New Zealand’s First Mountaineering Expedition Abroad: The Dora de Beer Collection

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 45, 1 January 2013, Page 27

New Zealand’s First Mountaineering Expedition Abroad: The Dora de Beer Collection

WALTER COOK

Work at the Alexander Turnbull Library is full of surprises. For most of my time working here I have been involved with photographs, a medium of infinite variety, which has required me to engage with all sorts of subjects, most of them outside my personal interests and experience. The Dora de Beer collection is one such case. It is made up of 372 film negatives dating from 1938. They arrived in New Zealand via the High Commission in London, and originally included reels of movie film. At first they were sent to Te Papa, who passed them to the New Zealand Film Archive. The archive retained the movie film and gave the negatives to the Turnbull Library. These arrived in the Photograph Archive in 1997 and were shelved to await housing and cataloguing.

For two years the collection was judged to be of low priority. Of what pressing interest was a record of somebody's holiday in China in the 19305? China was a long way from the South Pacific and the bounds of the Turnbull Library's collecting policies. Nevertheless, collections like this are retained because those policies also require a record, in the widest sense, of 'the New Zealand experience'; this includes sample records of trips abroad made by New Zealanders. One day my manager looked at a small group of collections which had been lingering for some time on a shelf, and directed me to clear them. I took down the negatives of the trip to China and began a process of discovery - they turned out to be a record of New Zealand's first mountaineering expedition overseas, and what really grabbed my interest was that the trip had been organised by three women mountaineers.

The Photograph Archive's extensive mountaineering collections hardly feature women at all - unless you count May Kinsey's decorative presence in camp in the 1890 s, while her father and his male companions pose in full regalia ready to embark on the real thing. It's not until you get to the tramping clubs of the 1920 s and 1930 s that women appear in any great number among the peaks and

forests of the New Zealand landscape. The instigator of the China expedition was an Australian, Marie Beuzeville Byles (1900-1979). She was of British Huguenot descent and had arrived in Australia with her family in 1911. Encouraged by her father and suffragette mother, who instilled in their daughter the belief that women could do anything they set their minds to and should have a profession, she became the first woman to qualify as a lawyer in the state of New South Wales. She was also an adventurous traveller, and in 1927 began a two-year world tour, leaving Sydney on a Norwegian cargo boat and returning on a Swedish one. The trip included climbing mountains in Britain, Norway and Canada, and gave her material for her book, By Cargo Boat and Mountain (1931). From 1929, following the example of her friend and client, Freda du Faur, Marie did a lot of climbing in the Southern Alps, including on Aoraki/Mt Cook with guide Alf Brustad on her first visit to New Zealand. In the 1930 s she made first ascents of several peaks in the Mahitahi Valley, Westland. She became a member of the New Zealand Alpine Club in 1935. The Chinese expedition she planned for 1938 was to the Yulong Xue Shan (jade dragon snowy mountain) range, about 16 kilometres north of the city of Fijiang, in north-western Yunnan. Her objective was to climb the highest of the range's 13 peaks, the 6,096-metre Mt Sansato (the fan), at that time unconquered. 1

ft is perhaps not surprising that Australian mountaineering historian Will Steffen claims, in Himalayan Dreaming, that Marie Byles' expedition to China was the first Australian climbing trip to a big Asian mountain. 2 Although he mentions that she travelled with colleagues, he omits their names and nationalities. In the light of this view, the expedition could perhaps be more accurately called Australasia's first mountaineering trip to China, and thus include all protagonists and overcome conflicting claims as to whose national event it really was. As well as Marie, the party included four New Zealanders and one other Australian. All, except the other Australian and a Swiss-born guide, had gained their formative climbing experiences in the Southern Alps.

