On Everest

Above them stared the forbidding face of the North Col. Still farther above them towered the glaring white summit, with its snow plume blowing far out into space. But in sleeping bags within their tiny tents a group of Englishmen and tough Tibetan porters out to conquer unconquered Mt. Everest (29,140 ft.) rested contentedly last week. Camp No. 3 had been safely established at 21,500 ft. Francis Sydney Smythe and Eric Earle Shipton,both crack Alpinists and members of the unsuccessful

1933 expedition, had worked out a route half way up the col. The company was in good physical condition.

This news was wirelessed from Camp No. 3 to Calcutta and to the world by Hugh Ruttledge, leader of the fifth British mountain-climbing assault in 15 years on Mt. Everest. It had taken the party more than three months to get from London to their present height. Mountaineers, aware that 14 men have so far lost their lives trying to scale Everest, were of the gloomy opinion that the worst was yet to come.

Up the treacherous col and beyond the party must climb to try to establish camp at 27,800 ft. Once there, they have two choices. They can mount the pinnacle by way of the notorious First & Second Steps, the latter of which rises smooth and sheer for 100 ft. like a battle-cruiser's bow. Or they can follow a long band of rocks skirting the summit and leading to a long, shallow couloir which points straight up the face to the top. George Leigh Mallory and Andrew C. Irvine are thought to have climbed the First Step before they met their death in 1924. In 1933 Smythe struggled 50 ft. up the couloir, stopped 1,000 ft. short of the summit, convinced that further advance over the rocks, slippery with newly-fallen snow, was futile.

Last week, waiting at Camp No. 3 for supplies, dogged Leader Ruttledge announced: "If the first attempt fails . . . it is planned to go on trying until the monsoon breaks."

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