MOUNT EVEREST SURVEY

Northern Advocate, 21 January 1936, Page 6

MOUNT EVEREST SURVEY

ADVANCE PARTY’S DISCOVERIES [United Press Association-By Electric Telegraph.—Covyrighti } (Received, :10,‘a.nv.) f LONDON, January 20. The famous: explorer, Mr C. E. Shipton, writing in the “Daily Telegraph sums up his reconnaissance expedition to Mt. Everest in June, when he secured valuable data for Mr Hugh Ruttledge’s forthcoming assault on the summit. ... He says:— “The expedition climbed 26 peaks, all of which were more than 20,000 ft high. Only two of the summits had been previously reached. “During a descent of the north col, Everest, we found an enormous avalanche, which had recently broken away, largely along the line of our ascent. It had peeled , off the whole face of a slope to a depth of 6 ft. * “This was an alarming discovery Which, eventually, with other considerations, decided us to have nothing further to do with the north col during the monsoon. Waist Deep In. Soft Snow. “Later we established the fact that the monsoon snow neither disappears nor consolidates at altitudes above 23,000 feet in the region of Everest until the re-establishment of winter gales. Thus we are able to decide that the only time when there will be a reasonable hope of reaching the summit of -Everest will be during the exceedingly short interval between the end of the winter gales and the arrival of the monsoon. In 1933, however, there was no such interval. When we reached the Ronjbuk Glacier, at the end of August, we found, above 22,000 feet, that we were floundering waist deep in soft snow, while, above 23,000 feet, the snow was a bottomless morass. Stoves did not function, and we could not even melt snow for drinking purposes. Later, however, we devised a burner, . which could be used in atmospheric pressure equivalent to that at 35,000 feet.