I am not qualified to attempt an explanation of the complex physiological problems of attempting the world’s highest peaks. As far as I can gather the physiologists themselves still do not understand the subject fully and there seems to be little way of telling who will perform well at altitude. Some degree of physical fitness is probably essential and people with low blood pressure and low pulses tend to do better. But really it is the mental approach that counts: one has to want very much to succeed.
On the Kangshung Face all four of us were well suited to high-altitude climbing, because above all we believed that we were capable of it. That confidence stemmed largely from a knowledge of what had been done before, from the first tentative climbs above 7,000 metres to the recent successes on the highest peaks, but it was also tempered by knowledge of the disasters, some of which are also listed here. This historical survey is not exhaustive, but it does chart some of the main events that have gradually increased our knowledge of what is possible. I have included some comparatively low climbs, where they have been important breakthroughs, but by ‘extreme altitude’ I really mean ‘the big five’ – Lhotse, Makalu, Kangchenjunga, K2 and Everest.
In the course of his first remarkable journey to the Himalaya, Dr Thomas Longstaff explored the approaches to Trisul, in the Garhwal Himalaya, then travelled north to Tibet, where he reached a height of about 7,300 metres on Gurla Mandhata.
Longstaff, Alexis, Henry Brocherel and Subadar Karbir made the first ascent of this peak, which remained the highest summit climbed for the next nineteen years. The climb was made in a single 1,800-metres ten-hour push from the Trisul Glacier. Most of the previous month had been spent above 4,500 metres and two nights had been spent above 6,000 metres.
After attempting K2, the Duke of Abruzzi with three guides reached a new altitude record of 7,500 metres, attempting Chogolisa.
Although the route to the North Col had been reconnoitred the previous year, when this first full attempt started there was still doubt about whether man could survive above 7,500 metres without supplementary oxygen. Although oxygen equipment was taken, most of the party had little faith in it. The first attempt was made by George Mallory, Col.. H. T. Morshead, Major E. F. Norton and Dr T. Howard Somervell without oxygen. On the night of 20 May they camped at a record height of about 7,650 metres. The following day three of the party continued into the unknown, heading for the Shoulder of the North-East Ridge, moving very slowly, taking up to five breaths per step, finally being forced to turn back from about 8,200 metres. They descended to the North Col that afternoon, dangerously exhausted, slipping and stumbling and at one point saved from death by Mallory’s rapid ice axe belay.
The second attempt was made by the expedition’s controversial oxygen apostle, George Finch, a highly experienced alpinist who was accompanied by two complete climbing novices, Ghurka Tejbir and Geoffrey Bruce. They sat out a storm for a day and two nights at about 7,650 metres, discovering in the process that a few whiffs of oxygen dramatically improved their condition. Finch was perhaps correct in attributing their survival to oxygen and it was certainly oxygen which helped their incredible feat of continuing after that terrible storm, making faster progress than the oxygenless first party. Tejbir had to turn back early in the day, but Finch and Bruce explored the traverse towards the Great Couloir, reaching a tantalising altitude record of about 8,320 metres, before they too were forced to turn back, when Finch realised that Bruce had reached his limit. They descended all the way to the East Rongbuk Glacier, 2,000 metres below, the same day.
With the exclusion of Finch from the second climbing expedition, oxygen equipment was likely to be neglected. Although Irvine worked hard to improve and lighten the apparatus for his and Mallory’s fateful attempt, there was not the methodical planning that would probably have been the case if Finch had been there. However, Mallory clearly realised that supplementary oxygen would improve his chances, and he and Irvine were carrying the primitive apparatus when they disappeared on the North-East Ridge.
Four days before Mallory and Irvine disappeared, Norton and Somervell made the first attempt without oxygen. Somervell gave up on the Yellow Band at about 8,540 metres, but Norton continued to the dangerous snow-smothered slabs on the far bank of the Great Couloir, before wisely turning back from a spot which was later measured by theodolite and reckoned to be 28,126 feet – 8,575 metres – an altitude record for oxygenless climbing which would not be broken until the Messner-Habeler ascent fifty-six years later.
