Man's Measure

THE CONQUEST OF EVEREST (300 pp.)--Sir John Hunt--Dutton ($6).

Mountains, when high enough and tough enough, measure men. In three decades, at least 16 men died trying to scale Everest, and eleven expeditions failed to reach its 29,002-foot virgin summit, although at least six men got within the last, breathless 1,000 feet. What was needed to conquer it? That was the question facing Colonel John Hunt in the autumn of 1952, when he took the leadership of a British climbing expedition. In The Conquest of Everest, Mountaineer Hunt gives a cleanly written, technician's answer, and describes the behind-the-scenes planning that led to victory.

Everest, writes Planner Hunt, rises above an icefall resembling "a gigantic cascade . . . Almost, you might expect to hear the roar of that immense volume of foaming water . . . plunging down with terrifying power. But it has been gripped by the intense cold, frozen into immobility ... [Yet] this labyrinth of broken ice is moving, its surface changing." High over the monumental, 2,000-foot icefall, with its treacherously shifting crevasses and its crashing, house-high blocks of ice, stands a greater obstacle--a steep slope of ice and snow rising a vertical distance of 4,000 feet. Beyond that lies the last and toughest 3,000-foot rise to the highest point on the surface of the earth.

The Buildup. Hunt began by hand-picking eleven mountaineers to work as a team in overcoming the tricky terrain and getting two of their number to the top. He timed his attack between the end of the winter gales and the start of the summer monsoons. By the time Hunt and his team reached the foot of Everest, the expedition had swelled to almost 400 hands, most of them coolies to carry equipment and food across the roadless approaches.

Since the coolies would accept only Nepali coin in payment, twelve men had to go along just to carry the payroll.

On the mountain, Hunt directed all his efforts at one supreme objective: to enable his summit climbers to mount the final 500 yards and 400 vertical feet with lucid minds and enough reserve strength to get down again.

The Assault. Warmly bundled in many layered, lightweight clothes and wearing three pairs of gloves (silk, wool or down, and windbreaking cotton), the team started plodding up the mountain. They were accompanied by Sherpa porters, carrying tents, sleeping bags, mattresses, food, cooking equipment and fuel. Progressively higher camps were established as the men slowly accustomed themselves to high altitudes, became used to oxygen masks, and were molded into the unity of a smoothly meshed team.

Some stretches of the mountain were so stubborn that it took 5 1/2 hours to climb 600 feet. But Hunt's plan for a one-two punch at the peak brought the giant down to size. After the expedition had crawled up the mountain for almost two months, two assault teams made ready for the thrust to the summit from Camp IV at 21,200 feet. Team No. 1 (Tom Bourdillon, a physicist, and Charles Evans, a medical officer) had the primary mission of reaching the South Peak, 28,700 feet high, preparing the way and bringing back information for Team No. 2. The men would also forge on to the summit if they could. Making their bid from Camp VIII at 26,000 feet, Bourdillon and Evans reached their first objective at 1 o'clock on a cloudy afternoon, but they were forced back from a point only about 300 feet below the summit when their oxygen ran low.

The Victory. Team No. 2 (Edmund P. Hillary, the New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing Norkey, the Sherpa tribesman) followed up from a camp set up with three supporting teammates at 27,900 feet.

After a tortured night in a wildly flapping tent with the thermometer at --17DEG, the men crawled into the open at 6:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, and with 30 Ibs. of oxygen equipment on their backs, started the last lap. At 11:30 a.m. the beekeeper and the tribesman stood on the pinnacle of Everest. The courage and fortitude of the victors were in no way diminished by the evident fact that they could never have stood so high except for the work of the team, and the planning of Colonel (now Sir John) Hunt.

A first-rate report of a dazzlingly successful expedition, The Conquest of Everest may well mark the peak of books on mountain climbing. Its point is that the long climb was a combined operation, that against the mountain's cunning and its terrifying heights, man had to match his own cunning no less than his valor.

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