THE BEST TIME

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1936, Page 10

THE BEST TIME

ASCENT OF EVEREST

PARTY'S OBSERVATIONS

LONDON, January 20.

Mr. E. E. Shipton', writing in the "Daily Telegraph," and summing up the recent Everest reconnaissance, says that the expedition climbed 26 peaks, all over 20,000 feet. The summits of only two had previously been reached. "During the descent of the north col of Everest," he says, "we found that an enormous avalanche had refcently broken away, largely along the line of our ascent, .peeling off the whole face of the slope to a depth of six feet. This was an alarming discovery. Eventually, with other considerations, this decided us to have nothing further to do with the north col during the monsoon period. Later we established that the monsoon snow neither disappears nor consolidates at altitudes above 23,000 feet in the region of Everest until the re-establish-ment of the winter gales. Thus we were able to decide that the only time that there would be a reasonable hope of reaching the summit of Everest would be during the exceedingly short interval between the end of the winter gales and the arrival of the monsoon, but in 1933 there was no such interval." Mr. Shipton adds: "When we reached the Rongbuk.Glacier at the end of August we found that above 22,000 feet we were floundering waist deep in soft snow, while above 23,000 feet the snow was a bottomless morass. Stoves did not function, and we were unable even to melt snow for drinking purposes, although later we devised a burner that could be used in an atmospheric pressure equivalent to that at 35,000 feet."