March 10, 2014 • 29 mins
Once a British survey effort identified Peak XV of the Himalayan range as the highest point on Earth, a committee was formed with one goal: Get to the top. Early expeditions gathered data and made runs up the mountain, until WWII put a halt to things. Here are the show notes for the episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And uh, it
was not all that long ago that mankind was not
entirely certain of how high it could go without a vehicle. Uh.
(00:25):
And this is actually much more recent history than people
may realize. It certainly is more recent than I realized.
If you had asked me prior to researching this topic,
I would have guessed that the Summit of Everest had
actually been reached in the late nineteenth century. It does
seem kind of like a late nineteenth century story. Well,
and that's where the seeds are sown. Yeah, sure, but no.
(00:48):
So today we're actually talking about however, became this ultimate
climbing challenge and how it was first conquered by a
beekeeper and a Nepalese guide. So we're first going to
start off by covering the geography pretty quickly. And I
should also say this is going to be a two
parter because they were took a lot of time and effort. Yes,
this is an example often when we have two parters,
(01:09):
it's something that we didn't intend to have a two
part episode when we started, but the farther we got
into it, the more we realized we needed more time
than we had. Yeah, there's just and even so I
feel like, you know, a lot is edited out of this,
Like certainly you could expand probably any one of the
expeditions and make it its own episode, because there are
(01:30):
these really detailed and intense write ups of each expedition
and all of the various things that happened. But this
time we're going to mostly be covering the time from
when it was recognized by the British, because certainly people
that lived near it had known about it much longer
than that, and how it became an important goal for
many people, and then we'll kind of get to early efforts,
(01:52):
and then the second episode we'll do post World War
two through to the Magic Moment and even a little
bit after that. So heads up, that's where we're going.
So first, we're going to cover a little bit of
the geography of the area. Mount Everest is part of
the Himalayan Range, which separates the Tibetan Plateau from the
Indian plains to the south, and the Himalayan Wall is
(02:13):
approximately two thousand miles or kilometers long and about three
hundred miles or four hundred eighty kilometers wide, so in
terms of like one side of the range to the
other side of the range, rather than the length that
it runs. Everest sits right on the border between Tibet
and Nepal, just east of Katmandu, and the Mountain range
(02:34):
was formed by the shifting of the Indian tectonic plate
pushing against the Asian plate, and that process, by the way,
is ongoing, so the Himalayans get a little bit taller
every year. Still, the summit of Everest is recognized as
the highest point on Earth. It's just a little bit
higher than twenty nine thousand feet or eight thousand, eight
hundred meters, and it's going up incrementally each year, tiny bits, yes,
(02:59):
no ters at a time. The climate is anything but hospitable.
Temperatures can drop to negative eighty degrees fahrenheit, which is
minus sixty two celsius at the summit. The air has
less than a third the amount of oxygen that it
contains at sea level, and because of the extremes of
the climate, it can take more than a month to
(03:20):
climb mountain, and a lot of that is so the
body has time to adjust to this altitude. High altitude
cerebral edema, which is fluid accumulating in the brain, is
a serious risk and it can not only make climbers
feel weak and lethargic, it can also cause confusion and
lack of coordination, and climbers have been known to start
talking gibberish and exhibit really poor judgment. And I actually
(03:43):
have a personal anecdotal thing about altitude sickness that I
discovered after I was reading on the notes for this
which is my dad's career military, his career Air Force,
And when I was telling him about this podcast and
that I was working on it, he started telling you
about this crazy altitude sickness test that they would do
when he was in the Air Force, where they would
(04:04):
take everybody up really really high on a plane and
you kind of had a buddy with you, and half
of the guys had to take off their oxygen masks
and then they were given a quick, simple four question
tests and they had to answer it as quickly as
they could, and if they started getting wonky, it was
their buddies job to put the oxygen back on them
(04:24):
because they were getting altitude sickness, and he was describing
to me what it was like to kind of have
that inkling of I know something's not right here. He said,
You know, you'd write the first two questions fine, and
then the third one your pen would trail off the page,
but you'd think you were still doing it, except you
would get a flash of I'm not doing it. Oh no,
I'm doing it. Uh. And it was just sort of
(04:45):
a fascinating insight into how like your brain is tricking
you as you go to think you're okay, you're okay.
No you're not okay. No, I'm okay, No you're not.
I can imagine how frightening that is when you are
feet near well. And I think altitude sickness kind of
gets a lot of the press as far as the
health effects of trying to climb this mountain. Yeah, there
(05:06):
are so many others, like, oh, yeah, the air is
so dry that people will cough until they break their
own ribs from coughing. Yeah. I was watching a documentary
while work in this and one guy was talking about
how his the air was so dry and cold that
even in his boots, the skin on his toes started
to crack open and expose the bone underneath. There were
(05:26):
other very gross things won't go into. You can go
to the Mommification podcast for gross. But yeah, I mean
the body is just really put through its paces when
you're getting up at these altitudes. Um Just reaching base
camp on the Nepalese side of the mountain can take
about ten days and then normally climbers will make a
(05:47):
series of stepped climbs, like they'll go up a bit
and then they retreated a little bit, and uh, that
will repeat kind of as part of this altitude um
acclamation and they keep doing that and before there's like
the big push moved of the summit. Yeah, it didn't
get its famous name until eighteen fifties six, when it
was named after Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of British
(06:09):
India from eighteen thirty to eighteen forty three, who, by
the way, never actually saw Everest the mountain. The people
living around it, of course, had known about it for
a long time before the British put this moniker to
it and considered it holy. So the people living on
the Tibetan side of the mountain it was Chomo Langma,
which means Goddess mother, and then the Nepalese people to
(06:31):
the south of it called it Sagarmata. Prior to being
named Everest, British called it Peak fifteen. And I think
this to me is why I this this feels like
a late nineteenth century story to me, because it has
this whole thread of British colonialism going through it in India.
(06:51):
Uh especially Yeah, I mean, as I said, its roots
are definitely there, and it really sort of loue in
British consciousness in terms of the um the surveyors that
we're doing this for quite some time. Uh. And it
really was that sort of empire mentality that kind of
(07:12):
I think fostered the It planted the seed and fostered
the initial ideas of we're gonna go after that thing. Uh.