Norton’s determined attempt has remained one of the great inspirations to high-altitude climbers, but for sheer stamina few people, if any, have equalled the record of Noel Odell, who worked selflessly in support of both the summit attempts, making the final fruitless search for Mallory and Irvine. During those first two weeks of June 1924, completely eschewing oxygen equipment, he spent eleven nights above 7,000 metres and twice climbed to 8,200 metres. His performance was particularly interesting because he had been one of the slowest men in the team to acclimatise.
Hugh Ruttledge, the leader, superintended the development of an improved lightened oxygen set, but in the event most of his team had little faith in oxygen and it was never used high on the mountain. As in the past, porters were used to establish the top camp, but this year Camp 6 was even higher. Jack Longland escorted porters back down, leaving Percy Wyn Harris and Lawrence Wager to spend the night of 29 May at 8,350 metres. The next day they made their summit attempt, reaching Norton’s 1924 highpoint. They descended that day to Camp 5. Meanwhile Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton had moved up to Camp 6. Like Finch in 1922, they were pinned down by a storm for two nights, but at a higher altitude and with no oxygen to combat rapid deterioration. Nevertheless, Shipton managed to struggle up for two hours on 1 June before turning back. Smythe had the strength to continue to the Norton highpoint. Once he had returned to Camp 6, Shipton descended, but Smythe spent a third night out at 8,350 metres, sleeping soundly through another storm, before descending alone to the North Col.
Mallory may have pushed on rashly on his final climb. We shall never know; but all the other remarkable attempts of 1922, 1924 and 1933 were characterised by an admirable willingness to turn back when it became obvious that continuing would probably spell disaster. Nevertheless, struggling under the enormous stress of altitude and striving for a very special prize, men did abandon some of the accepted precepts of traditional mountaineering. Finch let Tejbir descend alone to Camp 5. Norton left Somervell on the Yellow Band. Smythe and Shipton split up and both had narrow escapes on their separate descents. Recently, in the 1980s, there has been much criticism of the modern ethic of ‘every man for himself’, but it could be argued that it has precedents going back to the 1920s.
H. W. Tilman, turned down from that year’s Everest expedition on spurious grounds of health (as Finch had been in 1921 and John Hunt in 1935), led the successful expedition to Nanda Devi, reaching the summit with Noel Odell. No oxygen was used and Nanda Devi remained the highest summit climbed for the next sixteen years.
Fritz Wiessner and Sherpa Pasang Lama, climbing without oxygen beyond Houston’s and Petzoldt’s highpoint of the previous year, reached about 8,365 metres on the Abruzzi Spur of K2, late in the afternoon. Wiessner wanted to press on through the night but was forced to turn back by Pasang Lama. Even so, it took most of the night to descend to Camp 9 on the Shoulder and Pasang lost his crampons, making a repeat attempt from the top camp impossible. During the subsequent descent of the mountain they found several camps stripped of equipment, including vital sleeping bags, due to some catastrophic misunderstanding. The ensuing drama, in which Dudley Wolfe and three Sherpas ultimately died, and the controversy over what exactly happened, foreshadowed the even more disastrous summer on K2 in 1986.
The first 8,000-metre peak to be climbed. After a long reconnaissance, the French expedition just completed a rushed ascent before the Monsoon arrived. Mauricw Herzog and Louis Lachenal reached the summit without oxygen. On the descent both they and their support climbers, Terray and Rébuffat, were stretched to the limit, harassed by storms, avalanches, frostbite and snow blindness. Herzog and Lachenal lost nearly all their fingers and toes.
On 28 May, during the first Swiss attempt on the South Col route, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay reached a point they reckoned to be just over 8,600 metres, after a camp at 8,400 metres without sleeping bags. Their oxygen equipment was only functioning while they were resting, so they were effectively climbing without supplementary oxygen. It took them five-and-a-half hours to climb just 200 metres.
On 29 May Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made what was almost certainly the first ascent of Everest. For the first time there was a comprehensive policy of using supplementary oxygen, made possible by meticulous logistics.
