botanists were in their element. I am no naturalist myself, but I tried to show an intelligent interest in the work of the others, encouraging them to come to me with their discoveries. I am indebted to them for what small knowledge I possess in this field.
The lower slopes were gay with Facetia and Persiflage, just then at their best, and the nostrils were continually assailed with the disturbing smell of Rodentia. Nostalgia, which flourishes everywhere but at home, was plentiful, as was the universal Wantonia. Higher up, dark belts of Suspicia and Melancholia gave place to the last grassy slopes below the snow line, where nothing was seen growing but an occasional solitary Excentricular, or old-fashioned Manspride.
The fauna, too, was a constant delight. The scapegoat was, of course, common, as were the platitude and the long-tailed bore. The weak-willed sloth was often met, and sometimes after dark I would catch sight of slinking shadows which Burley identified as the miserable hangdog. One afternoon Shute, in great excitement, pointed out to me a disreputable-looking creature which he said was a shaggy dog. Burley swore that it was not a shaggy dog at all but a hairy disgrace; but this may have been intended for one of his peculiar jokes. Burley’s sense of humour is rather weak. He told me one day that he was being followed by a lurking suspicion, which was obviously absurd. But he is a good fellow.
We were naturally all agog to catch sight of the Atrocious Snowman, about whom so much has been written. This creature was first seen by Thudd in 1928 near the summit of Raw Deedle. He describes it as a man-like creature about seven feet tall covered with blue fur and having three ears. It emitted a thin whistle and ran off with incredible rapidity. The next reported encounter took place during the 1931 Bavarian reconnaissance expedition to Hi Hurdle. On this occasion it was seen by three members at a height of 25,000 feet. Their impressions are largely contradictory, but all agree that the thing wore trousers. In 1933 Orgrind and Stretcher found footprints on a snow slope above the Trundling La, and the following year Moodies heard grunts at 30,000 feet. Nothing further was reported until 1946, when Brewbody was fortunate enough to see the creature at close quarters. It was, he said, completely bare of either fur or hair, and resembled a human being of normal stature. It wore a loincloth and was talking to itself in Rudistani with a strong Birmingham accent. When it caught sight of Brewbody it sprang to the top of a crag and disappeared.
Such was the meagre information gleaned so far, and all were agog to add to it. The most agog among us was Wish, who may have nourished secret dreams of adding the Eoanthropus Wishi to mankind’s family tree. Wish spent much time above the snow line examining any mark which might prove to be a footprint; but although he heard grunts, whistles, sighs and gurgles, and even, on one occasion, muttering, he found no direct evidence. His enthusiasm weakened appreciably after he had spent a whole rest day tracking footprints for miles across a treacherous mountainside, only to find that he was following a trail laid for him by a porter at Burley’s instigation.
The porters were unprepossessing. Mountaineering to them was strictly business. An eight-hour day had been agreed on, for which each received bohees five (3 3/4d.). Nothing on earth would persuade them to work longer than this, except money. When not on the march they squatted in groups smoking a villainous tobacco called stunk. Their attitude was surly in the extreme; a more desperate-looking crew can hardly be imagined. They were in such contrast to the description which Constant had given us that I was moved to mention the matter to him in a tactful way. He explained that they were used to living above the 20,000 feet line; their good qualities did not begin to appear until this height was reached. He said that they would improve as we got higher, reaching their peak of imperturbability and cheerfulness at 40,000 feet. This was a great relief to me.
…
The great question was: would the mountain go? Totter, in 1947, had written: ‘The mountain is difficult – severe, even – but it will go.’ Later reconnaissance had questioned whether the North Wall itself would go, but the final verdict had been that it would. Totter himself had summed up the prevailing opinion thus: ‘Given team spirit and good porters, the mountain will go.’ All the world knows now that it did. It is no small part of my satisfaction that we vindicated Totter’s opinion.
But as we stood on the Rankling La we were awed by the mighty bastion which reared its majestic head against the cloudless sky. As we stood there, Constant spoke for all of us:
‘She stands like a goddess, defying those who would set sacrilegious feet on her unsullied shrine.’ There was a murmur of agreement. In that moment we were humbled by the magnitude of the task we had set ourselves, and I for one sent up a fervent prayer that I would not be found wanting in the ordeal that lay before us. In such moments a man feels close to himself.
We stood there, close to ourselves, until sunset, the supreme artist, touched the snowfields of that mighty bastion with rose-tinted brushes and the mountain became a vision such as few human eyes have beheld. In silence we turned and made our way through gathering darkness to our halting-place in the valley.