more villages, and nowhere to buy food,
until the party reached the Rongbuk
Monastery, and the beginning of the climb.
On the morning of April 12, 1934, he
climbed a hill and was greeted with an
astonishing view of Everest. His vantage
point was at 17,000ft. The summit of
Everest was just over 29,000ft. It was the
first time he had seen the mountain up
close. The top section looked like a giant’s
tooth made of rock and ice. A white plume
of wind-whipped snow spun away from its
highest slopes. A dazzling cobalt blue
surrounded the black pyramid of its peak.
The sight should have shaken Wilson to
the soles of his hobnail boots. Instead
he admitted to nothing but joy and
excitement. “What a game,” he wrote.
“Maybe, in less than five weeks, the world
will be on fire.”
Wilson began the climb on Everest at dawn
on April 16, heading south along the path of
the Rongbuk Glacier. He would follow this
vast furrow until the valley forked. Then he
would turn to the left, up the subsidiary
East Rongbuk Glacier, until Camp III (of an
earlier expedition). This camp sat at a little
under 22,000ft, at the foot of the North Col
— a fearsome wall of snow and ice. This
approach to the mountain followed the
Everest expeditions of 1922, 1924 and 1933.
He would be walking in the footsteps of the
English alpinist George Mallory.
Wilson’s load was prodigious. He packed
45lb of gear and food. It felt like 90lb in the
thin atmosphere. One of the Bhutias helped
him to base camp, but from there he was
on his own.
On the first day he walked about eight
miles as a hot sun blazed. At 3pm he was
about three quarters of a mile from Camp I
of the previous year’s expedition. It was a
good place to stop and pitch his tent. The
altimeter showed 19,200ft. “Only 10,000
feet to go,” he wrote in his diary.
His dream had long been to stand on the
summit of the mountain on his birthday,
April 21. Now, making good progress in
perfect weather, he believed he would reach
the top exactly on schedule. Such thinking
was madness. Even if Wilson had been the
finest climber of his generation this would
have been impossible. The sheer effort
needed to carry his massive load above
21,000ft, to the foot of the North Col,
would require heroic fortitude. Porters
carried Mallory’s bags, pitched his tents,
brewed his tea. Wilson needed to do
everything himself.
He scrabbled up slopes to get a better
view of a possible route, only to find himself
— without crampons — slipping down
again. He narrowly avoided crevasses.
His breath became short. To mitigate his
fatigue he dumped inessential supplies: one
of his Tommy cookers, some food, some
candles. By the end of the day on which he
had hoped to have reached Camp III he had
barely passed Camp I.
On Saturday, April 21, Wilson was not on
the summit of Everest, but floundering on
the glacier 9,000ft below, and running out
of energy. The nights had turned so cold
that his feet felt like blocks of ice. On the
morning of his birthday a blizzard forced
him to quit not far from where he’d started.Wilson turned back and found Camp II,
where he now dumped much of his kit.
At some time on this chaotic day he also
found, and then discarded, a pair of
crampons — presumably left by a previous
climbing party. He was by now in such bad
condition that he realised he must try to
return to the Rongbuk Monastery by the
following evening. It would be a long trek.
The next day he ate a single slice of bread
before starting his trudge to Rongbuk at
6am. Somehow he kept his legs moving and
walked for 16 hours. Shortly before 10pm he
took one more fall and tumbled head over
heels to the bottom of a gully. He scrambled
up one of its banks and found himself
looking at the Rongbuk Monastery.
Half dead, he shouted out for his men:
Tewang, then Rinzing, then Tsering.
Anyone. Tewang rushed to Wilson with
outstretched arms, his smile blazing like
fireworks. The other two followed. One put
up a tent while the others started cooking
food. In the following days Wilson wrote
of the deep pleasure of a midnight feast
that included “rice, soup, fried Tibetan
meat, and the most gorgeous pot of tea
I ever had in my life”.Wilson was drained from his near-death
experience. The Bhutias now cared for him
like the medical patient he was. But on the
second day he and Tsering discussed a new
strategy for another attempt on Everest.
Tewang and Rinzing would climb with
Wilson all the way to Camp III, at the foot
of the North Col. Then, after a short rest, he
would strike out for the summit on his own.
His two Bhutia colleagues would await his
return to Camp III before accompanying
their boss down the mountain.
Wilson recuperated fast. Every day he felt
stronger. He professed to be profoundly
optimistic about the second attempt on the
mountain because he had now learnt some
of the rudiments of high-altitude
mountaineering. He understood that
crampons for his feet were essential on the
steeper and icier slopes. He vowed to find
the pair he had discarded near Camp II.
The party of three set out from Rongbuk
in the early hours of Saturday, May 12. That
night Wilson was buoyant and wrote in his
diary: “Here we are again, girlie, at Camp I
or at least near to it ... Tewang was just
about played out so we turned in here. He is
a marvel ... He has been down with some
sort of bowel trouble for over three weeks,
and has carried his whack with the rest for
7 hours. Getting colder as the sun is just
down. Writing in mitts in the boys tent, as
my pencil is like ice ... Sun been terrific
today, am using German anti-frost and
violet ray cream. Getting much colder so
going over tent and getting half into bed,
keep the heat in. Lovely and warm.”
By sunset on Monday, two days after
beginning their climb, the three men had
reached Camp III. They were making GETTYREALITY BITES The East Rongbuk Glacier was no place for a rookie climber like Wilson
Porters carried Mallory’s
bags, pitched his tents.
Wilson needed to do
everything himself
36 • The Sunday Times Magazine