Overshadowed inevitably by the ascent of Everest, the first ascent of Nanga Parbat was achieved by an astonishing solo push with no oxygen. It took Hermann Buhl sixteen hours to make the 1,200-metres height gain and 4 km distance from Camp 5 to the summit, which he reached just before dark. On the way back, he bivouacked at about 8,000 metres, standing up on a tiny ledge, with neither down clothing nor even his pullover, which he had cached lower down. Luckily it was a completely still night. He reached his companions at Camp 5 late the following evening. Buhl was possibly helped by the stimulant pills he took, Pervitine. Nevertheless it was a remarkable feat by a man who, like Odell in 1924, was very slow to acclimatise.
Charles Houston, who had led the 1938 attempt, returned to lead the third American expedition. He and eight companions reached Camp 8 on the Shoulder, close to 8,000 metres, on the evening of 2 August. They were then pinned down by storm for four days with no oxygen. Nevertheless they seriously hoped to continue upwards when things improved temporarily on the 7th. Then Art Gilkey developed phlebitis in his leg, whereupon any hope of the summit was abandoned. The renewed storm and avalanche conditions delayed departure and it was not until the 10th that the party set off down, heroically determined, even after a week’s deterioration at nearly 8,000 metres, to try and save Gilkey. However, he was swept away to his death during the descent. The others continued and reached base on the 4th.
Oxygen was used by the Italian expedition which finally made the first ascent in 1954, but both Achille Campagoni and Lino Lacedeli ran out on the summit. They were too bemused to think of taking the heavy empty cylinders off their backs.
The first ascent established no new altitude records, but it did establish that an unsupported four-man team, Hermann Buhl, Kurt Diemberger, Marcus Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller, Could climb an 8,000-metre peak with neither oxygen, nor paid load-carriers.
Peter Habeler and Reinhold Messner, with the advantages, eighteen years on, of lighter equipment, went a step further – a hard new route climbed in just three days up and down, in pure alpine-style, with no pre-placed caches or camps.
Dougal Haston and Doug Scott establish a new bivouac altitude record of 8,760 metres by the South Summit, after completing the South-West Face. Their oxygen ran out at 8.30 p.m., but they managed to survive the night in cold post-Monsoon conditions without frost-bite.
Habeler and Messner, inspired by the feats of pre-war British Everesters, finally confirmed that Everest could be climbed without supplementary oxygen. Messner had already survived, and helped a Sherpa to survive, a gruelling storm on the South Col. He returned two weeks later with Habeler and Sherpas in support (they were attached to a large Austrian expedition). From the col Habeler and Messner climbed unaided and unroped, taking just nine-and-a-half hours to cover the 850 metres to the summit. This fast rate of almost 100 metres per hour had been predicted theoretically possible by Dr Alexander Kellas at the beginning of the century. The ascent was a very important psychological breakthrough. Particularly impressive was Messner’s ability to take cine film by the Hillary Step and Habeler’s ability, prompted by fear of brain damage, to descend in just one hour to the South Col.
Four months later, the Americans finally gained their long-sought prize of K2. Of the four men who summited, three – Lou Reichardt, Rick Ridgeway and John Roskelley – used no oxygen.
This success took some of the edge off the recent Everest climb and contradicted the claim of physiologist, Dr Griffith Pugh, that ‘probably only exceptional men can go above 27,000 feet (8,230 m) without supplementary oxygen.’ Writing to Mountain magazine (No. 64), Ridgeway replied that ‘I have never considered myself anything close to an “exceptional man”, much less a super athlete. I can only run a few miles, and twenty press-ups pretty much wipe me out … How then did we do it? … When you want to top out as much as we did, you can make your body do some extraordinary things, even if you’re not an exceptional man. I kinda think that’s the secret.’
