Everest Controversy

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 8

Everest Controversy

The controversy that is reported to be “ raging ” in Nepal on the question of who stepped first on to the summit of Mount Everest is to be regretted because it subtracts something from the satisfaction that everyone is entitled to feel in this notable achievement of racial cooperation. But the controversy is insignificant beside the achievement; and it should raise no more than a ripple outside Nepal. This is probably the first time in the long history of mountaineering that any attempt has been made to differentiate among the climbers, two, three, lour, or sometimes more, credited with the first ascent of a peak. The very nature of mountaineering makes the ascent of a major peak a matter of teamwork. Someone must lead, if the climbers are roped: and if an unroped party straggles on to the summit at .quite distinct intervals the honour is still equally shared, for the last to arrive may have done the lion’s share of the exhausting work of step-cutting or “ snow-plugging ” that won the peak for all. How the question came to arise in this case may never be known for certain. The fun-loving Sherpas are not averse to embroidering a good tale. Tensing himself may have been pulling the legs of some of his admiring friends. And once the fantastic story of his double ascent —first single-handed and then again, aiding the exhausted Hillary' —got into circulation it would need little or no colour of probability to commend it to the simple but intensely nationalist Nepalis. The Nepalis are clearly determined on two things: to establish that Tensing is a native son (about which there is some doubt), and to establish that he was first on top of Everest (about which there Is no doubt whatever). The hubbub which the story has caused in Nepal has evidently been sufficient to irk the returning members of the expedition; but they would not have been put to the painful necessity of making world-wide denials of an inherently improbable story—more than improbable considering the virtual certainty that the climbers would be roped for the final assault —if a world-wide news service and newspapers in various parts of the world had not been as credulous as the Nepali tribesmen. The argument will soon be forgotten; the achievement on the great mountain is a matter of history. And the honours which go with it are not lessened by being shared.