CHAPTER 6
Most of Ed’s classic adventuring occurred in a relatively short period, between Everest in 1953 and the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition (HSME) of 1960–61. This last would indirectly lead to what Ed considered his greatest achievement—his work in Nepal through the Himalayan Trust.
The HSME was also known as the Silver Hut Expedition because of the futuristic-looking hut, like a giant drainpipe coated in aluminium paint, that was built to provide shelter for the party while they wintered at 5791 metres before attempting the assault on 8481-metre Makalu, the world’s fifth-highest mountain.
This was three expeditions in one: a hunt for the yeti; a physiological study of existence at high altitudes; and another attempt to climb Makalu, this time without oxygen (the French had summited Makalu with oxygen in 1955).
Ed had already discussed with physiologist and Everest veteran Griffith Pugh the possibility of spending a long time at high altitude to measure the effects on the human body—and also to see whether, over a long time, the body would adapt and learn to survive with less oxygen. This would, of course, be a precursor to an eventual attempt to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen—one of Ed’s list of firsts that he was still hoping to knock off.
It was a major enterprise, another long expedition, planned to take place in the nine months between monsoon seasons. It was also a media event: world-famous zoologist Marlin Perkins, host of the popular American TV show Animal Kingdom, joined the team. As team member Desmond Doig—a Calcutta-based journalist who co-wrote with Ed an entertaining account, High in the Thin Cold Air—explained, it was the first Himalayan adventure Ed had been involved in that counted what he called ‘arty types’ among its personnel. Ed’s definition of arty types included journalists and makers of television programs.
There are several anecdotes concerning the background to this expedition. According to Peter Mulgrew, Ed wanted to scale Everest from the northern side.
The initial spark occurred in 1959, which was also the year in which Ed and Louise’s third child, Belinda, was born; and when he travelled to Chicago to make a short film for the publishers of the World Book Encyclopedia—the start of a long and happy working relationship with this company. Ed’s affable Kiwi-bloke persona was a character the Americans had not encountered before; and his modest appearance—and financial requirements to match—went down a treat with the corporates.
In conversation with the company’s PR director, John Dienhart, Ed outlined his plan for an expedition with a physiological bent. According to some, he threw in the idea of a yeti hunt on the spot, to spice it up a bit. Dienhart was very keen and Ed suddenly found himself with a sponsor.
Another explanation of the background to the expedition was the official view of the Soviet Union, as outlined by one I Andropov, a foreign affairs official: ‘Sir Edmund took rocket experts from New Zealand and the United States on the expedition which was financed by the United States Air Force. He was more interested in spying on China than looking for the abominable snowman.’
‘As uninterested’ might have been a fairer description. It is most unlikely that practical, pragmatic, hard-nosed and -headed Ed ever believed the yeti (or the Abominable Snowman) existed—even though Eric Shipton counted himself among the believers. But many of Ed’s Nepali friends and acquaintances were convinced they had encountered such a creature; some even when they were not under the influence of chang, the local alcoholic beverage. However, he was canny enough to know that this romantic quest would attract attention and money.
Ed assembled a particularly talented group, mixing old hands such as Griffith Pugh, Norm Hardie, Michael Ward and Peter Mulgrew with enthusiastic youngsters such as Mike Gill. Gill had been enthralled by Ed since before Everest, and had been at a talk Ed and George Lowe had given about their time on the Shipton reconnaissance expedition. He later became a lifelong friend and colleague of Ed’s.
The inherent flaw in the yeti hunt was that Ed was setting out to test the existence of something that wasn’t there—trying to prove a negative. However, although there were no yetis, there was plenty of evidence that yetis existed, available at a price. As Pat Booth put it, the team failed to find a yeti but they discovered a yeti industry. They passed up the offer of a yeti skeleton on the grounds that it was that of a dog. Yeti fur frequently came their way, but nearly always turned out to be that of a blue bear.
Some monasteries held sacred yeti relics. One, at Khumjung, was home to a yeti scalp, which Ed and some of his party were not just shown but were allowed to try on. Eventually they negotiated to borrow this scalp and take it abroad for testing. After a grand tour of laboratories in Chicago, Paris and London it was proved to be a fake made from the hair of the goat-like serow—albeit a couple of centuries old.
