Upward in Sneakers

AN INNOCENT ON EVEREST (319 pp.)--Ralph Izzard--Dutton ($3.75).

Lanky Ralph Izzard, foreign correspondent of the London Daily Mail, is not one to be intimidated by the impossible. When his editor ordered him off to Nepal to cover the British Everest Expedition and beat the Times of London, off he went. But how he could beat the Times, or even get the story, was a puzzler. The Times was subsidizing the expedition; by excluding all rivals from climb and climbers, it had a guaranteed airtight exclusive. Nonetheless, Correspondent Izzard, innocent as a fox, timid as a lion, moved in. An Innocent on Everest is his modest and amusing story of how, in spite of the Times, the expedition, the Foreign Office and the forces of nature, Reporter Izzard got his story.

The expedition leader, Colonel Sir John Hunt, told Izzard: "I am forbidden to tell you anything, and that applies as well to all members of the expedition." The British ambassador promised to be equally unhelpful and kept his promise so brilliantly that frozen-out newsmen later called him "the extra-special correspondent of the Times." Soon the expedition set out from the Nepal capital weighted down with 7 1/2 tons of equipment. Izzard sadly watched his story climb away from him. It was going to take place three weeks away as a man walks (nearly 200 miles over murderously wild, roadless country), and the only way to get there was on foot. Resolutely, Izzard followed after the Hunt expedition with his own expedition.

Compared to the splendid enterprise led by Hunt, the Izzard expedition was a joke. Against some 360 coolies, Izzard had five. He had no map or compass and his equipment consisted in part of two pairs of sneakers, a few pots, an old U.S. Army pup tent, an umbrella to ward off the leeches that fell like leaves from the trees. The incongruous team traveled fast and far over rough country carpeted with rhododendrons, orchids and magnolias. Izzard had never climbed anything more formidable than a flight of stairs, but he caught up to the British advance party after 19 days. It was more than 18,000 feet up the side of Everest. The expedition physiologist, who had made the climb carefully and slowly to become acclimatized, seemed dazed when Izzard came puffing among the ice blocks in his sneakers. Wrote Izzard: "The idea that a man could walk up from sea level to nearly 19,000 feet without pause seemed so disconcerting to [him] that for some time the only thing I could do to oblige him was to drop dead in my tracks. If the truth be known, I believe I very nearly did."

Back at sea level Izzard was 18 lbs. lighter, but pounds (sterling) richer in bonus money. His feat made fat headlines and dazzling copy. It also gave him a clean beat on the Times, during the first crucial days of the expedition that conquered Mount Everest, though the Times beat everyone on the big story, the climb to Everest's summit.

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