Before the 1900 s few women had ventured into the mountains as climbers, and fewer still had attempted high alpine climbs. 3 Society's attitude towards the limitations of women in relation to such a 'masculine' activity proved a formidable barrier to those willing to make the effort. On a practical level it was considered improper that women should be alone with male guides to whom they were not related, and that they wear trousers for ease of movement and safety. The guides themselves could be much more supportive in encouraging women to climb, and mountaineering historian Graham Langton records that by 1908 Peter and Alec Graham at the Hermitage and Waiho Gorge expected that women could and should be energetic in the mountains. Guides packed trousers for the trip, so that women clients could change into them when they were out of sight of the great

encompassing cloud of disapproving witnesses. By 1908, women were about to tackle high climbing in the New Zealand mountains, and the Australians led the way. The stimulus came from the Government Tourist Department's exhibit at the New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch in 1906-7. The two Australian women who responded to it were Annette Lindon and Freda du Faur. Of the two, Freda became the more famous and was the first woman to climb high in New Zealand, in 1909-10, at the age of 27. Her most famous achievement was the first grand traverse of Aoraki/ Mt Cook in 1913 in the company of guides Peter Graham and Darby Thompson.

The activities of Freda du Faur initiated an era of guided mountaineering for women, and following her achievements New Zealand women began to take up the sport. By 1920, women made up about half of client climbers in the Aoraki/ Mt Cook area. Langton generalises that most of them were wealthy single women, 'not in the first flush of energetic youth'. He also states that 'none of these guided women climbers were in the forefront of climbing progress in New Zealand as Freda du Faur had been. Yet from the later 1920 s they did some pioneering'. Marie Byles and her two female companions on the Yunnan trip had emerged as mountaineers in the mid- to late 19205. Their Yunnan expedition can be seen as a culminating event, a grand tour in the annals of guided mountaineering in New Zealand, where the women funded the project and the guides were both paid servants and expedition leaders.

In putting her team together, Marie Byles turned to the people she knew from her climbing experiences in New Zealand. To lead the expedition she chose Kurt Suter, who had emigrated from Switzerland in 1930 and worked as a guide mainly at the Hermitage. Marie asked him to select a second guide for the expedition, and he invited his colleague Mick Bowie, after his first choice, Jack Cox, decided he was unable to go. After the Second World War Bowie was to become head guide at the Hermitage and one of the most respected New Zealand mountain guides of his generation. Marie invited two women mountaineers who Colin Monteath calls The most experienced women climbers that the Southern Alps had yet produced'. 4 They were Marjorie Edgar Jones and Dora de Beer.

Marjorie's father, Edgar Jones, was born in England but by the 1900 s was part of the Canterbury landed gentry, and from 1900 to 1913 the family home and farm was Mt Nessing Station near Aldbury, South Canterbury. In 1913 the family moved to England, where they lived for two years but again moved, this time to Los Angeles, finally returning to New Zealand in 1916. The Jones family bought Otiritiri, a large country house near Timaru, and continued in their role as members of the South Canterbury social elite. In the 1920 s Edgar Jones's children adopted his first name as part of their surname. Marjorie began climbing in the Southern Alps in 1926, and this interest involved her until

1938. Marie Byles' expedition to Yunnan was Marjorie Edgar Jones's last major mountaineering endeavour.

Dora de Beer, by contrast, was a city girl, whose family's wealth came from business enterprise. She was the granddaughter of Bendix Hallenstein, famed for his Dunedin clothing factory, which opened in 1873, and for the well-known menswear outfitters Hallenstein Brothers. In 1884 he also founded the DIC department-store chain. In Dora's time the family were established in Dunedin, and though Dora had been born in Melbourne during her parents' brief soujourn there, they had returned to Dunedin in 1893, where her father, Isadore de Beer, entered the family firm to eventually become a director.

Although Dora began serious mountaineering in the Southern Alps in 1920, 5 she left New Zealand after her mother's death in 1931 to join her sister Mary and historian brother Esmond in London, where she lived until the end of her life. There, Dora had the opportunity to climb in the European Alps and communicate with experienced Himalayan climbers and alpine specialists such as Eric Shipton and Robert Lawrie. These contacts were of great help to her in her task of sourcing and selecting the best equipment for the expedition to Yunnan.