Even the Shrpa people who lived at the base of
the mountain had never tried to climb it prior to
the British fascination with it. But once Everest had been
identified and named, its Alayre became completely irresistible to explorers.
(07:34):
As mountaineering, which was still in its infancy in the
late nineteenth century, grew in popularity among thrill seekers and
people who sort of had this desire to see what
they could do and what they could conquer. In thirteen,
Captain John Neal, who was building on the work of
previous explorers who had been trying to unlock the secrets
of this mountain, got closer to it than any outsider had,
(07:56):
allegedly coming within forty miles of it. There were a
number of political issues going on at the time. A
revolution had just ended China's Qing dynasty and Tibet was
making a move for independence, while Russia and Britain were
engaged in what was called the Great Game as they
made strategic moves for power in Central Asia. All of
(08:17):
these complex relationships among nations made it difficult for British
expeditions to get close to Everest, and Noel was allegedly
shot at by a Tibetan guard. After a survey and
expedition report was given to the Royal Geographical Society in
London in March of nineteen nineteen by Captain John Noel.
World War One had actually delayed the presentation until then,
(08:37):
so there were several years gap between when he actually
went on this expedition and when he was able to
really meet with them and discuss it. In detail, and
in this report he detailed the size and the scope
of the mountain as well as the cultural and political
landscape immediately surrounding it. And as a consequence of all
of this information, the Mount Everest Committee was founded. And
(08:58):
this committee, which was undon and staffed as a cooperative
effort primarily between the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society,
which were both British organizations, was focused solely on ascending Everest.
Like even though it had been talked about kind of
in adventurer circles and in the Geographical Society, this was
like the first time that they really there was pen
(09:20):
to paper, there was a plan, there was a committee founded,
We're going to Everest. In nineteen twenty, the m EC
negotiated with His Holiness the thirteenth Diali Lama, who gave
special permission to the committee so climbers could access the
north side of the mountain via Tibet. And throughout the
early history of Everest assent attempts that m EC was
(09:42):
frequently in talks with Tibet to try to get permission
for each of their climbs and expeditions to climb the
mountain began almost immediately after they got this permission. So
when the Mount Everest Committee launched their ambitious campaign, the
highest the human had ever climbed was twenty four thousand
feet just uh seven thousand, three fifteen meters in the
(10:03):
Karacorum Range, which sits at the border of China and Pakistan.
No one actually knew if anyone could survive the conditions
beyond that height, so they kind of knew they were
throwing people into they didn't kind of know. They knew
they were just throwing people into a potential death situation.
So before we get to really the big expeditions, do
(10:24):
you want to take a moment and to have a
word from our sponsor? Sure, alright, alright, So getting back
to Everest, we're going to start with the first official
British mission and this is and this first expedition was
really reconnaissance only. Uh. The effort was led by Brigadier
General Charles Granville Bruce, who was a man who had
(10:46):
actually first discussed this idea of climbing Everest several decades
earlier at the Royal Geographic Society. Bruce, who went by
the nickname Bruiser, was a veteran climber and he was
a fluent Apoli speaker. So the team mapped a coach,
reached to the mountain and climbed it to about twenty
three thousand feet which is about seven thousand meters, but
that they had no intention of trying to get to
(11:09):
the summit at this point. Yeah, I mean they really were.
As much as there was this um desire and you know,
passion to get to the summit, they were going about
it in a pretty methodical way. They were trying to
be very careful and gather as much information as they could.
So uh. In ninety two. The next year, an expedition
that was led by George Ingle Finch made the first
(11:30):
real go at Everest and George Finch had been born
in Australia but raised in Switzerland, and he had attended
Geneva University while studying the physical sciences. Thanks to his
chemistry knowledge, Finch was actually a pioneer in developing the
oxygen that was used not only on his climb, but
on many many expeditions after it. Major General John Jeffrey Bruce,
(11:53):
who was cousin to Charles Grahamville Bruce accompanied Finch, although
he wasn't a mountaineer and had never made a climb before,
and this trek, as well as many after its, traveled
along the Tibetan Plateau and followed the East Wrongbuck Glacier,
attempting to ascend Everest from what's called the North Cole.
Despite Jeffrey Bruce's lack of experience, this team set a
(12:14):
record by ascending to twenty seven thousand, three hundred feet,
which is about eight thousand three although they did not
get to the summit. After they returned to London, uh
Finch actually had a falling out with the Mount Everest
Committee and he never climbed in the Himalayas again. He
did remain involved with mountaineering, though, and he eventually became
president of the Alpine Club, which is one of the
(12:36):
groups that originally formed the MBC. The nineteen twenty four
Mallory and Irvine expedition is famous, in large part because
of the tragedy associated with it. Two lives were lost
in this quest for the summit. George Herbert Lee Mallory,
who was thirty eight at the time, was an extremely
accomplished climber. He had been on the previous Mount Everest
(12:59):
Committee expedition, and he was considered the most skilled climber
of their group. On the other hand, Andrew Comban Irvine,
who went by Sandy, wasn't terribly experienced as a mountaineer,
and he was also very young. He was only twenty one.
He was really fit and agile, however, and he was
originally chosen for the mission to assist the oxygen officer
(13:20):
Noel O'Dell. And O'Dell served as geologist as well as
oxygen officer on the expedition, and he was actually the
last to see Mallory and Irvine alive. Despite Irvine's lack
of experience, due to his physical fitness, he was chosen
by Mallory it's a partner with him on this final
upward surge. Irvine's other skill that made him the perfect
(13:40):
partner was his knowledge and dexterity with the oxygen tanks
that are used on the mountain. Yeah, we'd think of
oxygen tanks now, I think is being this thing that
gets shipped to you and it's main in factory and
they're they're well made, and they really were very fiddly,
particularly at this point. They would have problems with the lines.
They would you know, need to have things replaced on
the go well, and even modern tanks, they don't make
(14:03):
it equivalent to being anywhere near sea level. It's like
barely taking the edge off of the whole oxygen deprivation situations. Yeah,
and they had to be extremely careful with their use
of it because they had limited amounts that they could
carry with them and limited time in which they could
(14:25):
just physically make it up and down the mountain, and
they had to kind of meet out their oxygen usage
to try to perfectly align with what they were going
to need as they went. Uh. And it's worth noting
that on previous expeditions Mallory had been against the use
of oxygen. He wanted to summit without aid, but he
really began to change his mind this time around. Irvine,
(14:46):
who as we said, was expert at dealing with the
notoriously problematic and heavy tanks, had also found a way
to revise them to make them five pounds lighter. I
think I read a thing and I didn't put it
in these notes that that was basically a change of
they had been their five pounds and it brought them
down a thirty. So it wasn't like they were, you know,
light and breezy to carry that's still a lot of
weight when you're exhausted and can't breathe very well. Yeah.
