Everest 1922: The Epic Story of the First Attempt on the World's Highest Mountain by Mick Conefrey

Everest 1922: The Epic Story of the First Attempt on the World's Highest Mountain by Mick Conefrey

Author:Mick Conefrey [Conefrey, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781639361465
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00


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Down at Base Camp, the logistical battle continued. In 1922 there were no sat-phones or portable radios. Bruce had no idea how well or otherwise Mallory and Somervell were doing, but he knew that in order for them or anyone else to get high on the mountain, a considerable amount of food and equipment would have to be carried up to Camp 3. Whenever local farmers appeared offering their services, he would get them to join the parties shuttling between Base Camp and Camps 1 and 2, after which the Darjeeling porters would take over. At one stage, to Bruce’s amazement, some Sherpa families arrived who had come all the way from the Solukhumbu region, having trekked over the Lho La without sleeping bags or any shelter, but the numbers of workers were unpredictable and inconsistent, and the clock was counting down.

Bruce’s other worry was Finch. He had not quite warmed to him, but he respected him as a climber and recognized that he was a key member of the team – and the only one who really knew how to operate the oxygen sets. Right now, though, Finch remained confined to his tent with what looked like a bad case of dysentery. Oxygen drills had stopped and the equipment had not been checked. With the monsoon expected within weeks, Bruce and Strutt were forced to make a significant change to the plan. Instead of waiting until Finch was fully recovered, on 14 May, Bruce sent Norton up with Morshead to be the follow-up party to Mallory and Somervell. They would make the second attempt without supplementary oxygen.

It was an intensely difficult moment for Finch. With Norton gone, the only other experienced men left at Base Camp were Ferdie Crawford and Arthur Wakefield, but Finch had little regard for either man’s mountaineering skills, regarding Crawford as ‘tending to hysteria’ and Wakefield as ‘distinctly hysterical’. Finch did not admit it in his diary at the time, but he later wrote: ‘When I saw the last mountaineers of the expedition leave the Base Camp, my hopes fell low.’

The only good news was that his stomach bug did seem to be clearing up. When the second party left camp on 14 May, Finch spent the day experimenting with an alternative type of oxygen set, designed by a British scientist, Leonard Hill. At one end, there was a breathing tube and a mask; at the other there was a tightly sealed bag containing Oxylithe, the same substance that had given Noel such a shock a week earlier. When water was added to the bag a chemical reaction ensued, causing the sodium peroxide to release oxygen. The whole set-up was much lighter than a typical oxygen set – but as Finch soon discovered, the system was, in his own words, ‘useless’. The oxygen liberated was contaminated with crystals of sodium hydroxide formed during the chemical reaction, which caused anyone who breathed from a Leonard Hill bag to cough and spit.

Far more successful, but with a shorter-lasting benefit, was to fill a Leonard Hill bag with oxygen from a cylinder.



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