That left only the question of explaining away numerous sightings of footprints unlike those of any known creature; these were what had convinced Shipton. Some prints were reputed to show a toe perpendicular to the main part of the foot, which seemed inexplicable until this deformity was noted in Sherpa feet. Others were simply too big for any creature that lived in the area. Ed eventually employed cool logic to show that these prints were the result of a smaller creature’s prints that the sun had melted and merged into one. Now, perhaps, they could get on with their expedition and more productive research.
Those in the Silver Hut spent their time working and training—there was a lot of stationary bike riding with a splendid view of Ama Dablam, as yet unclimbed.
Ed had been in New Zealand organising supplies, and was en route from Kathmandu when four of his team achieved the first summiting of this mountain’s 6856-metre peak. Unfortunately, permission to make the attempt had been neither sought from, nor granted by, the Nepalese Government, which had grown increasingly firm about the need for outsiders to seek permission to climb its mountains. This was a body so pernickety it maintained a time difference of ten minutes with neighbouring India.
The Nepalese were not pleased. Permission to climb Makalu was withdrawn and the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition of 1960–61 was told to leave the country.
Ed says in High in the Thin Cold Air that he was astonished that this group had attempted Ama Dablam—a claim that seems more than a little disingenuous. He knew full well that with time on their hands—and the researchers had everything well under control on the scientific side of things—there is really only one thing fit young mountaineers will do in the vicinity of a magnificent, unclimbed mountain. It would be like putting an ambitious, competitive man in a direct line to the South Pole and telling him to stop halfway there.
The government had spoken, however. So Ed had to turn around and go back to the low altitude of Kathmandu, where he spent several frustrating days as an unwilling participant in a game of bureaucratic musical chairs. Eventually, on payment of a not particularly extortionate sum, permission to attempt Makalu was given.
This, after all, was what most of the previous year had been about—preparing a team at high altitude for an attempt without oxygen on the fifth highest mountain in the world. It was a great mountaineering challenge. However, not long into the attempt, Ed showed the first signs of altitude sickness. He decided not to go past 6460 metres. Four days later, with no improvement, he went lower again. There was still no improvement; on the contrary, when he woke up the next morning he was unable to speak properly. Ed had suffered a small stroke.
Michael Ward assessed him and instructed him to stay below 4570 metres, which effectively meant he was no longer in control of his own mission. Ward took over. Pugh wanted Ed to return as low as Kathmandu, but he was determined to oversee the school building project he had started at Khumjung. He also turned down offers from Peter Mulgrew and Mingma Tsering to stay back with him. Eventually he was well enough to undertake the 15-day walk out of the area.
So the assault on Makalu continued without Ed. On 17 May a group of Sherpas nearly perished when one fell and the five roped to him fell with him. Only two, including Tsering, were injured, and they were sent back. The others continued as far as 8320 metres before leaving Peter Mulgrew, Tom Nevison and Annullu, a Sherpa, ready for a final attempt.
Then, heartbreakingly close to the summit, Mulgrew collapsed in great pain, struggling to breathe. He had suffered a pulmonary embolism—a blocked artery—in his right arm. This might have been enough to kill him in his garden in Auckland; at 120 metres from the top of Makalu, the outlook could hardly be bleaker—especially when it became clear that Annullu was also in pain with a cracked rib. Nevertheless the Sherpa went for help, and water, oxygen and a tent reached Mulgrew.
There was no radio contact between Mulgrew’s group and anyone else, but eventually word got to the others. The attempt on Makalu was now in tatters, with men spread across the mountain at various camps in various states of ill health, injury and exhaustion. Slowly, painfully and against all odds Peter Mulgrew was brought down from Makalu. He was alive, but in appalling shape.
It would be almost another twenty years before anyone managed to climb Makalu without oxygen.
Ed was greatly disappointed by the outcome of this expedition—the worst of any he had been involved in, even though, miraculously, no lives were lost. It seems clear that what befell him on the mountain was the direct result of his trip to regain permission for the attempt. After spending so long at a relatively low level, he had not had time to readjust to the higher altitude before the climb began. He continued to believe that if he had been able to stay in charge, the outcome would have been much better—especially for Peter Mulgrew.