(15:11):
So already two pushes to the summit without oxygen tanks
by the expedition had failed, reaching only twenty eight thousand ft.
So they tried this third attempt aid aided with oxygen
uh and in the early afternoon on June eight, Noel O'Dell,
who was trailing the two men in a support position,
(15:33):
saw the pair near the base of the summit pyramid,
and this is the last time that they were seen alive.
A snowstorm blew in and Odell fell back to the
north coal and kept watch for movement from above, and
after two days with no sign of Mallory or Irvine,
he climbed up to the tent they had left to
make their summit charge, but they weren't there, and there
(15:55):
were no signs that they had ever made it back
to the camp. O'Dell thought they had been sure to
summit when he saw them last, as they were going
very strong when he spotted them, although we do not
know to this day for certain if they ever did
reach the top of the mountain. The other thing that
most people remember about this expedition is a famous quote
from Mallory. While touring the United States on a fundraising
(16:17):
tour for the trip. In three a New York Times
journalist asked him why he wanted to climb ever Everest,
and his response was because it's there. And that's usually
all you hear. I mean, that's famously quoted. Well, and
when you said, you were doing these notes about how
horrible it is to try to do it, and you're like,
why do people do this? And I said, because it's there.
(16:37):
Because that's one of the sort of sound bites that
we've heard through the years. Uh. And the quote has
been criticized as everything from being callous, ecocentric, flippant, and
even as evidence of this mindset of ongoing British imperialism.
It's pretty much impossible to talk about this whole thing
without acknowledging how routed it is in British imperiods. Yeah. Uh, However,
(17:03):
there was actually more to this response. That isn't the
only thing he said. It wasn't like he dropped the
mic and walked out. It does sound like a mic
drop kind of quote. Mallory went on to say Everest
is the highest mountain in the world, and no man
has reached its summit, its existence as a challenge. The
answer is instinctive apart I suppose of man's desire to
(17:24):
conquer the universe. So still a little eccentric, but also
you could see the route that it's he's kind of
acknowledging that there's this psychological drive that we have when
you can also make the same kind of arguments for
exploring things like space and the ocean. Exactly. I keep
in mind at this point that both of the poles
(17:44):
had already been reached and virtually every corner of the
world had been explored, so to explorer adventurers who you know,
we're definitely a type of person that was very much
in the public eye at this point. Everest was really
the last unturned stone on the globe. Yeah, they forgot
the ocean. I know, That's how I keept thinking, like,
(18:06):
but what about below? But they weren't as excited about
the water. I guess I am really excited about the ocean.
I wish they would be a big ocean exploration. Well,
there's lots of them. Perhaps we'll talk about them in
the future. In nineteen seventy five, a Chinese climber found
a body at twenty seven thousand feet which is eight thousand,
two hundred thirty which may have been Irvine. And then
(18:27):
an expedition in May of nineteen ninety nine found Mallory's
frozen corpse on the mountain at twenty six thousand, seven
hundred sixty feet, which is eight thousand, one one hundred
fifty seven. So at this point they've been on the
mountain for seventy five years, and there have been recent
expeditions in twenty eleven to search for Irvine. Those have
(18:49):
not been successful. Yeah, they want to confirm whether or
not that Chinese climber actually found the body of Irvine. Uh.
And there's also a camera that the pair took with
them that was borrowed from another member of their team
that still sits somewhere on Everest Uh. If it were
to be found, it could be the piece of evidence
that people need to determine whether or not they ever
(19:11):
reached the summit. Yeah, and there's been a lot of
theorizing about whether they did or didn't based on where
their body were, like where Mallory's body was found. Yeah. Um,
you know, Mallory's body was definitely injured, although found so
late that any number of things could have transpired in
the the various years, so it's still a bit of
(19:31):
a mystery, and one that if you look at any
like Everest message boards or discussion groups or anything, is
still hotly debated, which is kind of love. Um, before
we get to the next expedition, we're gonna take a
quick break and hear from a word about our sponsor.
So let's return to our subject at hand. So in
ninety three, expedition headed by Hugh Rettledge was unsuccessful at
(19:55):
reaching the summit. Retledge, and he was in his late forties,
was kind of an an usual choice for the team leader.
He wouldn't really be able to make any summit pushes
and he walked with a limp from an old injury.
To summit attempts were made during this expedition uh and
reached a height of twenty twenty feet or eight thousand,
(20:16):
five hundred sixty fives and a third go at the
summit was actually abandoned pretty early on. They realized that
conditions were not going to be successful, so that pretty
much wrapped up the whole trip. Another year later, in
ninety four, an expedition that was not mounted by the
MBC was undertaken by Maurice Wilson. Wilson pretty foolishly tried
(20:39):
to summit Everest alone, despite having no experience in glacier climbing,
and you can imagine how that ended. He died on
the mountain. Yeah. The night before Wilson left for this
Everest adventure, a British paper called his plan quote an
elaborate suicide, which turned out to be all too true.
It apparently also really irritated him and he was something
(21:01):
of like a I don't even know if daredevil is
the right word, but he would get a wild hair
and do things he had never done before, like I'm
a fly play across I think the Alps, Like I know,
he he had never piloted. He just jumped in. I
need to fact check all of this, but I mean,
reading about him, he just did lots of crazy stuff
like that. It does seem a little like he had
a death wish. I don't understand it. I'm like, why
(21:25):
when there's a cozy home well, and I think that
I've seen like the big Imax movie about Everest, which
is about that summer a few years ago when so
many people died um and at the beginning of it,
I was like, maybe I could go home Everest one day,
and within about I know, six six minutes, I was like,
(21:46):
this is never a thing I will forever do. Yeah,
I'm in the same boat. I think it's beautiful when
I understand the allure. But no, No. In ninety five,
Eric Earl Shipton let an other expedition, and he had
been on many Everest climbs already, and he was on
one of the summit pushes during the nineteen thirty three
(22:07):
Rutledge expedition. In nineteen thirty five, this was another reconnaissance
mission that was meant to gather information to prepare for
a summit attempt the next year, and according to his
write up, he had several specific goals. Yeah, the expedition
was aiming to collect information about monsoon and snow conditions.
