THE EVEREST CLIMB.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 44, 21 January 1936, Page 10

THE EVEREST CLIMB .

SOFT SNOW HINDRANCES.

RECONNAISSANCE WORK,

LONDON, Jan. 20,

Mr E. E. Shipton, writing in the Daily Telegraph, and summing up the recent Everest reconnaissance, says that the expedition climbed 26 peaks, all over .20,000 feet: The summits of only two had previously been reached. He adds: During the descent of the north col of Everest we found that an enormous avalanche'had recently broken away, largely along the line of our ascent, peeling off the whole face _of the slope to a depth of six feet, which was an alarming disco-very. Eventually, with other considerations, this decided us to have nothing further to do with the north col during the monsoon period. Later we established that the monsoon snow neither disappears nor consolidates at altitudes above 23,000 feet in the region of Everest until the re-establishment of the winter gales. Thus we were able to decide that the only time that there would be a reasonable hope of reaching the summit of Everest would bo during the exceedingly short interval between the end of the winter gales and the arrival of the monsoon, but in 1933 there was no such interval.

Mr Shipton adds: When we reached the Rongbuk Glacier at the end of August we found that above 22,000 feet we were floundering waist-deep in soit snow, while above 23,000 feet the snow was a bottomless morass. Stoves did not function and we were v.nable even to melt snow for drinking purposes, although we later devised a burner that coukl be used in an atmospheric pressure equivalent to that at 35,000 feet.