Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (35 page)

The next day things had not improved much.  Sandy was suffering from a splitting headache so he was detailed by Mallory to stay in camp and do various jobs there.  Odell and Hazard set out for the North Col to reconnoitre the route and find a possible camp site; Mallory hurried down the glacier to Camp II to try again to organize the loads.  Sandy’s job was to rearrange the camp to accommodate more men.  The only help he could enlist was from Karmi, the indefatigable cook, who was of great assistance.  Together they got the primuses going for each party that arrived from Camp II and distributed sleeping bags to the porters in the hope that this would stop them from going sick so often.  That afternoon Somervell arrived from II while Hazard and Odell came in from above Camp III.  They had been driven back from the North Col by the wind and bad weather.  That evening Sandy got the roarer cooker to work and they had a better meal, prepared for them by Karmi.

The situation at Camp II was little better than that in Camp III.  Norton had asked Geoffrey Bruce to follow him up the glacier, a day behind, and to inspect the camps and ensure the NCOs understood exactly what was expected of them.  The plan was for Bruce to arrive at Camp III by May 11 and from there be ready to go on to Camp IV on the North Col and then on to establish Camp V.  When he arrived at Camp II on 8 May he expected to meet only the cook and a couple of porters, instead of which he found it fully occupied.  Norton was there as well and it soon became clear that there had been some kind of major breakdown in the line.  Of greatest concern to both men was the fact that the porters were miserable, demoralized and lacking in their usual courage and high spirits.  With double the number of men in Camp II it was necessary to break open the stores of food and tents intended for the higher camps in order to meet this emergency.  Some of the porters had struggled down from Camp III where they had spent two days holed up in their tents with a blanket between them and only a handful of barley to eat.  This was a grave situation and Norton was deeply concerned.  All he knew was that Mallory, Odell, Hazard and Sandy were up at Camp III in goodness only knew what conditions and that he had on his hands a large number of sick and dispirited porters.  Mallory arrived the following morning and amplified the porters’ story, telling Norton of the high winds and low temperature they had suffered on the night of 7 May. 

The situation called for a radical reorganization and Norton, to his great credit, came up with a plan.  He would send Somervell, who was a favourite with the men, up to Camp III with as many porters as he could muster.  Shebbeare, who was currently in charge of Base Camp, would be brought up to run Camp II and Hazard would be sent down to replace Shebbeare in Base as Norton was unwilling to leave Base Camp without a sahib in charge as all their money, stores and remaining equipment was housed there.  For the remainder of the day Norton, Bruce and Mallory made attempts to cheer up the porters and render Camp II more habitable.  It was a great load off Mallory’s mind when he was able to discuss with Norton the problems he had encountered at III and he wrote to Ruth of his feelings that day ‘A great day of relief this with the responsibility shared or handed over.’

The following morning with snow falling thickly around them, the three climbers, with twenty-six porters in tow, including the twelve reserve porters who had been assigned to Bruce and were therefore fit and willing, set off for Camp III.  Half-way up the trough they met Hazard who told them of his and Odell’s reconnaissance of the North Col, or as far as it had gone, and painted a very bleak picture of Camp III to them.  ‘We gathered from him that Camp III was an exceedingly unpleasant place.  With the wind and snow increasing every moment it was obviously going to be even worse than he painted it, but it was little use trying to talk in half a gale, so we bade him farewell and pushed on as rapidly as possible.’

Matters in Camp III were indeed bleak.  ‘Perfectly bloody day – nothing else will describe it.  Wind and driven snow,’ wrote Sandy who spent the morning in his tent trying to repair a cooker which had not been functioning well in the cold.  It was a fruitless task and left him with very near frostbite in his fingers.  Odell and Somervell considered the weather too inclement for a further foray towards the North Col so they remained in Camp where they were all joined by Bruce, Norton, Mallory and a few porters at lunchtime.  The porters in Camp III were in a worse state than ever and would make no effort to look after themselves, despite the fact that Sandy busily prepared their primus stoves, pushing them into their tents so that they could cook some food for themselves.  Bruce’s reserve porters were, however, much fitter, and they set about helping their friends and proving themselves to be invaluable in raising spirits among the porters’ ranks.  Meanwhile the climbers all lay down in their tents as the wind got up and the blizzard intensified.  That night there was little sleep for anyone.  ‘Had a terrible night with wind and snow.  I don’t know how the tent stood it’, Sandy wrote, ‘very little sleep and about 2” of snow over everything in the tent.  Had a lot of rheumatism in the night and an awful headache this morning.’  Bruce had an equally miserable time: ‘snow drifted into our tents covering everything to a depth of an inch or two.  The discomfort of that night was acute.  At every slightest movement of the body a miniature avalanche of snow would drop inside one’s sleeping bag and met there into a cold wet patch.’

