Coronation Everest Read online

  JAN MORRIS

  Coronation Everest

  For

  HENRY MORRIS

  born on page 115

  and for those who have climbed on

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  1 Introductory

  2 Theory

  3 Preparation

  4 Travelling

  5 Arrival

  6 Climbing

  7 Sherpas

  8 Practice

  9 Snowmen

  10 Ascent

  11 Descent

  12 Valedictory

  Index

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The position of Nepal

  The route to Everest

  The environs of Everest

  1

  Introductory

  This little book is a work of historical romanticism. It recalls the almost simultaneous occurrence of two events – a young queen’s coronation, the first ascent of a mountain – which profoundly stirred the British nation fifty years ago. The queen was Elizabeth II of England. The mountain was Mount Everest, the highest of them all, climbed at last by a British expedition after decades of failed attempts.

  It is hard to imagine now the almost mystical delight with which the coincidence of the two happenings was greeted in Britain. Emerging at last from the austerity which had plagued them since the second world war, but at the same time facing the loss of their great Empire and the inevitable decline of their power in the world, the British had half-convinced themselves that the accession of the young Queen was a token of a fresh start – a new Elizabethan age, as the newspapers like to call it. Coronation Day, June 2, 1953, was to be a day of symbolical hope and rejoicing, in which all the British patriotic loyalties would find a supreme moment of expression: and marvel of marvels, on that very day there arrived the news from distant places – from the frontiers of the old Empire, in fact – that a British team of mountaineers, led by a British soldier, Colonel John Hunt, had reached the supreme remaining earthly objective of exploration and adventure, the top of the world.

  Things were different then. On the one hand space travel was yet to come, and the ascent of Mount Everest, since climbed by hundreds of people of all nationalities, was enough to thrill everyone. On the other hand the British monarchy was at an apex of its popularity. The moment aroused a whole orchestra of rich emotions among the British – pride, patriotism, nostalgia for the lost past of war and derring do, hope for a rejuvenated future, satisfaction that Everest, essentially a British sphere of influence (as the old imperialists would have said) had been first climbed, as it should be, by the British. People of a certain age remember vividly to this day the moment when, as they waited on a drizzly June morning for the Coronation procession to pass by in London, they heard the magical news that the summit of the world was, so to speak, theirs. They cheered and sang as the news spread around the waiting crowds, and went on to ring the world.

  Very improbably, for I am a lifelong republican, I was the newspaper correspondent who arranged this happy conjunction, and Coronation Everest explains how it happened. The book, which I wrote in the 1950s, needs to be read with a strong dose of historical sympathy, for everything has changed since then. I have changed myself – I was living and working as James Morris in those days – but the British nation has changed hardly less. Few moments now, certainly not a royal moment, can embrace the entire nation in such unity; and few exploits of adventure, I suspect, could be accepted with such uncomplicated pleasure. It was as though a family was celebrating, and its celebrations were infectious, too, and were shared by other peoples everywhere. Half a lifetime later, wherever I go someone is sure to raise the subject of my association with Everest and the Coronation, and they nearly always speak of it in a tone of wistful affection, as a memory from simpler times.

  Of course it did not seem in the least simple in 1953, certainly not my own part in it, for getting the news back from Everest was a complicated technical task, and a fateful challenge for a young reporter like me. For more than thirty years there had been expeditions to Everest, which stood on the frontier between Nepal and Tibet. The first reconnaissance expedition, travelling through Tibet, reached the mountain in 1921, and was followed by five full-scale British attempts in the years between the world wars. After the second war British and Swiss expeditions both reached the mountain from the southern side, through Nepal. There were two wild but dauntless one-man expeditions, the first of which ended tragically, and in the early days of high-altitude flying there had been an aerial expedition over the summit.

  Yet Everest had never really been ‘news’, in the big-time sense that it was in 1953. In the old days an assault on the highest of peaks had been essentially an adventure for gentlemen, tarnished by no cheap nationalist ambition, unspoilt by the stridencies of publicity. An Everest expedition was a group of English sportsmen, attended by their native servants, trying to climb an impossibly difficult hill in a ludicrously distant place, and quietly risking their lives in doing so. The world did not watch their efforts with any feverish interest. No element of passion pursued their attempts. The great public was not much interested.

  A fragrance of English oddness is left to us from those early expeditions. The Abominable Snowman first made his appearance not as a figure of vulgar fun, or material for scientists, but rather as a strange squire of the snows, moving sedately if a little lumpishly through his remote estate. Many of the climbers were notable for pungency of wit, splendid independence, or colourful bigness. Everest had not been cheapened or distorted, and those who climbed upon it formed an exclusive society of adventurers. It was proper that the one London newspaper which did concern itself with the venture from the beginning was The Times, then the proud but somewhat eccentric organ of the establishment.

