Kangchenjunga

Publication Year: 1956.

Kangchenjunga

CHARLES EVANS

FEW great Himalayan peaks are climbed at the first attempt and without much preliminary exploration. Kangchenjunga is no exception, for as long ago as 1899 Freshfield, the first European to make a circuit of the mountain, described as a possible line the route taken by us in 1955.

The summit, 28,146 feet high, is the center and highest point of a great cross which juts to the south from the main Himalayan chain. Its four ridges run north, south, east, and west, each of them a range of high mountains. Between the ridges are four faces: the northeast overlooks the Zemu glacier and the northwest the Kangchenjunga glacier; the southeast overlooks the Talung glacier and the southwest the Yalung glacier. It was the northeast spur on the Zemu face that Paul Bauer’s Munich team climbed in 1929 and 1931, in the latter year reaching a height of over 25,000 feet before turning to fight its way down through storm; it was to the northwest face that Dyhrenfurth went in 1930, when the Sherpa Chettan lost his life in an ice-avalanche which swept the lower part of the route; the Talung face is untouched and by present-day standards seems formidable; we went to the Yalung face.

This face was in 1905 the scene of the first expedition to attempt Kangchenjunga, an expedition which ended in disaster, when a Swiss, Alexis Pache, and three porters were killed in an avalanche of snow. Pache was buried at the foot of the face, and the Yalung valley was then neglected until 1953, when John Kempe and Gilmour Lewis, who went there to climb Kabru, were struck with the possibility that here there might after all be a route to Kangchenjunga. They returned in 1954 with a larger party to make a thorough reconnaissance, and it was as a result of their report that the Alpine Club set up the Kangchenjunga Committee under the chairmanship of Sir John Hunt to launch a further expedition. The Royal Geographical Society was asked to join in the project, and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh graciously consented to be the expedition’s patron.

The Yalung face is more than 10,000 feet high. The most conspicuous landmark on it is the Great Shelf, a hanging glacier about a quarter of a mile wide and nearly a mile long. It is tilted outwards: the lowest, southerly, part of its outer edge is at 23,500 feet and the highest, northerly, part of its inner edge is at 25,500 feet. Above the Shelf, toward the mountain’s west ridge, a steep ledge rises, the Gangway, which lies immediately to the east of a prominent rock cirque known as the Sickle. From the southerly two-thirds of the outer edge of the Shelf sheer cliffs fall for five thousand feet to the floor of the valley; from the outer edge of its northerly third the ice of the Shelf flows down as a great icefall divided in two parts, the Upper Icefall, from 23,500 to 20,400 feet, and the Lower Icefall, from 20,400 feet to the valley floor at about 17,500 feet. The Lower Icefall is flanked by two prominent rock buttresses: to the east Kempe’s Buttress, the top of which is at 19,500 feet; and to the west the Western Buttress, the top of which, at 20,500 feet, we called the Hump.

A study of Kempe’s report led me to think that his buttress was the only weakness in the lower part of this huge face, and when we went to the mountain our first aim was to force a way from Kempe’s Buttress to the Plateau. Above the Plateau, we thought that we would not encounter any comparable difficulty until we were near the top of the Upper Icefall, and after that not until we were higher than the Great Shelf.

We were a party of nine, and had begun to know each other before leaving England. In age, build, and experience we were all different: the oldest was forty-two, the youngest twenty-four; some were skilled rock- climbers, and some experienced in ice work; some were tall and some short; some light in weight and some, at least at the start of the expedition, heavyweights. At the present stage of the development of Himalayan climbing superlative technical skill is not of first-rate importance to success, and I had in mind, when making up the party, that in the months to come we would be living together in cramped quarters, enduring some discomfort, often tired, sometimes ill, and for the most part of the time doing the chores of a Himalayan expedition—improving the routes and escorting the porters; if we were lucky, two of us might have the chance to go somewhere near the summit. In such a case, clearly, the ideal is a close-knit group of friends.