In the same issue of Mountain, the distinguished Everest veteran, Norman Dyhrenfurth, made some sobering comments on oxygen less climbing at extreme altitude, prompted by the disastrous Makalu attempt of 1961, during which Peter Mulgrew developed a pulmonary infarct at 8,350 metres, was only just evacuated by his team mates (one of whom, Dr Michael Ward, also nearly died) and subsequently had both frostbitten legs amputated below the knee. This disaster, wrote Dyhrenfurth, ‘points up one very important basic fact: any attempt on one of the big five (Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Makalu and Lhotse) without oxygen is and will always be dangerous, even for well acclimatised, very fit Himalayan climbers. It is, in this author’s personal opinion, a rather senseless risk which ought not to be taken, in spite of the admirable feat of the oxygenless Messner-Habeler ascent of Everest.’
In the post-Monsoon season the Herrligkoffer-Mazeaud international circus put sixteen people on the summit by the South Col route. Three people repeated the Messner/Habeler feat. Hans Engl did not use oxygen, but was assisted by an oxygenated companion breaking trail. Sherpas Mingma and Ang Dorje also reached the summit without oxygen.
In 1979 Messner made a semi-alpine-style ascent of the Abruzzi Spur of K2, without oxygen. However, the third ever ascent of Kangchenjunga, by a small team on a hard new route, with no oxygen, was perhaps more significant. Georges Bettembourg, Peter Boardman, Doug Scott and Joe Tasker fixed 1,000 metres of rope up the West Face of the North Col (6,890 meters). From there it took several abortive attempts, including one destroyed tent in a storm at 8,000 metres, before Boardman, Scott and Tasker completed the route up the North Ridge and North Face to the summit. (Boardman and Scott had previously climbed Everest with oxygen, but Tasker had never before been above 7,066 metres.)
Messner returned, with just his girlfriend/doctor to tend Advance Base at about 6,500 metres, while he spent four days soloing up and down the North Ridge/North Face, finally completing the exit from the Great Couloir which had eluded Norton 56 years earlier. This climb seems to have been more draining than the 1978 ascent: at his top camp at about 8,200 metres Messner, usually so professional, was too exhausted to photograph himself. However, he managed to photograph himself on the summit the next day. After another night at the top camp he ditched all his survival equipment and descended in a day to Advance Base.
A four-man American team, led by John Roskelley and climbing without oxygen, repeated the stupendous French route up the West Pillar, originally tamed in 1971 by ‘tine grande équipe’. On the final ridge Roskelley, outclassing his slower companions, ordered them down so that he could push on fast to the summit, snatching success late in the day.
In May Larry Neilsen climbed the normal route without oxygen, but with three other Americans using oxygen to break trail from the South Col. By the time they left the summit, however, all had run out of oxygen.
On the morning of 8 October, Carlos Buhler, Kim Momb and Louis Reichardt, completing the first ascent of the Kangshung Face with oxygen, arrived on the summit ridge to meet a Japanese team. They passed the six Japanese climbers and one Sherpa, making the first Japanese oxygenless ascent, by the normal route. By the time the Americans had returned from the summit to the Hillary Step, the Japanese were still on their way up, ‘staggering like zombies’. The Americans persuaded one of them to turn back, along with the Sherpa Pasang Temba, who slipped and fell to his death. The other five Japanese reached the summit very late in the afternoon. All bivouacked at various places on the descent. Hiroshi Yoshina and Hironubo Kamuro were caught out highest without bivouac gear right up at the Hillary Step (8,800 metres). In the morning they both fell to their deaths.
Pierre Beghin soloed the 1955 route on Kangchenjunga, unsupported with no oxygen.
The first Australian ascent of Everest was by a five-man team on a bold new route up the North Face. ‘White Limbo’ was essentially an ascent of the Great Couloir. Geoff Bartram dropped out of the summit push and Lincoln Hall turned back at c.8,150 metres. Andy Henderson had to stop with frozen hands, only fifty metres short of the summit, while Greg Mortimer and Tim Macartney-Snape made the very top at sunset. The whole team descended safely over the next two days, concluding a brilliant climb without oxygen.
Jean Afanassieff, Doug Scott and Stephen Sustad spent four committing days without oxygen above 8,000 metres in the great Eastern Cwm, coming within about 100 metres of the summit on the Headwall, when dubious weather and Afanassieff’s fears of possibleoedema forced them to abandon their ambitious traverse plan and start immediately on an exhausting retreat. In all they spent eight days on the immense South-East Ridge.