They wanted to look at possible alternate routes to the summit.
(22:30):
They wanted to report on ice formations on the North
Coal so proper equipment choices could be made. They were
going to try out new mission personnel. They were going
to experiment with food and equipment provisions to make sure
they were carrying exactly the right amount, not overweighing themselves,
not being under prepared, and they were going to perform
stereo photogramic survey of the surrounding area of Everest so
(22:51):
that they could expand on the survey work that was
done by the first reconnaissance mission in ninety one. So
at this point they had had several missions and they
hadn't made it, so they kind of were like, let's regroup,
do some more recon and put together another report. This
expedition is noteworthy for the presence of one of the porters,
tens Ignore Gay, and while the five trip was his
(23:12):
first Everest climb, he would become a hugely important figure
in Everest history. And this expedition also found Maurice Wilson's
body and diary, so the gentleman who went at this
alone was discovered by these people. In nineteen thirty six,
Rutledge led a bid for the summit a second time.
While he had already led one team, the Mount Everest
(23:34):
Committee appointing him as leader was a little bit controversial.
During his earlier expedition, his leadership had been questioned and
many felt that someone both physically stronger and more assertive
would be a better choice. Although he seemed to be
universally liked. Yeah, everybody seemed to like him. They just
thought he really wasn't the ideal man to lead a
team going up a mountain that was extremely physically demanding,
(23:56):
needed really strong leadership. It's like, he's a nice guy,
but he's not for this. Uh. And this is also
interesting because it's the first time that radio sets were
included as part of the equipment. So prior to that
there had been no radio communications done during any of
the expeditions. This expedition, which once again included sharp Atten signor,
had to be terminated early because of an early monsoon,
(24:18):
and they didn't make any summit pushes. A nineteen thirty
eight attempt was headed up by Harold William Tillman, who
had also been on the nineteen thirty five reconnaissance expedition,
and despite having had a lot of difficulty with acclimatizing
during that nineteen five trip, Tillman was able to climb
up to twenty seven thousand feet or eight thousand, two
hundred thirty meters, taking a route along in Northwest Ridge
(24:40):
without the aid of oxygen. As with the nineteen thirty
six expedition. This mission was cut short due to bad
weather conditions. Noel O'Dell, the geologist who had made the
last exchange with Mallory and Irvine, was also on this expedition,
and then, uh, world affairs kind of got in the
way of this exploration. World War two really put a
(25:03):
stop to the expeditions, in part because the political landscape
made permissions to enter the areas you would need to
access the mountain almost impossible to obtain, and also because
British resources were obviously focused elsewhere. So that's where we're
gonna pause. Yeah, we'll come back in part two to
talk about what happened after the war was over. Yeah,
because we haven't gotten to the summit. We really haven't,
(25:24):
in spite of many years trying reconnaissance missions the whole nine.
It's uh so fascinating to me to think of this
ongoing effort of just throwing people at it over and
over trying to get this one thing. And you have
to wonder, like, at some point, I'm sure they were
discussing it, like what did this mean to them? And
why were they so intent on it? But yeah, I
(25:47):
think that answer is probably different for a lot of
people even today that do it. But do you also
have some listener mail I do. Indeed, this one is
from Ellen and she says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
was pleasantly surprised when I saw your podcast on Crown
Print Sado. I was a bit of of a history
junkie during my childhood in Korea. Sato's tragic fate is
such a popular story in Korea, and it has been
(26:07):
constantly retold with creative license in Korean literature and even
TV series. I thought it might be interesting to hear
your perspective, especially as someone who had not had exposure
to this story before. I thought I knew the story
pretty well, but your podcast was full of surprises. I
may be over generalizing here a bit, but Prince Sotto
is often portrayed in Korea as a victim of political
(26:28):
power play, and some historians even go so far as
to say that Lady Hong was involved in conspiring against
the Prince. But all of the details that you've included
in the podcast really seemed to make the case that
Soto was a deeply troubled serial killer. It prompted me
to do a little bit more research, and the main
supporting evidence for this conspiracy theory seems to be the
obituary was written by Jong Joe, Sato's biological son. Here,
(26:51):
Jong Joe portrays Sato as a bright prince who rolled
out good policies and emphasizes that political factions at the
time drove a wedge between Sto and his father, Young Joe.
Prince Sotto was also posthumously given the title of King
Jong Joe in. I just wonder why they would honor
him like that given all the terrible things he's done.
I'm still a bit unsure of how to make sense
(27:13):
out of all of these theories. But thank you for
re sparking my interest in history. I had a good
time looking up and evaluating various theories and ideas surrounding
Prince Sotto. I hope you do more similar podcasts like
this one. Uh. Yeah, it's an interesting story and some
of that came up in my research, where he has
been sort of framed in different ways throughout history, but
as sort of the evidence has come to pass, and
(27:35):
as I said, his widows biography was hugely important in
kind of revealing what was really going on, which I
don't even think is entirely at odds with the way
she's describing him as being portrayed a lot um. I
don't think he was inherently intentionally a bad person. I
think he was just mentally ill, and it was two
(27:57):
sides of his psyche that we're fighting against each other
at all times. It is. It's also just fascinating and
I love hearing about Asian history, and so it was
nice to get the perspective from someone that grew up
in Korea and spent time with the story from uh,
the childhood perspective on up, which is really cool. So
thank you, Ellen, because that was awesome. UH. If you
(28:20):
would like to write to us, you should do so.
You can do that at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
You can also connect with us at Facebook dot com,
slash missed in history, on Twitter at misst in history
at misston history dot tumbler dot com, and on pinterest
dot com slash missed in History. If you would like
to learn more about what we've talked about today, you
(28:41):
can go to our website and enter the word Everest
in the search bar, and one of the things that
will come up is are their dead bodies on Mount Everest?
The short answer is yes, yes, so many talked about
a couple of them, but there are many, many more,
and a lot of other stuff too. Oh yes, we're
gonna talk about that in episode two. Uh so, we
hope to see you back here in the meantime. If
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(29:03):
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(29:24):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And uh, it
was not all that long ago that mankind was not
entirely certain of how high it could go without a vehicle. Uh.