How do the three women in the expedition stack up to Langton's observation that most of the women mountaineers of this time were single, wealthy, and not in the first flush of youth? All three were single. Marjorie and Dora were blessed with private incomes, while Marie earned a good salary as a lawyer. In 1938, the year of the expedition to Yunnan, Marie was 38, Marjorie 41 and Dora 47. They fit Langton's model pretty well.

The final member of the team, the other Australian, was a young man, Fraser Radcliff, who according to Dora, 'had done little climbing but was keen and eager to see and do as much as possible'. 6 I have been unable to find out anything about Fraser, how he came to join the expedition, or what his relationship was to Marie Byles.

The travellers planned to reach Yunnan by way of Burma, which at that time was part of the British Empire and a relatively easy way into south-western China. This route also avoided those parts of China where the Sino-Japanese war was in progress. Even so, in late September during their second week in Lijiang, Japanese planes bombed Kunming, the regional capital of Yunnan, about 350 kilometres to the south-east.

When most of the party arrived in Rangoon on 2 August 1938 they found the city tense as a result of riots between the Burmese and Indian populations. It was hot, and armed police patrolled the streets. After three days of hectic shopping and receiving advice from the commissioner of police and his wife about treatments for snake bites, scorpion stings, malaria and dysentery, the party caught the train for Myitkyina, a town in north-eastern Burma not far from the Chinese border,

and the northern terminus for the railway at that time. Kurt Suter had already been in Myitkyina hiring servants and mules.

The journey to Lijiang properly begins at Myitkyina. This was definitely an experience of a different kind from that of modern tourists. When the caravan left there on 8 August it consisted of the six Europeans, 14 mules and their drivers, four riding ponies, two servants, a cook and an interpreter. They needed to be prepared. While in British-ruled Burma they had access to well-maintained Public Works Department bungalows, police commissioners and other administrative officials for advice and support. Their route into China was by the Kambaiti Pass along ancient trade tracks through mountains linking Burma to China and Tibet. Because the monsoons were late that year, the climbers were damp or wet for a lot of the time. Their accommodation would be in village inns or temples which provided shelter but not much more, and everyone would often share the same space. They were also travelling through bandit-infested country, and at one point armed soldiers were hired to guard the caravan's passage. In the event, they met with no working bandits but were advised to keep their guns handy, as 'two Catholic priests had recently been skinned alive'. 7 However, there were Europeans

present in the larger centres in Yunnan who were ready to give the expedition members help, and in one case join in some of their adventures. These people were Christian missionaries, allowed into China as a concession wrung out of the Chinese government by Britain and France in 1860 as a result of the Second Opium War.

According to Dora de Beer the distance from Myitkyina to Lijiang was over 400 miles (643 km), a bit more than the distance between Wellington and Auckland. It took the party 42 days to cover this, though only 29 were travelling days. The journey took them over some of the great rivers of Asia, beginning with the Irrawady in Burma, which they crossed in dugout canoes. In China the route crossed the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Kiang rivers. The China they encountered in Yunnan in 1938 was still medieval in appearance and reality. The walled cities, village inns, stone bridges, rural temples and passing caravans were probably not much different in the time of Marco Polo. A premonition of a possible future came into view when they reached the new Burma Road, the first part of a project that came to be associated with violent change and suffering.

Their first goal in Yunnan was the ancient town of Tengyueh (also called Tengchong) just across the border where there was a British consul. Most of the baggage had been sent on to Tengyueh via Bhamo and the Taping Valley, a route that avoided customs duties at the Chinese boarder which could not have been done by way of the Kambaiti Pass. The caravan not only saved on custom dues, but also missed the much worse weather and flooding on the Taping Valley route that delayed the arrival of the baggage. This part of the journey also brought out problems with the mules and the servants. The mules were in bad condition and the servants did not seem willing to live up to their profession. They were dismissed at Tengyueh, which caused the remaining servants to resign in solidarity. With the help of the consul a new team of mules and servants was put together, and when the party left the town with the extra baggage in tow the caravan consisted of about 30 mules.