  In return for financial backing, The Times secured the copyright of dispatches from almost all the pre-war expeditions, and became the accepted channel of information from the mountain at a time when most other papers took little serious notice. The leader of each expedition undertook, as part of his duties, to ‘write the dispatches for The Times’. There was no hectic newsroom flavour to this kind of journalism. From time to time the mountaineer would collect his writing materials about him, closing the flap of his tent to keep out the wind, and settle down to describe the progress of the attempt much as he might write to complain about the pollution of a trout stream, or invite contributions to some charitable fund. Graceful and entertaining was the writing of most of these climbers, marred by no Fleet Street clichés, with no axes to grind and only the gentlest of trumpets to blow.

  By 1953, when John Hunt’s expedition was completing its preparations in England, the news value of the mountain had been transformed. People no longer went to the Himalaya only for the fun of it, because sport was now a chief medium of nationalist fervour. The French had climbed Annapurna with a flourish of national pride. The Swiss had made two attempts on Everest, and nearly climbed it. People were beginning to call Everest ‘the British mountain’, just as they called Nanga Parbat ‘the German mountain’. Besides, was it not Coronation year, the start of the new era, the rebirth of Britain, and all that? This time the news from Everest was going to be hot indeed.

  The Times, on whose editorial staff I then worked, again had the copyright to dispatches from the expedition; but it could clearly no longer afford to rely upon climbers’ journalism, produced when opportunity offered in the knowledge that only one newspaper was really concerned. This time there would be strong competition for the story, fanned by nationalist sentiment and honest patriotic pride, even fostered by the two current cold wars – between Capitalism and Communist, between E
ast and West. It became obvious to everyone that this time the Everest party must (swallowing its natural revulsion) include in its number a professional journalist, concerned only with the problems of getting the news home to England. Nobody much liked the idea, if only because the expedition was big enough already; but Hunt, kindliest of commanders, digested the fact that I had never set foot on a big mountain before and even summoned up a wan smile as, over lunch one day at the Garrick Club, he invited me to join his team as Special Correspondent of The Times.

  Coronation Everest is the record of my assignment. I wrote the book soon after the event, in the pleasure of its aftermath, so please treat it with indulgence. Its excitements are those of long ago, and so are many of its attitudes.

  2

  Theory

  The chief problem was not how to secure the news, but how to relay it back to London. Everest was one of the less accessible of the great mountains, partly because fairly harsh physical barriers blocked most routes to it, chiefly because of the political peculiarities of its situation. It lay exactly on the frontier between two countries of secretive tradition. To the north was Tibet, shrouded alike in Buddhist mysticism and Communist suspicion, and in 1953 more firmly closed to westerners than ever; to the south Nepal, a medieval kingdom, slowly opening like a warmed bud to permit the entrance of foreign ideas and values. Bang on the line that divided these two theatrical states lay Everest, and the frontier (according to the map) crossed its very summit, more than 29,000 feet above the sea.

  Since the war the way to Everest had necessarily lain through Nepal, whose rulers were generally obliging and whose myriads of poor labourers welcomed the work of porterage. You could conveniently fly into Katmandu from India (any good travel agent would book you a ticket there) and in that strange city you could engage your porters and buy many of the smaller necessities of mountain life. There was a British Embassy, and an Indian Embassy, and there were some Americans, and a cable office which sent its messages to India by radio for onward transmission to Europe. Once you left Katmandu, though, the temptations of civilization were nearly all behind you. No road led to Everest. Outside the valley of Katmandu there were no wheeled vehicles in Nepal, and only a meagre series of rough tracks crossed the hilly hinterland, connecting the golden capital with Tibet, Sikkim and the north.

  To get anywhere inside Nepal you must walk, for even ponies were scarce, and many of the tracks were too narrow, precipitous and forbidding for easy horsemanship. Patient porters carried your bags for you, and clasping your pills to your bosom you must trudge your way through the hills, dazzled by the alpine flowers, inspired by the distant white snow peaks, slightly befuddled by the local liquor, feeling like some antique Mandarin, excessively influential, journeying through the Chinese uplands for a parley with Marco Polo.

  By these stately means it took ten days or more to travel from Katmandu to Everest. The track crossed the grain of the country, as the geographers say, as if it had deliberately chosen to intersect contours rather than follow them. Sometimes it descended into impenetrable gorges; sometimes it crossed high mountain ranges; and although it was a pleasant journey, enlivened by all kinds of unusual interests, it was not the kind of route you would wish to follow too often in a hurry.

  This was to be the supply route of the expedition, and the way its members marched to the mountain. More to my point, all this rugged, primitive country, hard and wheelless, lay between the mountain and the nearest cable office. The foreign correspondent is never happy if he is far from a telephone or a cable-head, and it was daunting to envisage this 200 miles of intervening country without the saving grace of a single post office.

  How the gap could be bridged was therefore my first preoccupation, for the news had to travel not only safely, but swiftly too. Radio was the obvious answer, but though the Nepalese authorities were both helpful and sympathetic, they were understandably chary of allowing powerful radio transmitters to be operated so near their northern frontiers. All kinds of other methods were proposed. Some people suggested carrier pigeons, others beacon fires. Some said that since the Buddhist priests of the Everest region had remarkable telepathic powers, they might be willing simply to think the news away. There was a scheme to float news dispatches in cellophane containers down a river that happens to flow from the Everest area into India; where some unfortunate helper, it was proposed, would stand poised upon the bank, like a destitute angler, waiting for a package to appear.