(00:25):
And this is actually much more recent history than people
may realize. It certainly is more recent than I realized.
If you had asked me prior to researching this topic,
I would have guessed that the Summit of Everest had
actually been reached in the late nineteenth century. It does
seem kind of like a late nineteenth century story. Well,
and that's where the seeds are sown. Yeah, sure, but no.
(00:48):
So today we're actually talking about however, became this ultimate
climbing challenge and how it was first conquered by a
beekeeper and a Nepalese guide. So we're first going to
start off by covering the geography pretty quickly. And I
should also say this is going to be a two
parter because they were took a lot of time and effort. Yes,
this is an example often when we have two parters,
(01:09):
it's something that we didn't intend to have a two
part episode when we started, but the farther we got
into it, the more we realized we needed more time
than we had. Yeah, there's just and even so I
feel like, you know, a lot is edited out of this,
Like certainly you could expand probably any one of the
expeditions and make it its own episode, because there are
(01:30):
these really detailed and intense write ups of each expedition
and all of the various things that happened. But this
time we're going to mostly be covering the time from
when it was recognized by the British, because certainly people
that lived near it had known about it much longer
than that, and how it became an important goal for
many people, and then we'll kind of get to early efforts,
(01:52):
and then the second episode we'll do post World War
two through to the Magic Moment and even a little
bit after that. So heads up, that's where we're going.
So first, we're going to cover a little bit of
the geography of the area. Mount Everest is part of
the Himalayan Range, which separates the Tibetan Plateau from the
Indian plains to the south, and the Himalayan Wall is
(02:13):
approximately two thousand miles or kilometers long and about three
hundred miles or four hundred eighty kilometers wide, so in
terms of like one side of the range to the
other side of the range, rather than the length that
it runs. Everest sits right on the border between Tibet
and Nepal, just east of Katmandu, and the Mountain range
(02:34):
was formed by the shifting of the Indian tectonic plate
pushing against the Asian plate, and that process, by the way,
is ongoing, so the Himalayans get a little bit taller
every year. Still, the summit of Everest is recognized as
the highest point on Earth. It's just a little bit
higher than twenty nine thousand feet or eight thousand, eight
hundred meters, and it's going up incrementally each year, tiny bits, yes,
(02:59):
no ters at a time. The climate is anything but hospitable.
Temperatures can drop to negative eighty degrees fahrenheit, which is
minus sixty two celsius at the summit. The air has
less than a third the amount of oxygen that it
contains at sea level, and because of the extremes of
the climate, it can take more than a month to
(03:20):
climb mountain, and a lot of that is so the
body has time to adjust to this altitude. High altitude
cerebral edema, which is fluid accumulating in the brain, is
a serious risk and it can not only make climbers
feel weak and lethargic, it can also cause confusion and
lack of coordination, and climbers have been known to start
talking gibberish and exhibit really poor judgment. And I actually
(03:43):
have a personal anecdotal thing about altitude sickness that I
discovered after I was reading on the notes for this
which is my dad's career military, his career Air Force,
And when I was telling him about this podcast and
that I was working on it, he started telling you
about this crazy altitude sickness test that they would do
when he was in the Air Force, where they would
(04:04):
take everybody up really really high on a plane and
you kind of had a buddy with you, and half
of the guys had to take off their oxygen masks
and then they were given a quick, simple four question
tests and they had to answer it as quickly as
they could, and if they started getting wonky, it was
their buddies job to put the oxygen back on them
(04:24):
because they were getting altitude sickness, and he was describing
to me what it was like to kind of have
that inkling of I know something's not right here. He said,
You know, you'd write the first two questions fine, and
then the third one your pen would trail off the page,
but you'd think you were still doing it, except you
would get a flash of I'm not doing it. Oh no,
I'm doing it. Uh. And it was just sort of
(04:45):
a fascinating insight into how like your brain is tricking
you as you go to think you're okay, you're okay.
No you're not okay. No, I'm okay, No you're not.
I can imagine how frightening that is when you are
feet near well. And I think altitude sickness kind of
gets a lot of the press as far as the
health effects of trying to climb this mountain. Yeah, there
(05:06):
are so many others, like, oh, yeah, the air is
so dry that people will cough until they break their
own ribs from coughing. Yeah. I was watching a documentary
while work in this and one guy was talking about
how his the air was so dry and cold that
even in his boots, the skin on his toes started
to crack open and expose the bone underneath. There were
(05:26):
other very gross things won't go into. You can go
to the Mommification podcast for gross. But yeah, I mean
the body is just really put through its paces when
you're getting up at these altitudes. Um Just reaching base
camp on the Nepalese side of the mountain can take
about ten days and then normally climbers will make a
(05:47):
series of stepped climbs, like they'll go up a bit
and then they retreated a little bit, and uh, that
will repeat kind of as part of this altitude um
acclamation and they keep doing that and before there's like
the big push moved of the summit. Yeah, it didn't
get its famous name until eighteen fifties six, when it
was named after Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of British
(06:09):
India from eighteen thirty to eighteen forty three, who, by
the way, never actually saw Everest the mountain. The people
living around it, of course, had known about it for
a long time before the British put this moniker to
it and considered it holy. So the people living on
the Tibetan side of the mountain it was Chomo Langma,
which means Goddess mother, and then the Nepalese people to
(06:31):
the south of it called it Sagarmata. Prior to being
named Everest, British called it Peak fifteen. And I think
this to me is why I this this feels like
a late nineteenth century story to me, because it has
this whole thread of British colonialism going through it in India.
(06:51):
Uh especially Yeah, I mean, as I said, its roots
are definitely there, and it really sort of loue in
British consciousness in terms of the um the surveyors that
we're doing this for quite some time. Uh. And it
really was that sort of empire mentality that kind of
(07:12):
I think fostered the It planted the seed and fostered
the initial ideas of we're gonna go after that thing. Uh.
Even the Shrpa people who lived at the base of
the mountain had never tried to climb it prior to
the British fascination with it. But once Everest had been
identified and named, its Alayre became completely irresistible to explorers.