In the morning Norton, realising what a toll the six nights at Camp III had taken on Mallory and Sandy, decided that in order to conserve fuel and to give the two a respite they should descend to Camp II.  ‘These two had been in the thick of it from the start, never sparing themselves for a moment.  Irvine’s capacity for work was immense.  After the most gruelling day on the glacier, he would settle down with his tools inside a tent, improving the oxygen apparatus, or mending stoves, regardless of time or temperature, long after the rest of us were inside our sleeping-bags.’

Sandy was suffering not only from an altitude-induced headache but from severe dehydration.  He had neither eaten nor, more importantly, drunk sufficient quantities for several days and the result was that when he and Mallory set off down the glacier towards Camp II he was very close to collapse.  ‘Must have been touched by the sun or something, for I have found it difficult to keep up with George and the rough ice shook my head terribly.  Just at the top of the Trough I became completely exhausted panting about twice to every step and staggering badly at times. George trying a new route took us through a narrow crack between seracs which made me still more exhausted.’  To his sister Evelyn he confided, ‘it was all I could do with George’s praises & curses to get down to II alive with piles of snow on my head.  However I think a lot if it was lack of food & drink as the fuel question made snow meltings very few & far between.  After about 6 cups of tea at II & a couple of glasses of glacier water I quite recovered.’  Feeling considerably revived by the liquid and food he was delighted to find six letters waiting for him in camp.  He retired to his tent and read the letters until it was too dark to see. 

Camp III was still being battered by wind and snow.  Norton, Somervell and seventeen porters succeeded in bringing up to the camp the remainder of the loads that had been dumped on the glacier by the exhausted men four days previously.  Bruce was deeply shocked by the state of the porters when they returned and it became obvious to Norton, as the storm continued to rage, that there was no other course open but to retreat.  The temperature at night plummeted again to –21 °F (-30 °C) and sleep was impossible.  The next morning Camp III was evacuated, the tents were collapsed and Norton and Somervell made lists of what was left in the camp.  The porters took a great deal of persuasion to leave their tents and it was only due to Bruce’s cajoling and convincing them of the delights of Base Camp that they emerged and set off down the glacier.

As they headed down to Camp II they were met by Sandy who, completely recovered from his dehydration and exhaustion of the day before, ‘sped up towards Camp III to hurry Somervell’.  One of the porters, Tamding, had fallen on the ice and broken his leg.  He was in great pain and Somervell’s help was required to set the leg.  Tamding had been his servant during the journey across Tibet and
en route
Somervell had noticed that one or two articles of his underwear had gone missing, never to be traced.  On inspecting the fractured leg Somervell was somewhat bemused to discover that the missing garments had been ‘borrowed’ by Tamding.  A makeshift stretcher had been arranged, using a carrier and a Whymper fly, and the sick man was carried down to Camp II by two porters.  When Sandy got to Camp I he found another porter, Manbahadur, lying out in the cold making no attempt to keep himself warm.  Sandy was horrified.  ‘The 3 coolies that had carried him down from II took absolutely damn all notice of him.  I’m afraid both feet are lost from frostbite’, he wrote in his diary.

