Final Assault On Everest Expected Over Week-End

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27048, 25 May 1953, Page 9

Final Assault On Everest Expected Over Week-End

(N.Z. ,Press Association—Copyright) (Rec.‘ 8 p.m.) KATMANDU, May 23. Four picked climbers of the British Everest expedition will make a double-pronged attempt on the peak this week-end, according to reports reaching Katmandu by runner from the expedition’s base on the Khumbu Glacier. The attacks will be launched if the weather holds and if the first phase of the final assaults—the setting up of camps six and seven on the South Col—have gone according to plan. The weather forecast for today and tomorrow predicts clear skies, and it is expected at Katmandu that the attack will go ahead as scheduled. The first attack is expected to be made today by two climbers leaving at dawn from camp seven, at 25,500 feet. They will try to get to the summit and back in one day. If they fail, the second pair, with old-type oxygen equipment, will try tomorrow.

The second party will use a bivouac camp on a ridge above camp seven as its halfway halting place for the night to shorten the distance of the final attack. To cover the last 3000 feet to the summit and back in one day would be a tremendous feat of endurance for the two climbers selected. In the rarified atmosphere on the mountain, the extreme cold and perhaps soft snow; every step would mean a great effort, sapping at the men’s willpower.

Mountaineers say much depends on the working of the oxygen equipment. If the new type, or “closed circuit” apparatus, which gives the men pure oxygen, is used the climbers would have to complete- the journey in a day to survive. If they failed, the old-type equipment, though heavier, would be used by the second party as it would give the climbers more time in high altitudes. This type, the “open circuit,” gives a mixture of oxygen and air.