(07:34):
As mountaineering, which was still in its infancy in the
late nineteenth century, grew in popularity among thrill seekers and
people who sort of had this desire to see what
they could do and what they could conquer. In thirteen,
Captain John Neal, who was building on the work of
previous explorers who had been trying to unlock the secrets
of this mountain, got closer to it than any outsider had,
(07:56):
allegedly coming within forty miles of it. There were a
number of political issues going on at the time. A
revolution had just ended China's Qing dynasty and Tibet was
making a move for independence, while Russia and Britain were
engaged in what was called the Great Game as they
made strategic moves for power in Central Asia. All of
(08:17):
these complex relationships among nations made it difficult for British
expeditions to get close to Everest, and Noel was allegedly
shot at by a Tibetan guard. After a survey and
expedition report was given to the Royal Geographical Society in
London in March of nineteen nineteen by Captain John Noel.
World War One had actually delayed the presentation until then,
(08:37):
so there were several years gap between when he actually
went on this expedition and when he was able to
really meet with them and discuss it. In detail, and
in this report he detailed the size and the scope
of the mountain as well as the cultural and political
landscape immediately surrounding it. And as a consequence of all
of this information, the Mount Everest Committee was founded. And
(08:58):
this committee, which was undon and staffed as a cooperative
effort primarily between the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society,
which were both British organizations, was focused solely on ascending Everest.
Like even though it had been talked about kind of
in adventurer circles and in the Geographical Society, this was
like the first time that they really there was pen
(09:20):
to paper, there was a plan, there was a committee founded,
We're going to Everest. In nineteen twenty, the m EC
negotiated with His Holiness the thirteenth Diali Lama, who gave
special permission to the committee so climbers could access the
north side of the mountain via Tibet. And throughout the
early history of Everest assent attempts that m EC was
(09:42):
frequently in talks with Tibet to try to get permission
for each of their climbs and expeditions to climb the
mountain began almost immediately after they got this permission. So
when the Mount Everest Committee launched their ambitious campaign, the
highest the human had ever climbed was twenty four thousand
feet just uh seven thousand, three fifteen meters in the
(10:03):
Karacorum Range, which sits at the border of China and Pakistan.
No one actually knew if anyone could survive the conditions
beyond that height, so they kind of knew they were
throwing people into they didn't kind of know. They knew
they were just throwing people into a potential death situation.
So before we get to really the big expeditions, do
(10:24):
you want to take a moment and to have a
word from our sponsor? Sure, alright, alright, So getting back
to Everest, we're going to start with the first official
British mission and this is and this first expedition was
really reconnaissance only. Uh. The effort was led by Brigadier
General Charles Granville Bruce, who was a man who had
(10:46):
actually first discussed this idea of climbing Everest several decades
earlier at the Royal Geographic Society. Bruce, who went by
the nickname Bruiser, was a veteran climber and he was
a fluent Apoli speaker. So the team mapped a coach,
reached to the mountain and climbed it to about twenty
three thousand feet which is about seven thousand meters, but
that they had no intention of trying to get to
(11:09):
the summit at this point. Yeah, I mean they really were.
As much as there was this um desire and you know,
passion to get to the summit, they were going about
it in a pretty methodical way. They were trying to
be very careful and gather as much information as they could.
So uh. In ninety two. The next year, an expedition
that was led by George Ingle Finch made the first
(11:30):
real go at Everest and George Finch had been born
in Australia but raised in Switzerland, and he had attended
Geneva University while studying the physical sciences. Thanks to his
chemistry knowledge, Finch was actually a pioneer in developing the
oxygen that was used not only on his climb, but
on many many expeditions after it. Major General John Jeffrey Bruce,
(11:53):
who was cousin to Charles Grahamville Bruce accompanied Finch, although
he wasn't a mountaineer and had never made a climb before,
and this trek, as well as many after its, traveled
along the Tibetan Plateau and followed the East Wrongbuck Glacier,
attempting to ascend Everest from what's called the North Cole.
Despite Jeffrey Bruce's lack of experience, this team set a
(12:14):
record by ascending to twenty seven thousand, three hundred feet,
which is about eight thousand three although they did not
get to the summit. After they returned to London, uh
Finch actually had a falling out with the Mount Everest
Committee and he never climbed in the Himalayas again. He
did remain involved with mountaineering, though, and he eventually became
president of the Alpine Club, which is one of the
(12:36):
groups that originally formed the MBC. The nineteen twenty four
Mallory and Irvine expedition is famous, in large part because
of the tragedy associated with it. Two lives were lost
in this quest for the summit. George Herbert Lee Mallory,
who was thirty eight at the time, was an extremely
accomplished climber. He had been on the previous Mount Everest
(12:59):
Committee expedition, and he was considered the most skilled climber
of their group. On the other hand, Andrew Comban Irvine,
who went by Sandy, wasn't terribly experienced as a mountaineer,
and he was also very young. He was only twenty one.
He was really fit and agile, however, and he was
originally chosen for the mission to assist the oxygen officer
(13:20):
Noel O'Dell. And O'Dell served as geologist as well as
oxygen officer on the expedition, and he was actually the
last to see Mallory and Irvine alive. Despite Irvine's lack
of experience, due to his physical fitness, he was chosen
by Mallory it's a partner with him on this final
upward surge. Irvine's other skill that made him the perfect
(13:40):
partner was his knowledge and dexterity with the oxygen tanks
that are used on the mountain. Yeah, we'd think of
oxygen tanks now, I think is being this thing that
gets shipped to you and it's main in factory and
they're they're well made, and they really were very fiddly,
particularly at this point. They would have problems with the lines.
They would you know, need to have things replaced on
the go well, and even modern tanks, they don't make
(14:03):
it equivalent to being anywhere near sea level. It's like
barely taking the edge off of the whole oxygen deprivation situations. Yeah,
and they had to be extremely careful with their use
of it because they had limited amounts that they could
carry with them and limited time in which they could
(14:25):
just physically make it up and down the mountain, and
they had to kind of meet out their oxygen usage
to try to perfectly align with what they were going
to need as they went. Uh. And it's worth noting
that on previous expeditions Mallory had been against the use
of oxygen. He wanted to summit without aid, but he
really began to change his mind this time around. Irvine,
(14:46):
who as we said, was expert at dealing with the
notoriously problematic and heavy tanks, had also found a way
to revise them to make them five pounds lighter. I
think I read a thing and I didn't put it
in these notes that that was basically a change of
they had been their five pounds and it brought them
down a thirty. So it wasn't like they were, you know,
light and breezy to carry that's still a lot of
weight when you're exhausted and can't breathe very well. Yeah.
