Mick Conefrey - Everest 1922: The Epic Story of the First Attempt on the Worlds Highest Mountain

Mick Conefrey

Everest 1922

The Epic Story of the First Attempt on the Worlds Highest Mountain

[Conefreys writing] is as poignant as Jon Krakauers Into Thin Air or Joe Simpsons Touching the Void. The Spectator

Per mia fanciulla Stella

1. Sir Francis Younghusband ..... President
2. Arthur Hinks ........ Honorary Secretary (RGS)
3. J. E. C. Eaton ........ Honorary Secretary (Alpine Club)
4. Edward Somers-Cocks ... Honorary Treasurer (RGS)
5. Colonel E. M. Jack ..... Royal Geographical Society (RGS)
6. Norman Collie....... Alpine Club
7. Captain Percy Farrar .... Alpine Club
8. C. F. Meade ......... Alpine Club

1. Charles Howard-Bury... Leader
2. Harold Raeburn...... Climbing Leader
3. George Mallory....... Climber
4. Guy Bullock ........ Climber
5. Alexander Kellas ...... Climber
6. Henry Morshead ...... Surveyor
7. Oliver Wheeler....... Surveyor
8. Sandy Wollaston...... Doctor and Naturalist
9. Alexander Heron ...... Geologist
10. Gyaljen........... Sirdar
11. Gyalzen Kazi........ Interpreter
12. Chheten Wangdi...... Interpreter

1. Charles Bruce........ Leader
2. Edward Lisle Strutt ..... Climbing Leader
3. George Leigh Mallory... Climber
4. George Ingle Finch ..... Climber
5. Howard Somervell ..... Climber
6. Edward Norton....... Climber
7. Henry Morshead ...... Climber
8. Arthur Wakefield ...... Climber
9. Colin Ferdie Crawford.. Transport Officer
10. John Morris........ Transport Officer
11. Geoffrey Bruce....... Transport Officer
12. Tom Longstaff....... Doctor
13. John Noel .......... Photographer
14. Lance Corporal Tejbir Bura Gurkha Officer
15. Gyaljen........... Sirdar
16. Karma Paul ......... Interpreter

Lhakay, Pema, Mingma Boora, Mingma Dorjay, Pasang Tempa, Pema, Norbu Bura, Nima Lama, Pemba Norbu, Tenzing Katar, Dharkay Chopku, Ang Dawa, Little Nima, Dasonna, Leba Tshering, Ang Pasang Lakhpa, Idallo, Karma, Dorjay Sherpa, Rinchen, Goray, Phoo Nima Tendook, Chhetan, Augnami, Kancha, Lakpa, Ang Passang, Pasang Dorjay, Pasang Sherpa, Sangay, Chongay, Augbabu, Phoo Kemba, Lakpa Ptsering, Pemba Dorjay, Gyana, Tobgay, Yeshay, Norbu, Buchay, Dukpa, Tsang Dorjay.

I n June 2018, an article appeared in the Financial Times, entitled Everest for the Time-Pressed Executive. It began with the story of a German businessman who had recently spent $110,000 on a Flash twenty-eight-day commercial expedition, which had got him to the summit with five days to spare, before going on to list several companies offering premium trips to the worlds highest mountain. The most luxurious was a Nepali company, Seven Summit Treks, who were selling a $130,000 VVIP package that included helicopter flights from Kathmandu to within three days of the mountain, as well as a mid-expedition recuperative escape to a five-star hotel. The VVIP package included a 1:1 mountain guide to client ratio, and the services of three Sherpas, a personal cook and a photographer. It was, as their website proclaimed, specially designed for those who want to experience what it feels like to be on the highest point on the planet and have strong economic background to compensate for your old age, weak physical condition or your fear of risks.

What, you wonder, would Hillary and Tenzing, the first men to reach the summit, have made of Seven Summits package? Or, going further back, what would George Mallory, the Galahad of Everest, have thought? When in 1923 Mallory was pressed by a reporter from the New York Times to explain why anyone would risk their life on Everest, he replied cryptically: Because its there. Is todays answer Because I can afford to, or Because Ive got two weeks in May between business conferences and a hostile takeover?

Its quite extraordinary to write a sentence like that, but theres no doubt that over the last thirty years Everests reputation has changed. Long queues of climbers on the Lhotse Face, lurid tales of frozen corpses and piles of high-altitude trash; even the mountain itself seems to be in rebellion, with the Hillary Step one of Everests most famous features collapsing in 2017. Today, for many mountaineers, Everest has become a symbol of excess and greed, a playground for the rich and occasionally foolish, the ultimate trophy mountain instead of the ultimate challenge.

It was not always thus.

When Everest was first measured in the mid-nineteenth century, it was thought to be so high that no one could survive on its summit. Even in the autumn of 1920, when a reconnaissance expedition was proposed, the respected mountaineer Sir Martin Conway told the Daily Chronicle that the climbing difficulties were so great it was unlikely Everest would ever be conquered. Its formation is unknown, he said. It has not been mapped. Nothing is really known about it.

Ten months later, when that reconnaissance was complete, the returning climbers were a little more confident. Lecturing at the Queens Hall in London shortly afterwards, George Mallory told a packed audience that, just before he left Tibet, hed asked his climbing partner, Guy Bullock, what he thought the chances were of reaching the top. After considerable reflection, Bullock had replied, Fifty to one against!

This book is about what happened next. It tells the story of the very first attempt on Everest in 1922, and the shocking events at its climax. Though in a very literal sense 1922 was Everests Ur expedition, in recent years it has been overlooked, with much of the historical and literary attention focused on the second British attempt, in 1924, and its still-controversial ending. Arguably, though, the 1922 expedition is more important. It set the style of big-expedition, siege-style mountaineering, with large teams and multiple camps, which would persist for decades to come; it marked the beginning of the oxygen controversy that would dog Himalayan expeditions until the 1970s; it created the link between the Sherpa people and Everest which has turned their name into a global brand; and it elevated George Mallory into an international hero, whose actions and writings have become a crucial part of Everests mythology.

For principal source material, I have drawn upon the thousands of mostly unpublished documents in the Mount Everest Foundation archives at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London and in several smaller collections, notably at the Alpine Club and the British Library in London as well as George Mallorys letters at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and George Finchs Everest diary at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The climbers and the organizers behind the expeditions of the 1920s were great aficionados of the written word, leaving us with thousands of pages of letters, diaries, reports and Everest Committee meeting minutes, which make it possible to get a detailed inside view on everything from financing to group dynamics. Sadly, there are no first-hand accounts from the Sherpa point of view. At the time, very few Nepalis and Tibetans could read or write; it wasnt until the 1950s, when (ghostwritten) autobiographies of Ang Tharkay and Tenzing Norgay appeared, that you really started hearing the Sherpa voice more directly.