SIR EDMUND HILLARY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27369, 7 June 1954, Page 10

SIR EDMUND HILLARY

NEWS EXPECTED OF PARTY SOON

OTHER EXPEDITIONS LEAVE PEAKS

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW DELHI, June 4. British High Commission officials at New Delhi said today that they expect to have news of Sir Edmund Hillary within three or four days, in reply to a broadcast they made last week. In a message put out by the All India Radio on May 29 the commission, asked for news of the health of the New Zealand climber reported ill with pneumonia while leading a team of his countrymen in an attempt on the 27,790 ft Mount Makalu in Nepal. As the party has no radio transmitter, any reply to the broadcast will have to come by runner. 'This is expected to take from eight to 10 days, and the earliest the news can be expected is on Sunday. Mr James McFarlane, the climber injured in a fall down a crevasse, is being evacuated to India and is expected to reach Jogbani, on the frontier, next week. He is suffering from frostbite to the hands and feet and is being carried over 150 miles of difficult mountain tracks and hazardous rope bridges to the nearest town on the Indian-Nepal frontier.

Dr. William Siri, leader of the California expedition, reported on May 19 that his group planned to leave the Makalu base camp about June 7, says the correspondent of the Associated Press. It is believed that the New Zealand team is following a similar schedule. Climbers Leaving Peaks The correspondent says that the Himalayan experts in New Delhi believe that “Operation Retreat” is ' in full swing among the mountain

climbers, who are leaving Nepal’s peaks ahead of the approaching storms.

The first to return to civilisation was a group of Japanese climbers, who reached the Nepalese capital of Khatmandu after abandoning an attempt to reach the top of the 24,199 ft Ganesh Himal.

The Japanese reached the 22,000 ft level—soooft higher than the New Zealand team attained a year ago—before the route became impossible. Of the other major expeditions still in Nepal, the movements of the Argentine team attempting the 26,795 ft Dhaulagiri are most secret. The Argentine Embassy said that no direct word from the South Americans had been received since April 2, but a spokesman said that he considered “no news good news.” He said that the Argentinians were listening to the daily radio reports of the monsoon movements to the northwards, and they planned to leave the high mountains in plenty of time to avoid storms.

A fourth group, composed of eight Austrian alpine experts, who gre seek-* ing to climb three Nepalese peaks, is also believed to have begun the retreat because of the threat of early monsoons, although the Austrian Legation is without news of the climbers’ movements.