(15:11):
So already two pushes to the summit without oxygen tanks
by the expedition had failed, reaching only twenty eight thousand ft.
So they tried this third attempt aid aided with oxygen
uh and in the early afternoon on June eight, Noel O'Dell,
who was trailing the two men in a support position,
(15:33):
saw the pair near the base of the summit pyramid,
and this is the last time that they were seen alive.
A snowstorm blew in and Odell fell back to the
north coal and kept watch for movement from above, and
after two days with no sign of Mallory or Irvine,
he climbed up to the tent they had left to
make their summit charge, but they weren't there, and there
(15:55):
were no signs that they had ever made it back
to the camp. O'Dell thought they had been sure to
summit when he saw them last, as they were going
very strong when he spotted them, although we do not
know to this day for certain if they ever did
reach the top of the mountain. The other thing that
most people remember about this expedition is a famous quote
from Mallory. While touring the United States on a fundraising
(16:17):
tour for the trip. In three a New York Times
journalist asked him why he wanted to climb ever Everest,
and his response was because it's there. And that's usually
all you hear. I mean, that's famously quoted. Well, and
when you said, you were doing these notes about how
horrible it is to try to do it, and you're like,
why do people do this? And I said, because it's there.
(16:37):
Because that's one of the sort of sound bites that
we've heard through the years. Uh. And the quote has
been criticized as everything from being callous, ecocentric, flippant, and
even as evidence of this mindset of ongoing British imperialism.
It's pretty much impossible to talk about this whole thing
without acknowledging how routed it is in British imperiods. Yeah. Uh, However,
(17:03):
there was actually more to this response. That isn't the
only thing he said. It wasn't like he dropped the
mic and walked out. It does sound like a mic
drop kind of quote. Mallory went on to say Everest
is the highest mountain in the world, and no man
has reached its summit, its existence as a challenge. The
answer is instinctive apart I suppose of man's desire to
(17:24):
conquer the universe. So still a little eccentric, but also
you could see the route that it's he's kind of
acknowledging that there's this psychological drive that we have when
you can also make the same kind of arguments for
exploring things like space and the ocean. Exactly. I keep
in mind at this point that both of the poles
(17:44):
had already been reached and virtually every corner of the
world had been explored, so to explorer adventurers who you know,
we're definitely a type of person that was very much
in the public eye at this point. Everest was really
the last unturned stone on the globe. Yeah, they forgot
the ocean. I know, That's how I keept thinking, like,
(18:06):
but what about below? But they weren't as excited about
the water. I guess I am really excited about the ocean.
I wish they would be a big ocean exploration. Well,
there's lots of them. Perhaps we'll talk about them in
the future. In nineteen seventy five, a Chinese climber found
a body at twenty seven thousand feet which is eight thousand,
two hundred thirty which may have been Irvine. And then
(18:27):
an expedition in May of nineteen ninety nine found Mallory's
frozen corpse on the mountain at twenty six thousand, seven
hundred sixty feet, which is eight thousand, one one hundred
fifty seven. So at this point they've been on the
mountain for seventy five years, and there have been recent
expeditions in twenty eleven to search for Irvine. Those have
(18:49):
not been successful. Yeah, they want to confirm whether or
not that Chinese climber actually found the body of Irvine. Uh.
And there's also a camera that the pair took with
them that was borrowed from another member of their team
that still sits somewhere on Everest Uh. If it were
to be found, it could be the piece of evidence
that people need to determine whether or not they ever
(19:11):
reached the summit. Yeah, and there's been a lot of
theorizing about whether they did or didn't based on where
their body were, like where Mallory's body was found. Yeah. Um,
you know, Mallory's body was definitely injured, although found so
late that any number of things could have transpired in
the the various years, so it's still a bit of
(19:31):
a mystery, and one that if you look at any
like Everest message boards or discussion groups or anything, is
still hotly debated, which is kind of love. Um, before
we get to the next expedition, we're gonna take a
quick break and hear from a word about our sponsor.
So let's return to our subject at hand. So in
ninety three, expedition headed by Hugh Rettledge was unsuccessful at
(19:55):
reaching the summit. Retledge, and he was in his late forties,
was kind of an an usual choice for the team leader.
He wouldn't really be able to make any summit pushes
and he walked with a limp from an old injury.
To summit attempts were made during this expedition uh and
reached a height of twenty twenty feet or eight thousand,
(20:16):
five hundred sixty fives and a third go at the
summit was actually abandoned pretty early on. They realized that
conditions were not going to be successful, so that pretty
much wrapped up the whole trip. Another year later, in
ninety four, an expedition that was not mounted by the
MBC was undertaken by Maurice Wilson. Wilson pretty foolishly tried
(20:39):
to summit Everest alone, despite having no experience in glacier climbing,
and you can imagine how that ended. He died on
the mountain. Yeah. The night before Wilson left for this
Everest adventure, a British paper called his plan quote an
elaborate suicide, which turned out to be all too true.
It apparently also really irritated him and he was something
(21:01):
of like a I don't even know if daredevil is
the right word, but he would get a wild hair
and do things he had never done before, like I'm
a fly play across I think the Alps, Like I know,
he he had never piloted. He just jumped in. I
need to fact check all of this, but I mean,
reading about him, he just did lots of crazy stuff
like that. It does seem a little like he had
a death wish. I don't understand it. I'm like, why
(21:25):
when there's a cozy home well, and I think that
I've seen like the big Imax movie about Everest, which
is about that summer a few years ago when so
many people died um and at the beginning of it,
I was like, maybe I could go home Everest one day,
and within about I know, six six minutes, I was like,
(21:46):
this is never a thing I will forever do. Yeah,
I'm in the same boat. I think it's beautiful when
I understand the allure. But no, No. In ninety five,
Eric Earl Shipton let an other expedition, and he had
been on many Everest climbs already, and he was on
one of the summit pushes during the nineteen thirty three
(22:07):
Rutledge expedition. In nineteen thirty five, this was another reconnaissance
mission that was meant to gather information to prepare for
a summit attempt the next year, and according to his
write up, he had several specific goals. Yeah, the expedition
was aiming to collect information about monsoon and snow conditions.