At Darjeeling we met our Sherpas: there were twenty-six engaged for climbing on the mountain and about as many more engaged to come as porters to the base camp. In addition to Sherpas we had more than three hundred Darjeeling men to take us to the mouth of the Yalung valley, ten days’ march from Darjeeling. Nearly all our Sherpas came from villages in Sola Khombu near the foot of Everest, and they had been picked for the expedition by Dawa Tenzing who was to be their sirdar, or head. Wise and loyal, he was also a mountaineer of experience, gifted with outstanding ability to go strongly and fast at great altitudes: on Everest in 1953 he had twice carried loads to the South Col without oxygen. He made few mistakes in picking his men, and those of us who had been before to Sola Khombu — Band, Jackson, Hardie, Mackinnon, and I—recognized many old and trusted friends among the grinning, wild-looking faces that greeted us. Sharing with them the life on the mountain was to be one of the great pleasures of the expedition.

On April 18th we started work in earnest on the Yalung face, but our first explorations there ended in disappointment: we could find no safe route from the top of Kempe’s Buttress to the Plateau. After three days’ work by Hardie and Band we reached a height in the Lower Icefall of about 20,000 feet, but owing to the steepness and instability of the icefall our route there was not safe; its risks were such that though we might accept them for an occasional passage by ourselves we could not accept them for the Sherpas who would be called upon to use the route every day for several weeks. Luckily, the impasse was not complete, for from the Lower Icefall, looking up and to the west, we saw a snow gully which seemed to join the top of the Western Buttress to the Plateau; if we could reach the top of this gully, that is, the Hump, from the west, we might by-pass the icefall completely, and after all reach the Plateau. We moved our Base Camp from the foot of Kempe’s Buttress to Pache’s grave at the foot of the slopes on the west side of the Hump, and found that here there was a route. Camp 1 was pitched half-way to the Hump, the Hump itself was crossed, and on April 28th we pitched Camp 2 on the Plateau above the Lower Icefall.

Our method, possibly because we had a large number of Sherpas who were at home on steep snow and ice, was to build up a chain of camps, from the highest of which we could reconnoiter farther up the unknown route at the same time as the lower camps were being stocked. The line of supply from Base was kept open throughout our time on the mountain, and the daily convoys continually improved the route and made such repairs to it as the changes caused by weather and time required. For instance: Hardie and Band first crossed the Hump to the Plateau and returned to tell us that there was a way over; next day, with Joe Brown and I and four Sherpas, they crossed the Hump again, and we pitched Camp 2, lightly stocked; Brown and I stayed there to reconnoiter toward Camp 3 while the rest of the expedition began a daily ferry over the Hump to build up a stock at Camp 2. In a few days we had found a route to Camp 3 and this camp, in turn, could be lightly stocked and occupied; from it, Hardie and I made a reconnaissance to the Great Shelf and up that to the site of our future Camp 5, while a party based at Camp 2 ferried from there to Camp 3, and a larger party, still living at the Base, kept up the carry over the Hump. For our three weeks on the mountain hardly a day passed when one or two ropes of porters and climbers did not make the journey over the Hump. The usual work needed on the route was the breaking of the trail after fresh snowfall, the repair of steps that had become worn with use and warm weather, and, when they became unsafe, the replacement of snow- and ice-bridges by ladders.

By May 13th we had reconnoitered as far as 25,300 feet, where, at the upper end of the Great Shelf, we meant to put Camp 5. We now planned the final climbs.

Jackson and Mackinnon, with eleven Sherpas, would first stock Camp 5; one day behind them, the first summit pair, George Band and Joe Brown, would follow with Neil Mather, me, Dawa Tenzing and three other Sherpas; we would put Camp 6 as near 27,000 feet as possible, and leave Band and Brown there to try next day the final ridge; one or two days behind us the second summit pair, Norman Hardie and Tony Streather, would follow with two more Sherpas, either to repeat the first pair’s climb if successful, or if they were unsuccessful to profit by their experience. While the two summit pairs made these highest climbs Dawa Tenzing and I would stay at Camp 5: there we could support the climbers above and be a link between them and those below.

When the time came, this plan was carried out with but few changes. Owing to illness, ten, not eleven, Sherpas carried to Camp 5; and that day Jackson and Mackinnon themselves each carried forty-pound loads. Jackson was snow-blind, and the going on the Shelf was heavy because of recent snowfall, but they reached 25,300 feet, and that night we all met at Camp 4, we on the way up, and they coming down. It was May 19th.