  None of these proposals seemed altogether satisfactory, though the beacon fires certainly had a genuine Elizabethan allure; and in the end it seemed that despite all the miracles of modern science, my dispatches would have to be sent back to Katmandu by runner. This at least was a well-tried method. Earlier Everest expeditions had always employed such men, and Hunt would have a number of them to take his own messages and convey the mail. I would probably need to recruit another small corps of my own. If the runners were well paid and kindly treated, they would probably see to it (I thought) that dispatches were in the cable office on the tenth or eleventh day after leaving the mountain.

  *

  So the plan was arranged. I was to go to Everest with a rear-guard party, led by Major J. O. M. Roberts, which would follow the expedition proper with supplies of oxygen. Another correspondent of The Times, Arthur Hutchinson, would be stationed in Katmandu to receive messages, interpret and supplement them where necessary, and shepherd them through the cable-head. There was, however, always the possibility that other newspapers would send men out to Nepal too, to intercept or steal our messages and grasp what news they could. Just how ruthless they would be, nobody knew. Would they lurk behind boulders with clubs, waiting to pounce upon our runners? Or would they merely bribe the cable office to divulge or delay our messages?

  It seemed foolish to take risks. It was not so much that other papers should not have the news as well as The Times; more serious was the possibility that they would succeed in publishing it before The Times (and the many foreign newspapers associated with it) – that we would be scooped on our own story. So some alternative routes were arranged. From Everest another rough track ran to the south across the Indian frontier, through the appalling jungle country of the Terai, to a small town called Jogbani, where there was a cable office. There an agent would be stationed, so that if the Katmandu route seemed insecure, runners could go southwards instead. There was even a third alternative. When the Swiss were on Everest in the preceding year, they sent their message to Europe through the Medium of a Jesuit priest living at Patna, a large Indian city in the province of Bihar, which runners could reach by taking a narrow-gauge railway from the frontier. We would again try to enlist the help, we decided, of this adaptable priest.

  But supposing the runners were actually intercepted en route, or the cable office at Katmandu proved easily bribable? It would obviously be impracticable to encode the whole of long descriptive messages from the mountain, even if they recorded some particular stage in the course of the attempt. But there was no reason why we should not devise code words to disguise personal names, certain key events, places on the mountainside, and altitudes. So a code card was produced, printed on waterproofed cardboard in the touching faith that we would be constantly pulling it from the pockets of our windproofs in the teeth of monstrous gales and stinging blizzards. I am no cipherer, and I was chiefly concerned, in evolving this simple system, in giving a deadpan or enigmatic air to things; and indeed it is marvellous how poker-faced the language can be if you give thought to it. The alternative code words for John Hunt, for example, were ‘Kettle’ and ‘Stringbag’. Wilfrid Noyce, another climber, was ‘Radiator’ or ‘Windowsill’. ‘Three thousand feet’ came out as ‘Waistcoat Crossword Amsterdam’, and the mountain’s sublime summit, home of myths and deities, was christened ‘Golliwog’. There were snags to such a code. Once enciphered, a message was nonsense, thus making it apparent that something significant was being concealed; and it might be necessary to be especially nice to th
e cable authorities to induce them to transmit such a stream of gibberish.

  I would send these messages back to Katmandu in padlocked canvas bags, or perhaps in the stitched fabric envelopes provided to contain the expedition’s exposed films. Once there, Hutchinson would see that the news was sent on expeditely to London. It all sounded splendid old-fashioned journalism, in the true cleft-stick tradition; and packing a new ribbon for my typewriter, and collecting my corduroy trousers from the cleaners, I flew gaily off one morning to India.

  3

  Preparation

  A narrow gorge in the mountains was the gate to Katmandu, and through this forbidding portal the aeroplane from India must pass. Eddies and swirls of air bumped the machine about, and on either side the high mountain crags rose high above us. This was a true frontier. Behind lay India, a familiar and friendly place, where you could buy the Illustrated London News: in front was Nepal, until a few years before one of the least known of all the countries of the earth, and in 1953 still haunted by lingering wraiths of mystery. I had done my necessary business in India – collected a tent in Delhi, called on our Jesuit priest at Patna, bought some pots and pans and carbon paper. In Katmandu my adventure would begin.

  There is always something fascinating about a great city secluded among mountains, and Katmandu, seen from the air for the first time, glittering in the hard sunshine, with the glorious peaks of the high Himalaya standing behind it, was a splendid and genuinely exotic sight. The wide valley that surrounded it was dazzlingly green, with vivid patches of yellow and red marking the cultivation of some especially improbable vegetable. Wooded foothills ran towards the capital from the high mountains, and a river of crystal blue wandered through the flat country and bisected the city. Against this heavenly background stood Katmandu, a complex of temples and towers and palaces, with a distinct sense of lunacy about it.