Foundation Meeting Of Himalayan Dining Club

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27750, 30 August 1955, Page 14

Foundation Meeting Of Himalayan Dining Club

A select band of mountaineers— New Zealanders, Englishmen, a Swiss and an Austrian—who have climbed some of the highest mountains in the world, will meet for the first time on Saturday week in Christchurch, when the Himalayan Dining Club will hold its foundation meeting. At least 23 men who have stood on the “roof of the world” are members of the club, and will be present at the meeting, which will take the form of a dinner to be held aj; the Clarendon Hotel. Three others may be there. Nine more who are eligible are unable to attend. The dinner is intended to be a forerunner of similar functions at -irregular intervals.

The mountaineers will eat in vastly different conditions from those they experienced in ice and snow thousands of feet up in the world’s most famous mountain region. They will sit down in comfort to a full-scale dinner, the courses of which will be named after some of the mountains they have climbed or attempted to climb. Preliminary discussions between the hotel chef and the club’s organising committee to draw up a menu began yesterday. The main course will be, appropriately, roast yak a I’Everest. The roast will be beef and it will not be out of a tin. The roast will follow soup—Nanda Devi pemmican—and well be followed by steamed Kenchenjunga pudding. Topics for Discussion

After dinner the climbers will exchange reminiscences. Sir Edmund Hillary is likely to be one of the main contributors in a discussion on oxygen. The ethics of oxygen to assist climbers has long been a burning question in mountaineering circles. It is understood that Sir Edmund Hillary will be asked not to speak on plans for Polar expeditions, as some members of the club consider that a height of 12,000 ft is too low.

A controversial subject—the possibility of Mallory and Irvine having climbed Everest in 1924—is another topic to arouse a good deal of interest. Professor N. E. Odell, who saw the two men walk to their death, will be the only person at the function who can throw light on the theory that the men reached the summit. Everest will also probably figure in a discussion on the relative merits of the traditonal approach through Tibet by. the north col and the neyv western cwm approach. Now that Kanchenjunga has been cilmbed, interest lies in speculation on prospects for an assault on another high Himalayan peak. The next highest peak, Dhaulagiri, is a most difficult mountain, and has repulsed four major expeditions. Mountaineers have seriously considered blasting camp sites from its side with explosives to get small flat places for camp sites. Another possibility is Lhotse. which has yet to be attempted. Lhotse is dwarfed by the Everest mass, but it is thought that it will be a hard mountain to climb. A hotly-debated topic, mountaineering and science, and whether the two mix, may provide a lively discussion. Expeditions have always had to decide whether they should take scientists with them and hope that they can climb, or to take climbers and hope that some of them will take an interest in science. Club Members The charter members of the club who climbed in the Himalayas are tentatively listed as follows: Professor Odell, a veteran mountaineering geologist at the University of Otaeo, who took part in the 1924 and 1938 expeditions to Mount Everest.

and was also on the Nanda Devi expedition in 1946; Mr L. V. Bryant, the organising secretary of the club, wh6 was a member of the British reconnaissance expedition to Everest in 1935; Lieutenant-Colonel J. B. Harrison, Military Secretary and Controller at Government House, who was on Masherbrum in 1938;

Mr M. Bowie, chief guide at the Hermitage, Mount Cook, who climbed with a private party in the Eastern Himalayas in 1938; and Mr Kurt Suter, of Akaroa, who climbed with him; i Mr W. P. Packard, of Cashmere, a . 'geographer with the Tillman scientific < expedition to the Nepal Himalayas ( five years ago; Mr H. E. Riddiford, of Wellington (leader), Mr E. Cotter, of Christchurch, and Sir Edmund Hillary, of Auckland, who were members of the first all-New Zealand expedition to the Himalayas in 1951 and climbed Mukut Parbat (23,760 ft ; Mr G. McCallum, one of four New 1 Zealanders in a private party to Buri Gandaki in 1953; Mr H. Maclnness, a Scot now settled in New Zealand, who with another ! Scot attempted to climb Mount Pumori 1 in Nepal; Messrs W. B. Beaven, C. J. Macfarlane, and B. J. Wilkins, of the New Zealand party to Barun Valley in 1954; Dr. H. J. Harrington, of the Geological Survey, Wellington, who led an Oxford University expedition to West Nepal in c l9s4; Messrs W. E. Hannah. R. H. Watson. R. Chapman, J. Harrison (Christchurch), P. Bain (Ashburton) and L, R. Hewitt (Palmerston North), who were in a Canterbury expedition which attempted to climb Masherbrum this year; Mr L. Krenek (Wanganui), an Austrian climber, who was formerly the Darjeeling secretary of the Himalayan Club; and Mr H. T. Milner, of Southland, who climbed Sikkim when a member of Colonel Sir John Hunt’s King’s Royal Rifles regiment in India in 1933. Absentees from Dinner Among those who will not be present are Mr W. G. Lowe, of Hastings, who was first in the Himalayas in 1951 with the Riddiford expedition. Mr Lowe is working in London at the headquarters of the Trans-Antarctic expedition and has sent his best wishes to the club. Messrs P. C. Gardner (Levin) and A. R. Roberts (Wellington), who took part in the 1953 Buri Gandaki expedition, are unable to be present, and the organising committee has yet to hear from Mr N. Bishop, of Levin, who was in the same expedition. Mr N. D. Hardie, of Timaru, deputyleader of the Kanchenjunga expedition, and one of the men who got to the top, will not be there. Neither will Mr Colin Todd, who was with Mr Hardie in the Barun Valley expedition. Mr Todd was killed in a motor accident three months ago. I Mr A. S. Morgan, a member of this year’s Canterbury Mountaineering Club expedition to Masherbrum, is in the United Kingdom, and Mr F. E. de Guerier, of Auckland,*is unable to attend the dinner. Mr S. Conway, of Christchurch, who was leader of the Canterbury expedition, and Mr G. Harrow (1954 Barun expedition) have not informed the committee whether they will be present. The other two men who’ would be eligible to join the club are Mr R. Scott Russell, lecturer in agriculture at Oxford University, who climbed with Mr Eric Shipton in 1939, and Lieutenant-Colonel W. M. Brown, of Auckland, a United Nations Commissioner in Kashmir, who went to Masherbrum this year with the Canterbury party.