CONQUEST OF EVEREST

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29272, 2 August 1960, Page 9

CONQUEST OF EVEREST

Chinese Claim Doubted (NZ. Press Association—CopyripM) NEW YORK, August 1. An American magazine writer, has debunked the Chinese Communist claim that a Chinese team reached the top of Mount Everest from the northern side on May 25. "One of the most impudent fakes of modern times,” said Quentin Pope, Far East correspondent, writing in the August issue of the “New Leader.” He said thait the Chinese Communists had offered no tangible proof that their team had scaled the 29,000tt peak. "The Chinese claim their climbing team stayed for 19 hours at the highest altitudes,” he said. "When Sir Edmund Hillary a greatly experienced climber of the highest calibre, conquered Mount Everest along with Sherpa Tensing, the man who was climbing the great mountain for the seventh time, it took them five hours to get from their 27,900 ft advanced base to the summit and two and a half hours to get back. When he had descended another 1900 ft to the South Col, Sir Edmund Hillary confessed he was exhausted. “Yet the Chinese claim to have been able to send their fledgling team to the .summit area and stay there almost twice as long as Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing during the assault alone. "Even if the Chinese equipment were 50 per cent, superior to that used in the British expedition, this still gives them an oxygen supply lasting only about 11 hours, which means the Chinese climbed for about eight and a half hours at the highest altitudes without oxygen.” Pope said that the Chinese said their success was due to superior physique, but he added that their own reports of earlier climbs showed they were not equal to Western climbers.