During a disastrous summer on K2, when several expeditions climbed on four different routes, thirteen climbers died. Most of the accidents happened high on the mountain, when people were descending, exhausted, from oxygenless ascents. Perhaps the outstanding success was the hard new route up the South Face, climbed in pure alpine style by Jerzy Kukuczka and Tadeusz Piotrowski but it was nullified by Piotrowski’s fatal fall on the descent of the Abruzzi Spur. This and all the other accidents reinforced the lesson that getting up the highest peaks without oxygen will always be possible, but getting down is going to be the big problem. This is particularly true on K2, where the easiest route – the Abruzzi – is very steep and complex. In 1986 this problem seems to have been exacerbated by a tendency to rely subconsciously on other parties’ tents, stoves and fixed ropes on the route.
Erhard Loretan and Jean Troillet perfected the technique they had already used on Dhaulagiri’s East Face to make a remarkable ‘flash’ ascent of Everest’s North Face, taking one step further the well-tried principle that for a safe success one should spend as little time as possible at extreme altitude. Acclimatisation in the Rongbuk area up to about 6,500 metres took two months. The route choice was canny-reasonably consolidated old avalanche snow up the Japanese and Hornbein couloirs – the quickest most direct line to the top. Neither tents nor sleeping bags were carried and they mainly rested during the warmth of the day (they were climbing at the tail end of the Monsoon). The total ascent time was forty-and-a-half hours. The controlled slide back down to the Rongbuk took just four-and-a-half.
Ang Rita, working for a South Korean expedition, made his fourth ascent without oxygen and the first winter ascent without oxygen, defying the common supposition that an oxygenless ascent would be impossible in winter due to lowered atmospheric pressure. However, it may be that the exceptionally fine weather of December 1987 produced atypical conditions. Ang Rita’s mastery was confirmed by his ability to hold on the rope his Korean companion (who had oxygen) when he slipped on the descent. That night the pair were caught out by darkness just below the. South Summit and survived an unprepared winter bivouac at about 8,600 metres. Both escaped with only mild frostbite.
In May Robert Anderson, Paul Teare, Stephen Venables and Ed Webster made a new route up the Kangshung Face to the South Col without oxygen. Teare was forced by illness to turn back from the South Col. Anderson and Webster reached the South Summit without oxygen and Venables the main summit, taking a dangerously slow sixteen-and-a-half hours from the South Col. The team made more dangerous delays on the four-day descent, but were sustained by caches of cooking gas. Messner offered qualified praise. ‘You have done a very hard thing … but you were lucky.’
In August the crux of the notorious North-East Ridge, the Pinnacles, was finally climbed by the fourth British expedition to attempt the route. Although they were unable to continue to the summit, Harry Taylor and Russell Brice climbed all the remaining unknown ground to the Shoulder. They used some oxygen for sleeping, but climbed entirely without oxygen during two days of very precarious climbing between 8,000 and 8,400 metres.
In September the French upstaged the previous spring’s Asian Friendship Expedition with a multi-media shown on the Khumbu/South Col route. Logistics were grandiose, enabling full media coverage of a massed ascent. The highlights were Boivin’s fantastic parapente jump from the summit and a new speed record by Marc Batard. He had already made a semi-solo ascent of Makalu’s West Pillar the previous year and he had the example of Benoit Chamoux’s twenty-three-hour ascent of K2 in 1986. Batard now climbed the normal route up Everest, all the way from the Khumbu Base Camp, in just twenty-two-and-a-half hours, with no supplementary oxygen. His strength and speed were particularly remarkable for having already climbed all the way to 8,750 metres during an abortive attempt ten days earlier. He halved the Loretan/ Troillet speed record, but on a trade route, with camps placed, ropes fixed and trails broken by a massive expedition.
In October Lydia Bradey (New Zealand) claimed the first female ascent of Everest without oxygen, by the South Col route. However, due to lack of proof (she was alone), her ascent was not unanimously accepted.
Four Czech climbers died on the descent to the South Col after making the first alpine-style ascent of the South-West Face (the 1975 route).