page_title: Maurice Wilson
section_title: Attempts on Everest
hierarchical_section_title: Maurice Wilson / Attempts on Everest
caption_attribution_description: Mount Everest north face from Ronguk monastery in Tibet.
context_page_description: Maurice Wilson MC was a British soldier, mystic, mountaineer and aviator who is known for his ill-fated attempt to climb Mount Everest alone in 1934. Often characterised as "eccentric", he wished to climb Everest as a platform to promote his belief that the world's ills could be solved by a combination of fasting and faith in God. Despite his lack of mountaineering or flying experience, he succeeded in flying from Britain to India, surreptitiously entering Tibet and climbing as high as 6,920 metres on Mount Everest. However, he died in his attempt, and his body was found the following year by a British expedition.
context_section_description: Most of what is known about Wilson's activities on the mountain itself come from his diary, which was recovered the following year and is now stored in the Alpine Club archives. Completely inexperienced in glacier travel, Wilson found the trek up the Rongbuk Glacier extremely difficult and constantly lost his bearing and had to retrace his steps. He showed his lack of experience when he found a pair of crampons at an old camp, which would have helped him tremendously, but threw them away. After five days and in worsening weather he was still two miles short of Ruttledge's Camp III below the North Col. He wrote in his diary "It's the weather that's beaten me – what damned bad luck" and began a gruelling four-day retreat down the glacier. He arrived back at the monastery exhausted, snowblind and in great pain from his war-wounds and a badly twisted ankle.
  It took eighteen days for Wilson to recover from his ordeal, yet he set forth again on 12 May, this time taking Tewand and Rinzing with him. With the Sherpas' knowledge of the glacier they made quicker progress and in three days they reached Camp III near the base of the slopes below the North Col. Confined to camp for several days by bad weather, Wilson considered possible routes by which he could climb the icy slopes above, and made a telling comment in his diary.
  Not taking short cut to Camp V as at first intended as should have to cut my own road up the ice and that's no good when there is already a hand rope and steps (if still there) to Camp IV.
  The entry showing how Wilson thought steps cut into the ice the previous year might still be present has been cited as particularly strong evidence of his ignorance of the mountain environment, and of his continuing failure to understand the task before him. When, on the 21st, he finally made an abortive attempt to climb to the North Col, he was extremely disappointed to find no trace of the rope, or the steps.
  The next day he began a further attempt to reach the Col. After four days of slow progress and camping on exposed ledges, he was defeated by a forty-foot ice wall at around 22,700 ft which had stretched Frank Smythe to his limit in 1933. On his return the Sherpas pleaded with him to return with them to the monastery, but he refused. Whether he still believed that he could climb the mountain, or whether he continued merely because he was now resigned to his fate and preferred death to the humiliation of an unsuccessful return to Britain, has been hotly debated. Writing in his diary "this will be a last effort, and I feel successful" he set out for the last time on 29 May, alone. Too weak to attempt the Col that day, he camped at its base, a few hundred yards from where the Sherpas were camped. The next day he stayed in bed. His last diary entry was dated 31 May, and read simply "Off again, gorgeous day [sic]".
  When he did not return from his last attempt, Tewand and Rinzing left the mountain. They reached Kalimpong in late July, giving the world the first news of Wilson's death.
caption: The North Face of Mount Everest, seen from the Rongbuk Monastery
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