Evening star., 1933-05-25
EVEREST IS LAST
GREAT ADVENTURE
Climb One of Few Remaining
Challenges to Intrepid
Explorers.
BY WALTER TRUMBULL.

In this age of modern miracles avia-
tors have flown over Mount Everest.
but there is no proof man ever has set
foot upon the crest of the worlds
highest peak.
George Mallory, 36-year-old Cam
bridge University professor. and An
drew Irvine. who at % left his place
in an Oxford shell to die upon un-
charted heights, came closest. 1t may
Irvine's young strength actually took
them to the top. Tney vanished into
the mist 600 feet below the peak and
never came back. That was nine
years ago.
Now another party composed OF men
equally intrepid is at this moment dar-
ingly climbing Everest. striving for the
summit. Hugh Ruttledge is leading the
little band which is pitting human
brains and Drawn against the maign
| forces nature has set around their
goal.
| AS you read this, Longland, Smythe.
! Wager or some other of these men
with hearts for high adventure may be
! within reaching distance of the sum-
NIT, or may have succumbed to the
violence of the guarding forces which in
! the last IL years have taken IL lives.
| Everest is one of the last great ad-
| ventures. The mountain stands on the
borders of Nepal and Tibet, the out
| standing vertebra in the backbone of
Asia, a 2.000-mile range of noun
tains called the Himalayas, from San
scrit words meaning the place of
SHOWS.
Young Mountains.
| Biologists say the Himalayas are
among the youngest mountain ranges,
that 100,006,000 years ago Everest was
under the sea. N. E. Odell of the 1924
expedition found fossils $4,000 feet up.
The range is still growing, not speedily.
as sometimes in volcanic action, but
pressed up by the slow crumpling of the
earth.
In 1852 the British trigonometrical
survey of the Indian government discov-
cred Everest was the tallest mountain in
the world. The first figures put the al
titude at 29.002 feet, but later triangu-
lationS set the height at 29145 feet
| about 512 miles. Still later calculations
set the height at 29141 feet
The British named the mountain after
Sir George Everest, under whose direc-
tons the surveys had been started, but
the Tibetans called it Chomo Lungama,
meaning Goddess Mother of the World.
To the natives, any attempt to scale it
is to incur the wrath of the gods They
hear the bowling of demons in the icy
winds which sweep it, Scientists and
explorers call the demons forces of Ma
ture.
wall OF other great mountains sur
rounds Everest, hiding even its height
from a distant view. Frequently from
its icy helmet a white plume trails 1t
is composed of mists from the glacier
and of particles of snow and rock. The
great broom of an incessant gale Swirls
them across the sky as one might sweep
dust from carpet. The wind comes
always from the west and blows 70 to
$50 mile an hour. That is why climbers
seek to keep below the ridges rather
than to walk their tops.
To the east side of Everest is a deep
gorge where the Arcun River runs To
the south are great precipices and bar
rem crevasse-cut glaciers. Only on the
north side may any climb be made with
hope OF reaching the top. Here, too,
are glacier ice, steep slopes, snow. great
gorges, slippery shale, zero weather and
never-ceasing wind, but here also is
mans only possible path to the peak.
Up to 1921 Everest was considered un-
scalable. 1t was Mallory who discov-
cred a possible way up the north
east ridge, and it was there that NAL
lory died, in 1924. But even Mallory,
who always believed Everest could be
conquered, cited the chances as 80 to
against"
Rays Burn Like Hot Irons.
Not only the cold, wind, snow, ice and
rocks, the ultraviolet rays of the sum
which burn like hot irons, and the in
fra-red rays which cause blindness,
must be overcome. but an altitude must
be attained at which for long time it
was believed no human could exist.
Previous to the attempts on Everest
the record altitude for mountain climb
ing was held by the Duke of Abruzzi,
who with the Brockerels, famous AL
pine guides, ascended 24,600 feet on
Brides Peak in Kashmir. Four hun
dred feet from the summit they had
to give up because they could not
breathe
The most wonderful thing about the
mechanism of the human body is its
ability to adjust itself to conditions.
Previous Everest expeditions have shown
that man can sleep at 27,000 feet-and
wake again; that he can climb to 28,-
coo feet-and keep on climbing. 1t may
be the present attempt will demonstrate
that man can stand on top OF the world
and return to tell the story.
Men in balloons and planes have been
higher than Everest, but those men
didn't have to give the utmost of their
strength to climbing. They could sit
in electrically warmed suits and breathe
from oxygen tanks they did not have
to carry They did not have to crawl
upward on leaden feet, gasp for air with
tortured lungs, or strive by force Of will
for consciousness. These men of Everest.
u-;fI dpath side in dreadful
effort and with pounding hearts, are