For the next two days we were storm-bound, but on the morning of May 22nd we were able to start for Camp 5. We reached it to find that some of the stores brought up had been carried away in a new-snow avalanche ; we recovered most of the gear but were now short of oxygen for the final climbs, and when Hardie and Streather came up two days later they had to bring their own. On May 24th Camp 6 was pitched at 26,900 feet near the top of the Gangway on a narrow ledge carved out of a forty- five degree snow-slope; the outer edge of the tent overhung the slope by six inches. Here Band and Brown settled down for an uneasy night after drawing lots for the outside berth; they secured themselves against accident to the tent by passing the rope from their waists through the door to a spike belay on some rocks nearby.

In the morning they started a little after eight o’clock and followed a route tentatively chosen earlier when they had examined the last slopes through binoculars from Base Camp. They climbed at first directly up the Gangway toward the col between Kangchenjunga and Kangchenjunga West, then, after a few hundred feet, began to traverse up and to their right, over the southwest face. Sometimes they were on rock, but more often on snow or ice. The snow, as is the rule on south-facing slopes in this part of the Himalaya, was good: firm, but not hard; but when at last they reached the west ridge above a prominent cluster of rock pinnacles about three hundred feet from the summit, it was two in the afternoon. At their feet the north flank of the ridge plunged to the Kangchenjunga glacier. They were late, and after a short rest, their first that day, they plodded on. In less than an hour they had reached the foot of a rock tower, the highest prominent step of the ridge; they skirted it on the south and climbed a steep and difficult twenty-foot crack; the summit was only a few yards away.

The slope ahead was of snow, and gentle; to the north, three thousand feet below, they saw the top of Bauer’s northeast spur; westwards they looked over Kangchenjunga West to Makalu, Lhotse, and, eighty miles away, Everest. Honouring a promise made to the Sikkimese not to tread the top of the sacred mountain, they went no farther; they had shown that it could be climbed.

Next day Hardie and Streather followed, with variations, the same route; they found that the final crack could be avoided by a snow route on the south, and were able to complete the climb without, as the first pair had done, discarding their crampons.

These climbs were on May 25th and 26th, and the monsoon, with its currents of warm air, was not far off. We had planned to be off the mountain, whatever happened, before the end of May, when we expected the deep snow below the Hump to soften and be highly dangerous. On May 28th, two days after Hardie’s and Streather’s ascent, we were all down at Base.

The route had captivated us: intricate, set in surroundings of fantastic beauty and grandeur, it had led us from one problem to the next; it threaded its way securely among ice-cliffs, with dangers now on this side, now on that, but rarely menacing the route, which, for Kangchenjunga, was surprisingly safe.

In the last five years seven of the world’s highest peaks have been climbed: in part it is because we have learned about life at higher altitudes from our predecessors; in part it is because each expedition to a particular peak discovers more about the way to climb it; but in the main it is because of oxygen. On Kangchenjunga we relied on an open-circuit set in which the climber breathes a mixture of air and oxygen; it is a relatively simple and reliable apparatus, and a set and bottle which could deliver three litres of oxygen per minute for nine hours weighed only twenty-five pounds. We all, Sherpas and Europeans alike, used these sets above Camp 5, and it was because of them that we could expect twelve men to climb, as they did, to 26,900 feet. We slept, as well as climbed, with oxygen: its use at night postpones the inevitable deterioration caused by high altitude life; it lets men sleep, and it warms them, and improves their appetite and morale. If I were planning a lightly equipped expedition on which only a strictly limited supply of oxygen could be taken, I would choose to use it for sleeping rather than for climbing, believing this to be the best use to which a very small quantity can be put.

Twice again, from Darjeeling, we saw our untrodden peak. Huge, beautiful, and remote, it had moved us to struggle up; but now there was no longer an individual invitation; rather, it stood there as an embodiment of all high snows and hidden valleys, a symbol of what is always beyond.

Summary of Statistics

Ascent: Kangchenjunga, 28,146 feet, first ascent, May 25 and May 26, 1955.

Personnel: Dr. Charles Evans, Leader; George Band, Joe Brown, Dr. John Clegg, Norman Hardie, John Jackson, Tom Mackinnon, Neil Mather, and Tony Streather.