The expedition's objective over the next 10 days was to travel from Tengyueh to Hsia-kwan at the junction of the road to Dali. They stopped for two nights in the walled city of Baoshan (Yungchang), where they were hosted by James Outram Fraser and his wife Roxie. Fraser had been with the Chinese Inland Mission in Yunnan since 1910, working with a Tibeto-Burmese minority people called the Lisu. As well as converting thousands of them to Christianity over the years he had made a name for himself as a scholar, creating a written language for the Lisu and a written musical notation for transcribing their oral history songs. Sadly, Dora records, a few weeks after the expedition's visit, James Fraser died of cerebral malaria (on 25 September 1938). As the caravan approached the causeway across the plain giving access to

Baoshan, the expedition had their first view of the new Burma Road. They left Baoshan on 4 September, travelling for the first four days through villages and hilly countryside. On 8 September they reached a completed section of the Burma Road, and after hearing news that robbers had attacked a small caravan on the mule track, decided to continue along the relative safety of the road which would take them to Hsia-kwan and Dali. This included crossing a range of mountains over 2,400 metres high dividing the Mekong River from the Yang-Pi and the village of the same name. The Burma Road descends to Yang-Pi in big zig-zags and the caravan began this descent in thick cloud and falling rain. After leaving YangPi they continued on to the town of Hsia-kwan, situated at the southern end of Lake Erhai, where they met a young Chinese doctor who could speak English. He alarmed the expedition by telling them that Germany had declared war on France, Russia, Czechoslovakia and England, but they decided, wisely, not to panic until they reached Dali where they could find out the truth of this from the English missionaries stationed there. This was a short journey of 16 kilometres. The three women walked the distance but the three men rode in chairs carried by bearers, while the mule caravan trailed behind.

Dali, on the shores of Lake Erhai, was another ancient walled city and dated from the eighth century. It had been the capital of two successive medieval kingdoms between the eighth and thirteenth centuries and was rich in antiquities, of which the most conspicuous were the three pagodas attached to the Chong Shen Temple and built between the ninth and twelfth centuries. The expedition was met by Chinese Inland Missionaries, who reassured them they were not at war with Germany. Mrs Allan, the wife of the head of the mission station (who was absent), invited them to stay. They spent two nights in the city and during that time visited Charles Patrick Fitzgerald, a notable historian of China at that time engaged on a study of the Bai ethnic minority (also known as the Min Chia). Fitzgerald was able to give news of Mt Sansato. The year before, Professor Ivor Richards of Cambridge University and his wife Dorothy had explored the mountain and climbed one of its peaks, but judged the main peak too difficult to attempt without help.

They left Dali for Lijiang on Wednesday 14 September, having hired a military escort on the advice of Mr Allan. The two soldiers making up this escort caused some concern, as they were raggedly dressed and, as Dora observed, 'armed with umbrellas and rifles. They wore two cartridge belts that held a few odd cartridges. ... I thought it a trifle unorthodox to have the muzzles of their rifles plugged with paper. It is only fair to say that we met other soldiers within the next few days who were very neat and much better equipped'. These well-turned-out soldiers were on their way to relieve the town of Atuntzu, north of Lijiang, which was being attacked by a gang of Tibetan bandits. News from a travelling missionary that 15 robbers had been beheaded within the last few days further encouraged the party to keep their military escort, and no doubt their own guns, at the ready.

On 18 September the caravan reached Lijiang. Help had arrived in the form of three Chinese men sent by their contact, a Mr Andrews (probably Rev. James Andrews) of the Pentecostal Mission. Ominously for the expedition, the Yulong Xue Shan mountain range was hidden in cloud and rain.