Some good came out of the expedition. Griffith Pugh published the results of the expedition’s research in the British Medical Journal in 1962. His conclusion stated: ‘The party appeared to acclimatize well to 19,000 ft. (5,790 m.), and card-sorting and other psychological tests revealed no evidence of mental impairment. However, all members of the party continued to lose weight, and this makes it doubtful if they could have stayed there indefinitely. Newcomerson Mt. Makalu, after four to six weeks’ acclimatization, were, if anything, fitter and more active than men who had wintered at 19,000 ft. (5,790 m.).’ Another of the physiologists on the trip, Jim Milledge, wrote in High Altitude Medicine and Biology, ‘Many of the findings were not repeated for many years, and none has been refuted.’
In his own summary of what was learnt about high-altitude existence, Ed noted that any gains achieved by habituation to low levels of oxygen were offset because it was so difficult to exercise in that state; this meant that keeping in climb-ready physical shape proved impossible.
As had happened on other occasions, Ed’s leadership was called into question in the wake of what happened at Makalu. It’s not easy to lead when you’ve just had a stroke, and there’s no way of knowing whether Ed’s certainty that things would have been different if he had stayed in charge would actually have proved correct.
The expedition did leave room for some of the flaws in Ed’s style to become apparent. Without his impetuousness he might have stopped after returning from low altitude and reacclimatised; and this would probably have prevented his altitude sickness.
Peter Mulgrew’s own account of these events, No Place for Men, is a small, witty masterpiece of Himalayan mountaineering literature. It is also an interesting footnote to the literature of drug addiction. In terrible pain, he was prescribed pethidine, a highly addictive opiate. He tried to do without it but the pain in his feet was too great, and only the drug could ease it. ‘Thus began the gradual infiltration of that insidious drug throughout my nervous system,’ he wrote, ‘accompanied by the relentless sapping of my willpower. In the months to come, my dependence on the drug became so great that I was unable to differentiate between pain and the need for pethidine.’ Before long the nurse was having trouble finding a clear space to administer the two-hourly injections.
Hospital visitors did not include the British ambassador to Nepal, who at this time also served as New Zealand’s diplomatic representative and might have been expected to call. Mulgrew noted that this personage went out of his way to avoid any contact with the expedition or its members. ‘Maybe he had the well-bred Britisher’s horror of wild colonial boys,’ wondered Mulgrew. Or maybe he had the well-bred Britisher’s horror of recalling the embarrassment of the ‘race’ to the South Pole.
Ed arranged, courtesy of the sponsors, for June Mulgrew to be flown up to be with her husband Peter while he was treated for his injuries. She did not know how badly hurt he was until she arrived, but she took the situation in her stride and set about doing what she could, including learning how to administer the two-hourly injections of pethidine under supervision.
June added to her medical mien by wearing a white shirt back to front, and was delighted when she heard herself referred to as the Memsahib Doctor. Her husband reported that her first shot practically ‘pinned my arm to my chest’. She was accommodated in a guesthouse outside the window of Mulgrew’s room, and he drew comfort from the fact that they could talk to each other from their beds on still nights.
It was decided to return Mulgrew to hospital in Auckland. Ed and June were on the flight with him; and the patient noted with some chagrin that his companions were treated to champagne that was forbidden to him. The Auckland Star was there to capture an incongruously jolly photo of the three of them sitting in the back of an ambulance on arrival.
Not long after his return, Mulgrew agreed to the amputation of both his legs below the knee. June was on hand when he woke from the operation; he then received a huge dose of morphine and lapsed into unconsciousness, gripping one of her fingers so tightly she could not free it, but had to wait until he awoke. Subsequently, pethidine would be the addictive painkiller administered. There followed a long recuperative period.
Ed gave Mulgrew a copy of Reach for the Sky, the biography of Douglas Bader, the former World War II air ace and double amputee. Mulgrew liked the gesture, though he didn’t warm to the subject.
When the hospital told him it had been slowly reducing his dose of pethidine, he decided to go cold turkey. On hearing that decision the doctors sent him home, believing the more congenial surroundings would aid the process. He went through three days of terrible withdrawal symptoms and many more weeks of pain before finally learning to walk on artificial legs. He would go on to achieve success in business. June showed remarkable courage and patience all through Peter’s recovery. It would not be the last time her devotion would help a man back to normal life.
For Ed, the era of the great swashbuckling adventure was almost over. Instead, he was about to embark on a very different kind of adventure, one that he would regard as his greatest achievement.