The Epic of Mount Everest. Francis Edward Younghusband
the glacier from which it springs and in full view of Everest, only 16 miles away, and with the high road of the glacier running straight up to it.
At these close quarters what was Everest like? This is what so many had wanted to know, and what Mallory and Bullock could now see for themselves, and at leisure. The first thing to notice about it was that it is built on big and simple lines. It has not, indeed, the smooth undulations of a snow mountain with white cap and glaciated flanks. Nor is it a broken, craggy peak, with jagged crests and pinnacles. It is rather a prodigious mountain mass—a mighty rock—coated over with a thin layer of white powder which is blown about its sides, and bearing perennial snow only on the gentler ledges and on several wide faces less steep than the rest. And the outline is comparatively smooth, because the stratification is horizontal, one great yellow band striking across the face being very conspicuous. And this circumstance seems to give strength and to emphasize the broad foundations.
From where Mallory stood two bold, well-defined ridges were presented: one was the North-East Ridge (which had been visible from near Darjiling and from Khamba Dzong), and the other was the North-West Ridge; and between these two lay the great North Face of Everest sloping steeply downward to the Rongbuk Glacier.
The spot where Mallory was encamped, and which was afterward the site of the Base Camp, is 16,500 feet above sea-level, so the climbers were already more than half-way up the mountain. It did not, therefore, have that appearance of height which it must have from the southern side, and which Kangchenjunga has from Darjiling. It was not quite 13,000 feet above the camp and appeared accordingly to be more on the Mont Blanc scale of magnitude. But there is an aspect of austerity about Mount Everest which Mont Blanc does not provide. Between it and the camp were no human habitations, no trees, no grassy meadows—hardly a living thing. All was stern rock and snow and glacier. And there were no pleasant valley breezes. Even in this valley base, and in the height of summer, the wind was fierce and biting cold.
The mountain was there before him and a way to it was at hand: the glacier itself formed a means of reaching it. And Mallory did not lose a day in proceeding up the glacier intent upon finding a way up to that North-East Ridge which he had had in his mind for so long. For the North-West Ridge, as he saw it now, was so steep near the summit as to be precluded from consideration. And he was the more drawn to this North-East Ridge because he had noticed that from where it ends, in what may be called the North-East Shoulder, a subsidiary ridge, forming the edge of the North Face, led down probably to a col—some neck or saddle joining it to an intervening peak which shut out the view of what actually happens.
The Rongbuk Glacier proved to be more of an obstacle than a highway. But it was a surmountable obstacle and was full of strange beauty. In the higher portion it was “a fairy world of spires.” The ice was melted into innumerable pinnacles, the largest about 50 feet in height. They resembled a topsy-turvy system of colossal icicles: icicles thrust upwards from a common icy mass, the whole resting on a definable floor.
Ascending it, the party felt a peculiar kind of lassitude which evaporated all the energy in them. It was what afterwards became known as “glacier lassitude” and was apparently due to the amount of moisture produced by the hot sun beating on the ice and forming watery vapour in the air. Porters as well as climbers felt it.
As Mallory reached higher up and could see more of the mountain he realized that climbing Everest would be a tougher job than he had thought. The precipices which now faced him were a grim spectacle, very different from the long gentle snow slopes suggested by the photographs taken from a distance. His first idea of what the last effort would be had been that of crawling, half blind, up easy snow, on an even slope all the way from a camp to a flat snow shoulder. Now he saw it would not be that sort of grind. Climbers would be needed—and not half dazed ones. Everest was a rock mountain.
But not yet had he found a way from the glacier on to the mountain itself. So pursuing his way up the glacier he set out on July 1st to examine the head of it, right under the cliff which falls from the North-East Ridge. And here he made an important discovery. He only got a glimpse of it owing to the amount of cloud there was about; but he saw quite distinctly the neck—what is now called the North Col—which connects the steep-sloping North Face of Everest with a peak to the north, now called the North Peak. And tumbling down from this col on to the Rongbuk Glacier was a broken glacier, or ice-fall.
This western way to the North Col might be a feasible way and Mallory did not write it off as absolutely impossible. But he was convinced that it should be used only as a last resort, if no other better way was to be found. The objections to it were the great height of ice-fall and the possibility of avalanches, but chiefly its exposure to the terrible west wind which prevails here. That wind would beat straight upon the climber in concentrated fury, for the glacier is in the very apex of the funnel leading up to the North Face.
More out of sheer irresistibility of mountaineering spirit than from any actual necessity, Mallory and Bullock two days later climbed a peak, afterwards named Riring, 22,520 feet high, on the western side of the Rongbuk Glacier. But from it they could see that the upper parts of the North Face lay back at no impossibly steep angle, more particularly above the North Col and up to the North-East Shoulder—the way by which all ascents were afterwards made.
The way to reach the summit was therefore now getting very much clearer. The North-East Ridge could be reached by the edge of the North Face from the North Col. From the North Col to the summit the way was clear.
The next problem was how to reach the North Col—reach it, that is to say, by a better way than that which Mallory had already seen leading up to it from the head of the Rongbuk Glacier. But before he examined that question he had one more matter to settle. There might be yet another way altogether up Everest. If he could get behind that long West Ridge—get round to the south of it—there might be a way there. No one had seen that side—the south-west side—and perhaps there might be a secret way up there. It was a possibility which must be gone into.
After several days’ preliminary work, on July 19th he reached the summit of a col at the end of the North-West Ridge of Everest and from there looked down on to the Nepalese side of the mountain. It was a “fantastically beautiful scene,” but there was no way here. There was a big drop of about 1500 feet down to a glacier, and a hopeless precipice. He thought he might be able to traverse into the head of this glacier but found that also was impossible. And the upper part of this Western Glacier was terribly steep and broken. He could see no signs of a way up Everest from this southern side, and if there was it would have to be approached from Nepal; there was no means of getting at it from the north.
But what a sight Everest must be from this southern side, if only climbers were allowed to get there! Grand as Everest is from the north, it must be more superb still from the south. And Mallory could see a lovely group of mountains away to the south in Nepal. Was anything known of them? Their heights and position would be known, for they would have been determined, as the height and position of Everest itself was determined, by observations from the plains of India. But what beauties they must contain! What forests and flowers! And from them—from them looking back towards Mallory—what glories we might behold! If they had been one giant mirror and Mallory could in that mirror see backwards towards himself he would have seen what must be almost the finest view in all the world: in the foreground deep-cut forest-clad valleys, and beyond them Everest rising in tremendous precipices, with Makalu on one side and Cho Uyo on the other, and far away to east and west a continuous array of lesser, but still mighty, peaks all now glistening in the radiant sunshine, but their whiteness tinted with the purple bluey haze which prevails on the moister southern side.
And Mallory had seen other glories in this lofty region, the reconnaissance of which he had now concluded. From the summit of Riring he had seen close opposite to him on the west those two peaks Cho Uyo and Gyachungkang, both so massive and magnificent. He had also seen that less high but perhaps more beautiful peak Pumori, 23,190 feet, so attractive in its build. A vast ice-world glacier he had seen too, filled with the outpourings from these snow-clad mountains; and edging these glaciers iron precipices, terrible in aspect.
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