The expedition members found the climate of Lijiang, situated 2,238 metres above sea level, cool. Unlike Baoshan and Dali, Lijiang was a city without walls. Another feature was and still is its ancient water supply. This comes from three sources, each with a specified use - one for human consumption, one for washing clothes, and one for washing vegetables. Water is reticulated throughout the city in canals and culverts, and Dora describes how the 'rapid little streams [that] rush in channels through the streets' give a special character to the town. Of the several ethnic minorities in the area, in Lijiang the Naxi are the largest, and the city is very much a centre of Naxi culture.

Dora confesses that in Lijiang the expedition members 'were perhaps too comfortable'. They stayed with the Andrews in the mission house, 'a rambling

place built in Chinese style, with several courtyards and staircases'. It also housed three cows, two ponies, chickens and a vegetable garden, 'and even a bath, possibly the only one in Lijiang ...[and] one privy in the garden'. In Lijiang the expedition members began preparations for climbing Mt Sansato. The servants who had been hired in Tengyueh were paid off and replaced by locals who knew the countryside and the mountains. Stores were bought and packed, and Dora and Marjorie had a tailor make them wool-lined jackets. They also spent time sightseeing in the town, and Dora particularly liked the streets where the coppersmiths worked. In her opinion the Lijiang copper pots, kettles, and trays were well made and very artistic, but not as well finished as metalware from Tibet. At that time Lijiang and its surrounding area had no tourist trade to speak of, so that all the artisans in the city produced for local consumption or traditional trade purposes. Dora found that it was impossible to buy silk in Lijiang as there was no local demand for it and no tourists to make importing it worthwhile.

The late monsoon rains had dogged the expedition from the beginning of the journey in Burma. Now the weather was to slow down the progress of reaching their goal by mid-November. On 28 September Mr Andrews, Mick and Kurt made the first trip to the mountain, to find a suitable site to set up a base camp when the weather settled. The job of the guides would then be to establish higher camps and plan the strategy of assault. On 5 October the climbing party followed five mules and their drivers, who had gone ahead carrying tents and baggage for the base camp, the set-up of which was quite luxurious. Situated about 3,300 metres, it was still among vegetation of firs, bamboos, crab apples, deciduous trees and peonies. A nearby spring was piped into wooden troughs made of hollowed-out tree trunks, probably made for the use of cattle, but on at least one occasion used as a hot-water bath. Two charcoal braziers supplied by Mr Andrews heated their living quarters. The supplies brought from Australia and Britain were supplemented by fresh food sent up from Lijiang using one of the porters, who couriered the shopping lists to Mrs Andrews, who did the shopping. Keeping meat fresh was a problem as by the time it arrived at the camp it was three days old and beginning to smell. To solve this they bought live sheep from a nearby village and did their own killing. They ate well, and Dora records that The Lijiang provisions included plenty of pumpkins, cabbages, potatoes, oranges, and pears, all very good'.

Two other camps were established higher up the mountain, one at 4,724 metres and the highest on a glacier below the summit, at 5,182 metres. By the time they were set up Mick Bowie and Kurt Suter had climbed to above 5,480 metres, but fog and rain kept them from attempting the summit; in fact, the party waited for a break in the weather from 5 to 25 October. On the 26th Marie and Marjory left for the high camp to join Kurt Suter and Mick Bowie for their first

attempt to the summit. Further delayed by the weather, they endured extreme cold and high winds at the first high camp where they stayed in an attempt to acclimatise to the altitude.

The second high camp was set up on 29 October, and on the 31st the team of Marie, Marjory, Kurt and Mick attempted to climb Tent Peak at the top of the glacier adjacent to the high peak of Mt Sansato. But high winds and extreme cold at around 6,000 metres forced them to retreat. They returned to the first high camp and decided to try a new approach a little to the north. On 1 November Mick, Fraser and Dora went up to the second high camp to collect the tents. When the thick mist dispersed they decided to go on, and after two hours reached a position at 5,500 metres. For the first time they were able to get a good overview of the Yulan Xue Shan looking north, as well as the neighbouring peak of Mt Gyi-na-10-gko standing at just over 5,900 metres. Dora commented, 'we were still rather in the dark about the geography of the massif and it was exciting to arrive at any point high enough to give a fresh view'.

