EVEREST EXPEDITION

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 41, 24 May 1935, Page 8

EVEREST EXPEDITION

NEW ZEALANDER IN ADVANCE

PARTY

(From the. Guardian's Special Corres-

pondent—By Air Mail)

LONDON, May 4

A New Zealander, Mr L. V. Bryant, is one of a party of six young men who left London this week for Mount Everest, the world's highest peak. Officially they are the advance party for the Everest Expedition which will attempt to reach the summit in 1936. Actually they will be on a physical .and mental fitness trial to prove their ability to join the main expedition. If they show themselves suitable for the gigantic task of scaling the mountain they will be asked to join it.

The main expedition will attempt to reach the summit of the mountain early in the summer of 1936. But every hope of planting a British flag on the 29,141 feet crag depends on one thing—physical efficiency. Previous attempts have failed through the climbers falling with exhaustion almost within sight of the summit. The climbers were beaten by the thinness of the air. The heavy oxygen equipment carried by the climbers served only as a further impediment to their progress. But the Mount Everest Committee have learned through failure. This time they have tried to eliminate every possible source of disaster, by making the human element as certain as possible.

One of the main duties of this advance party will be to devise a new plan of attack on the mountain. This will entail hard work and hardship at one of the worst mountaineering seasons of the year. They will reconnoitre the'mountain during the monsoon period, and establish the camps that the main party will use when the attempt begins.