DANGERS IN MAKALU ASSAULT

Press, Volume C, Issue 29524, 27 May 1961, Page 8

DANGERS IN MAKALU ASSAULT

One Climber Narrowly Missed Death [By DESMOND DOIG, Official Correspondent with the Hillary Party in ths 1961 Himalayan Expedition] gEFORE the start of the assault on Mount Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain, 200 loads weighing about 12,000 pounds were ferried across three high passes, a 20,000-foot plateau and two major glaciers in a strenuous 10 days in which there were several unnerving incidents. One of us missed death by the thickness of two woollen caps, and a party led by Sir Edmund Hillary stumbled about in near desperation looking for a camp site during a snowstorm and gathering darkness in an area of awesome crevasses and ice falls.

The fresh snow turned steep rock gradients everywhere into nightmares for the laden climbers and porters. But spring is now in full and open competition with winter, and dwarf iris lilies are showing purple and fragile on some arched slopes from which the winter snow has just lifted. This same spring, with its increasing number of hot cloudless days and irresponsible winds, brings down the avalanches. I watched two the other day pour one behind the other down a slope close by our precarious route to Makalu. If avalanches are now a hazard, rock falls are a constant threat. A few days ago Hillary and Peter Mulgrew were leading 30 laden porters across the 20,000-foot Barun plateau in weather turning rapidly hostile. In Ed Hillary’s own words: "We crossed the plateau and east col in the most unpleasant weather conditions and worked our way down the first rope. “The holds were slippery and loose, and when the rope came to an end we crabbed our way slowly across the slope—very hard work for the porters and a mighty drop below. “Halfway down the slope a porter dislodged a rock and I watched it fly down toward Peter and, to my horror, hit him on the head. He slumped and I expected to see him slide down the slope and over the bluff. Fortunately, he had a good hand grip and he held on.” Snowstorm

Peter Mulgrew survived the ordeal with a minor head wound, saved largely by a balaclava cap and a woollen hat which, for no reason that he can remember, he providentially wore that day, one over the other. In a snowstorm following Mulgfew’s narrow escape the first camp on Makalu was established. Getting Mulgrew off the steep snow slope in his dazed condition—he remembers nothing of it—was a long and tiring business and night was threatening when the exhausted party stumbled into an area some 500 feet above the glacier they had just traversed. Water flowed across one end of it and there, in driving snow and a deceptive half light, they pitched their tents and crawled gratefully into their sleeping bags. By morning light, the site appeared ideal. It became Camo One at 17.900 feet. . All the while the greatest lift of stores and equipment yet made in the high Himalayas was being effected by the largest number of highaltitude porters ever employed. The heavy loads had to be ferried from the wintering laboratory, the Silver Hut at 19,150 feet across to the Hongu glacier. From there the loads were carried by a new relay of sherpas over a 20.000 foot pass on to the high Barun plateau where yet another relay of porters lifted them over a hazardous, glazed rock pass and the Barun glacier to Camp One on Makalu. Arduous Work It has been the gruelling task of expedition members to blaze the trails, cut ice

steps, fix guide ropes, flag the route and keep the porter train moving in all weathers. The second of the seven camps necessary for the assault up the bald flanks of Makalu was established at IS£SOO feet. Between Camp One and Camp Two the route lies over the fantastically piled moraine of the Barun galcier. Crazily balanced castellated formations of glacial ice seem to have a vigorous life of their own, so continously do they moan and crack, so often splinter and topple and crash down with demoniacal force. Hillary explained that over one stretch “We had to take our chance and run for it.” What he left to the imagination was running at 19,000 feet over moraine and weighed down with heavy packs.

Ice Wall As compensation Camp Two commands delighted views but the delights were drowned by the atmospherics—and much of the success of the expedition rests on the efficient functioning of the small radio transmitter sets. To reach Camp Three at 21,000 feet required scaling an ice slope which the understating Hillary described as “a wall.” That was “really somethin!?.” too. Although Sir Edmund pushed the party to keep as close to schedule as possible, the summit date was moved back.

Doctors and scientists, with the experience of the first high-altitude winter ever spent on the Himalayas behind them, joined the party at Camp Four—like specialist troops moving up before an attack. Data gained on the summit of Makalu should soon enhance modern medical knowledge of the human heart. [Copyright 1961 by the World Book Encylopedla. Chicago. Distributed by Opera Mundi, Paris.]