The second approach to the mountain was by way of the narrow, steep-sided valley of the Peh Shui (black water) stream, north of the base camp. Three more camps were established, including Dora's preferred 'camp in the pines'. During this part of the journey most of the expedition members suffered dysentery and other illnesses which again slowed them down. The weather, especially heavy snow and wind, continued to be a challenge. On Thursday 10 November Dora and the three men went to the highest camp to move it to a more sheltered site 300 metres lower down. According to Kurt Suter in 1988, it was during this operation that they reached 5,900 metres, 'managing the only really hard climbing on the whole trip', 8 but Dora fails to mention any of this in her 1971 account of the same event.

On 15 November the expedition members decided they should evacuate base camp as it was now too late in the season to be worth staying on. The expedition split. 9 Possibly personality clashes also played a part. Marie Byles, along with enthusiastic mountaineering muleteer Wong, wanted to survey and map the area. Dora and the others decided to descend into the Yangtze Gorge and circumnavigate the Yulong Xue Shan. This was achieved between 18 and 25 November with a party consisting of five expedition members, three missionaries, the cook, a Tibetan servant, two muleteers, five baggage mules and three riding ponies - quite a challenge for the lightly built ferries that crossed the Yangtze Kiang.

Returning to Lijiang, the expedition members stayed again in the Pentecostal mission house. Marie Byles was expected back at any time as she, Marjorie and Mick had to leave for home. Colin Monteath reports that they travelled back to New Zealand by way of Kunming, Haiphong and Hong Kong as Chinese troops moved through these areas. 10 In Dora's account they had to board a ship in Hanoi. Dora, Kurt and Fraser decided to stay for a few more weeks, during which

time, as the monsoons had finally passed, they returned to the mountain to retrieve the expedition gear they had abandoned there. On 2 December they climbed the 5,900-metre Mt Geena Nkoo (Dora calls it Mt Gyi-na-10-gko), a satisfactory compensation for failing to reach the summit of Sansato.

At the invitation of Mr Andrews, Fraser Radcliff remained in Lijiang for a few more weeks, but Dora and Kurt prepared to leave the city on 10 December. They travelled by caravan to Dali then by bus to Kunming, which they reached on 25 December, and once more came into contact with modern plumbing. Eventually they arrived at Hanoi, where they parted company. Kurt went to Hong Kong to board a ship home via Europe, while Dora travelled to Saigon and from there returned to London via Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya and Ceylon. Dora never returned to Yunnan as she had hoped, 'to see the flowers in springtime'. The Second World War and the rise of communist China prevented that. But her detailed and accomplished photographs of the trip in 1938 leave us with a fascinating record of the mountain and the climbs, and a view of a remote part of China before it succumbed to the advances of the modern world.

For decades the Yulong Xue Shan was beyond the reach of Western mountaineers and travellers. It was not until 1987 that Phil Peralta-Ramos and Eric Perlman, members of an American expedition, became the first recorded Western climbers to reach the highest point on the Yulong Xue Shan. Though it is not the highest mountain in Asia, it must be a difficult nut to crack. The successful American expedition of 1987 was preceded by three unsuccessful attempts, two by Americans in 1986 and 1985, and one by Japanese in 1984. Eric Perlman notes that 'the Jade Dragon's usual horrific weather' held off just long enough in 1987 for the climbers to complete their ascent, but under constant threat from avalanches. 11 It seems that Marie Byles had not chosen an easy Asian mountain as the expedition's goal.