He finally got down to Base Camp on the afternoon of 11 May to discover that Hingston had arrived from Darjeeling.  That night they all relaxed and after a very good dinner Sandy wrote an assessment of his fellow climbers:

George and I and Noel came to the base camp to find Hingston just arrived and very cheery having left the General quite fit again. We had a very amusing dinner with a couple of bottles of champagne. A very dirty and bedraggled company.  Hingston clean shaven and proper sitting opposite Shebbeare with a face like a villain and a balaclava inside out on the back of his head. Hazard in flying helmet with a bristly chin sticking out farther than ever. Beetham sat silent most of the time, round and black like a mixture of Judas Iscariot and an apple dumpling. George sitting on a very low rookie chair could hardly be seen above the table except for a cloth hat pinned up on one side with a huge safety pin and covered with candle grease. Noel as usual leaning back with his chin down and cloth hat over his eyes, grinning to himself.  Everyone very happy to be back in a Christian mess hut eating decent food.

Relieved though they might have been to be back in the comfort of Base Camp, sleeping in luxurious camp beds and breathing the thick air of 17,800 feet, which had left them breathless two weeks previously, there were still men higher up the mountain and all was not well. Sandy had written a bald assessment of the situation to Evelyn. ‘One has I think pneumonia, one has lost both feet from frost bite & one has a broken leg.’

Hingston’s return on 11 May was auspicious and he wasted no time in assessing the health of the men.  The climbers were all basically fit but when Hingston made an inspection of the porters who had come off the glacier he was very concerned by the condition of all of them in general, and one or two individual men in particular gave him very great cause for worry.  There was Manbahadur, the cobbler: he was in a very bad state and Hingston judged that he would probably lose both feet above the ankles if he lived.  Meanwhile Bruce and Norton had met up with Somervell in Camp I where they found him with his hands full tending to the casualties.  The worst case was one of the Gurkha NCOs, Shamsher, who appeared to have a blood clot on the brain.  He was probably suffering from what is now known as HACE – high altitude cerebral edema, an extremely dangerous condition when fluid leaks from the cerebral blood vessels causing swelling of the brain.  As pressure builds up inside the skull, mental and motor skills deteriorate rapidly and unless the victim is quickly brought down to a lower altitude the risk is of slipping into a coma and dying.

By the time Somervell saw Shamsher he was already unconscious.  He left him in the care of two NCOs and descended to Base Camp.  Hingston and Bruce went up to Camp I to see Shamsher who, they hoped, would have improved with the rest and care he was receiving at Camp I.  They were disturbed to hear that his condition had deteriorated overnight and Hingston immediately ordered his evacuation to a lower altitude.  Despite their best attempts to carry him carefully to Base Camp Shamsher died about a mile from the camp without ever regaining consciousness.  He was buried in a sheltered spot outside Base Camp.

End of Round One, as Norton put it.  The setbacks they had suffered on the mountain had been a very great disappointment to them and Shamsher’s death a profound shock, but they were far from defeated.  A few days rest in Base Camp was the first consideration during which the weather, it was hoped, might improve.  For the first time since he left Darjeeling Sandy wrote in his diary that he’d done more or less nothing.  ‘Restful day in camp.  Mountain looked pretty beastly and clouds to north looked very threatening.  Did nothing much all day.’

The following two days were also quiet, although Sandy was busy once again in his workshop tent.  He spent the first morning making Noel a candlestick out of a broken reducing valve and the following day worked ‘practically the whole day up till 10 p.m. taking cinema motors to pieces and making gadgets for Noel’s camera.’  In between he gave the cooks for the higher camps instruction into how to use the primus stoves.  This must have been quite amusing bearing in mind his inability to speak a word of their language.  The training took place at the request of Norton and Geoffrey Bruce who spent the days after the retreat planning their next attack.  One of the few advantages of the adverse conditions they had suffered was that they had been able to assess the performance of the porters and were now in a position to select the six strongest men who would become leaders.  They allowed them, as far as possible, to pick their own teams thus encouraging an
esprit de corps
and a little friendly rivalry.  In reallocating the porters they were very careful to ensure that each party had at least two men who knew their way around the primus stoves and the use of meta fuel (solidified spirit).  There was a huge amount of organization to be completed before another attack on the mountain could be considered.  Although the camps had been stocked as far as III, careful lists needed to be made to ensure the right quantity of food, fuel and equipment was in place.  Lists had been made by the departing climbers as to what was where, so Bruce spent a whole day collating these and marrying the new schedule with Mallory’s revised summit campaign.