They wanted to look at possible alternate routes to the summit.
(22:30):
They wanted to report on ice formations on the North
Coal so proper equipment choices could be made. They were
going to try out new mission personnel. They were going
to experiment with food and equipment provisions to make sure
they were carrying exactly the right amount, not overweighing themselves,
not being under prepared, and they were going to perform
stereo photogramic survey of the surrounding area of Everest so
(22:51):
that they could expand on the survey work that was
done by the first reconnaissance mission in ninety one. So
at this point they had had several missions and they
hadn't made it, so they kind of were like, let's regroup,
do some more recon and put together another report. This
expedition is noteworthy for the presence of one of the porters,
tens Ignore Gay, and while the five trip was his
(23:12):
first Everest climb, he would become a hugely important figure
in Everest history. And this expedition also found Maurice Wilson's
body and diary, so the gentleman who went at this
alone was discovered by these people. In nineteen thirty six,
Rutledge led a bid for the summit a second time.
While he had already led one team, the Mount Everest
(23:34):
Committee appointing him as leader was a little bit controversial.
During his earlier expedition, his leadership had been questioned and
many felt that someone both physically stronger and more assertive
would be a better choice. Although he seemed to be
universally liked. Yeah, everybody seemed to like him. They just
thought he really wasn't the ideal man to lead a
team going up a mountain that was extremely physically demanding,
(23:56):
needed really strong leadership. It's like, he's a nice guy,
but he's not for this. Uh. And this is also
interesting because it's the first time that radio sets were
included as part of the equipment. So prior to that
there had been no radio communications done during any of
the expeditions. This expedition, which once again included sharp Atten signor,
had to be terminated early because of an early monsoon,
(24:18):
and they didn't make any summit pushes. A nineteen thirty
eight attempt was headed up by Harold William Tillman, who
had also been on the nineteen thirty five reconnaissance expedition,
and despite having had a lot of difficulty with acclimatizing
during that nineteen five trip, Tillman was able to climb
up to twenty seven thousand feet or eight thousand, two
hundred thirty meters, taking a route along in Northwest Ridge
(24:40):
without the aid of oxygen. As with the nineteen thirty
six expedition. This mission was cut short due to bad
weather conditions. Noel O'Dell, the geologist who had made the
last exchange with Mallory and Irvine, was also on this expedition,
and then, uh, world affairs kind of got in the
way of this exploration. World War two really put a
(25:03):
stop to the expeditions, in part because the political landscape
made permissions to enter the areas you would need to
access the mountain almost impossible to obtain, and also because
British resources were obviously focused elsewhere. So that's where we're
gonna pause. Yeah, we'll come back in part two to
talk about what happened after the war was over. Yeah,
because we haven't gotten to the summit. We really haven't,
(25:24):
in spite of many years trying reconnaissance missions the whole nine.
It's uh so fascinating to me to think of this
ongoing effort of just throwing people at it over and
over trying to get this one thing. And you have
to wonder, like, at some point, I'm sure they were
discussing it, like what did this mean to them? And
why were they so intent on it? But yeah, I
(25:47):
think that answer is probably different for a lot of
people even today that do it. But do you also
have some listener mail I do. Indeed, this one is
from Ellen and she says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
was pleasantly surprised when I saw your podcast on Crown
Print Sado. I was a bit of of a history
junkie during my childhood in Korea. Sato's tragic fate is
such a popular story in Korea, and it has been
(26:07):
constantly retold with creative license in Korean literature and even
TV series. I thought it might be interesting to hear
your perspective, especially as someone who had not had exposure
to this story before. I thought I knew the story
pretty well, but your podcast was full of surprises. I
may be over generalizing here a bit, but Prince Sotto
is often portrayed in Korea as a victim of political
(26:28):
power play, and some historians even go so far as
to say that Lady Hong was involved in conspiring against
the Prince. But all of the details that you've included
in the podcast really seemed to make the case that
Soto was a deeply troubled serial killer. It prompted me
to do a little bit more research, and the main
supporting evidence for this conspiracy theory seems to be the
obituary was written by Jong Joe, Sato's biological son. Here,
(26:51):
Jong Joe portrays Sato as a bright prince who rolled
out good policies and emphasizes that political factions at the
time drove a wedge between Sto and his father, Young Joe.
Prince Sotto was also posthumously given the title of King
Jong Joe in. I just wonder why they would honor
him like that given all the terrible things he's done.
I'm still a bit unsure of how to make sense
(27:13):
out of all of these theories. But thank you for
re sparking my interest in history. I had a good
time looking up and evaluating various theories and ideas surrounding
Prince Sotto. I hope you do more similar podcasts like
this one. Uh. Yeah, it's an interesting story and some
of that came up in my research, where he has
been sort of framed in different ways throughout history, but
as sort of the evidence has come to pass, and
(27:35):
as I said, his widows biography was hugely important in
kind of revealing what was really going on, which I
don't even think is entirely at odds with the way
she's describing him as being portrayed a lot um. I
don't think he was inherently intentionally a bad person. I
think he was just mentally ill, and it was two
(27:57):
sides of his psyche that we're fighting against each other
at all times. It is. It's also just fascinating and
I love hearing about Asian history, and so it was
nice to get the perspective from someone that grew up
in Korea and spent time with the story from uh,
the childhood perspective on up, which is really cool. So
thank you, Ellen, because that was awesome. UH. If you
(28:20):
would like to write to us, you should do so.
You can do that at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
You can also connect with us at Facebook dot com,
slash missed in history, on Twitter at misst in history
at misston history dot tumbler dot com, and on pinterest
dot com slash missed in History. If you would like
to learn more about what we've talked about today, you
(28:41):
can go to our website and enter the word Everest
in the search bar, and one of the things that
will come up is are their dead bodies on Mount Everest?
The short answer is yes, yes, so many talked about
a couple of them, but there are many, many more,
and a lot of other stuff too. Oh yes, we're
gonna talk about that in episode two. Uh so, we
hope to see you back here in the meantime. If
you would like to research almost anything you can think about,
(29:03):
you can do that at our website, which is how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics because it how stuff works dot com.
(29:24):
Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital
audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible has more than
one thousand titles to choose from to be download into
your iPod or MP three player. Go to audible podcast
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