The reputation of the 1938 Sansato expedition probably suffered because the climbers did not reach the summit: we only take 'winners' seriously. For the earnest, steely eyed, goal-driven mountaineers of later generations, the trip may have at times seemed like rich people on holiday. Twice in her account Dora makes it clear that for her, the trip counted most and reaching the summit was secondary. Marie Byles, however, was very disappointed the expedition failed to reach the summit of Sansato. She subsequently gave up mountaineering, became a Buddhist, a bush-walker, and a force in conservation in Australia, battling for, among other things, human-free wilderness areas in Kosciuszko National Park. What little that has been said about the expedition is merely an honorable mention rather than investigative detail. Colin Monteath has written: 'Although the Sansato expedition did not do a great deal of really hard climbing, even by the standards of the day, it remains a memorable one for it involved both professional guides as well as three women who had learned their mountaineering skills in New Zealand. New Zealand women would not begin climbing overseas regularly until the late 1960 s and guides would not take clients away from the Southern Alps until the late 19705'. 12 To me this statement, combined with Will Steffen's identification of the expedition as Australia's first climbing trip to a big Asian mountain, suggests that it was a significant pioneering event. That women were the instigators and organisers, I think, reinforces this judgement - they made the first attempt, so good on them!

On the cover of the 1989 issue of Adventure magazine, in which a 50thanniversary article on the Sansato expedition appears, is a photograph of mountaineer Lydia Brady. Young, blonde, of the huntress Diana type, she strides along in her brightly coloured mountaineering gear. At the time she was embroiled in controversy: had she actually climbed Mt Everest alone and without the aid of supplementary oxygen? It was subsequently proved that she had, and was the first woman mountaineer to do so. All this had to start somewhere, and perhaps for New Zealand and Australian women mountaineers and their engagement with the mountains of Asia, the Sansato expedition of 1938 was the inspirational beginning.

ENDNOTES 1 Terminology around the Yulong Xue Shan is confusing. It is described as a massif or a small range of mountains. Dora de Beer labelled her photographs 'Sansato' in 1938, and that is the spelling used by Colin Monteath in his 1989 article. In Dora's 1971 account it is spelled Sanseto, and she also states that this name can refer to the whole massif as well as a single peak. The Getty Museum, in cataloguing photographs of the Yulong Xue Shan, uses the spelling Satseto. There is another confusion. In Dora's account the highest point (Mt Sansato) is said to be 20,000 feet (6,096 metres) high. In various recent internet articles, the highest peak on the Yulong Xue Shan is called Shanzidau, and this is only 5,596 metres high. These sources also record that Shanzidou has only been climbed once and that was in 1987. On the other hand the Lonely Planet Guide to South Western China (1986) claims that the summit of Sansato was first reached by a Chinese research team from Beijing in 1963.

2 See Will Steffen, Himalayan Dreaming: Australian Mountaineering in the Great Ranges of Asia, 1922-1990, ANU epress, retrieved 20 September 2012. 3 The information on early women climbers in this part of the article is taken from Graham Langton, 'Early Women Climbers in New Zealand', in New Zealand Alpine Journal (1993): 99-105. 4 Colin Monteath, 'New Zealand's First Overseas Climbing Expedition'. Adventure (January/February 1989): 64-65 5 Langton, in 'Early Women Climbers in New Zealand', puts the date Dora began climbing at 1925; however, I have used Scott Russell's date of 1920 from his obituary of Dora in the Alpine Journal 1982, p. 134, on the basis that he knew her personally. 6 Dora de Beer, Yunnan 1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 3. All quotes attributed to Dora are taken from this book.

7 Monteath, 'New Zealand's First Overseas Climbing Expedition', p. 64. 8 Monteath, 'New Zealand's First Overseas Climbing Expedition', p. 65. 9 In Langton's obituary for Marjorie Edgar-Jones, in New Zealand Alpine Journal (1994): 119, he comments that during the Sansato expedition, 'Personality clashes did not make the party a cohesive one'. In Dora's account this is the only hint of dissention in the team. 10 Monteath, 'New Zealand's First Overseas Climbing Expedition', p. 65. 11 Eric S. Perlman, 'Yulong Shan'. American Alpine Journal (1988): 265. 12 Monteath, 'New Zealand's First Overseas Climbing Expedition', p. 64.