Everest Southwest Face

“Everything was said 40 years ago. Nothing has changed.” Doug Scott was tight-lipped when I asked him last spring about the British Everest Southwest Face Expedition in 1975. Late on 24 September, today exactly 40 years ago, Doug and his team comrade Dougal Haston, had reached the summit of Mount Everest after they had first climbed the more than 2000-meter-high, extremely difficult rock wall. After their summit success Scott and Haston survived a bivouac at 8760 meters. Their first climb of the Southwest Face was a milestone in Himalayan climbing, one of the “last big problems” was solved. Five expeditions had failed before, among them a British one in 1972.

Superb climbers

Route(s) through the Southwest Face (© Thincat)

This expedition as well as the successful three years later was led by legendary Chris Bonington. “In a way the expedition was my baby”, Chris told me last spring. “It was my vision and concept. Then I got together the group of superb climbers to actually complete it.” The team was based on climbers from the British 1970 Annapurna South Face and 1972 Everest Southwest Face expeditions and included aside from Scott and Haston such excellent climbers as Mick Burke, Nick Estcourt, Peter Boardman and Paul (“Tut”) Braithwate. “I had always seen very clearly in my mind that my first priority was the success of the expedition and not just the success of getting to the top of the mountain, but also the success of doing so harmoniously”, said the meanwhile 81-year-old Bonington. “And from that point of view it was a wonderful expedition. The only very serious cloud of course was the fact that in the second attempt we lost Mick Burke.” He disappeared during a second summit push. Burke was last seen alive only a few hundred meters from the highest point.

“Possible without breathing mask”

Bonington (l.) and Scott (in 2015)

The successful climb of the Southwest Face was a perfect teamwork. Scott and Haston were the members to complete it. “The way we did was a bit like the way the North wall of the Eiger was first climbed”, said Chris Bonington. “We found the easiest way, a kind of ‘serpentining’ our way up the mountain.” It was “the only line possible, the natural line”, Doug Scott finally told me last April. He and Haston had been using breathing masks. “When I bivouacked at 8,700 meters without oxygen, I knew, it would have been possible without it”, said Scott, aged 74 now. Afterwards there have been only a few successful climbs through the Everest Southwest Face. “The obviously challenge that nobody has done is a direttissima”, said Chris Bonington. “That is to go straight up the middle of the rock band and thus straight up to the summit.” Another “last problem”.

Aiguille Verte and Petit Dru (r.)

If there really is such a thing as a “Golden Year” of climbing in the Alps, it was 1865: More than sixty important first ascents were made on the highest mountains of France, Switzerland and Austria. The most spectacular was certainly that of the Matterhorn on 14 July. But Jungfrau, Wetterhorn, Breithorn, Ortler and Piz Buin were also first climbed in 1865 – and the Aiguille Verte, today exactly 150 years ago. On 29 June 1865, just after 10 a.m., the Briton Edward Whymper, the Swiss mountain guide Christian Almer from Grindelwald and his colleague Franz Biner from Zermatt reached  the 4122-meter-high summit in the Mont Blanc range. The first ascent of the “Green Needle” was one of the most coveted alpine goals of those days.

Insider tip: From Southeast

Contemporary illustration of the first ascent

“We arrived three quarters of an hour before the time we had told them, when below, to look up”, Whymper wrote later. “Probably, at the moment no one was looking, as they had not the slightest belief that we should succeed better than our predecessors. This did not trouble us much.” The trio’s secret to success was to ascend on the southeastern slopes of the mountain, facing away Chamonix. “It is somewhat surprising that scarcely any one made a serious attempt to ascend from that direction”, Whymper was astonished.

First ascents in a row

Michel Croz, drawn by Edward Whymper

On 16 June, just about two weeks earlier, the three mountaineers, along with the French mountain guide Michel Croz from Chamonix, had already first climbed the 3962-meter-high Grand Cornier in Valais. On 24 June, this roped party reached, for the first time too, a 4184-meter-high minor summit (Pointe Whymper) of the Grandes Jorasses. The main summit (Pointe Walker), which is 24 meters higher, was first climbed three years later.

Course insults

The local guide Croz, with whom Whymper was regularly climbing, was unable to join the first ascent of the Aiguille Verte, because he had to wait for a client in Chamonix. An outcry went through the local guides, when they heard that a British mountaineer, guided by two Swiss, had managed to scale the coveted mountain. Whymper and Co. were subjected to course insults. The guides of Chamonix were questioning the summit success. One of the ringleaders was even arrested.
The dust settled, when Michel Croz made the second ascent of the Aiguille Verte on 5 July 1865, on a new challenging route, the Moine Ridge. Croz guided among others the Englishman Charles Hudson. Nine days later, both were also among the first ascenders of the Matterhorn, but did not survive the coup. More about this later.

Last image of Mallory and Irvine in 1924

Frank Smythe was obsessed with the highest mountain on earth . “Everest is becoming a life’s task”, he wrote in his diary. Smythe was a member of all three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the 1930s. Not only since his first ascent of 7756-meter-high Kamet in 1931 he was among the leading climbers of his time. On 1 June 1933 Frank equalled the altitude record on Everest with about 8570 meters, reaching probably the same point in the North Face as his compatriot Edward Felix Norton in 1924. “It (the summit) was only 1,000 feet above me, but an aeon of weariness separated me from it”, Smythe wrote. Climbing without bottled oxygen he began to hallucinate on his way back. Frank thought there was a companion and wanted to share his cake with him. He was also convinced to see two bulbous objects hovering above him. Smythe reported about these experiences in his book “Camp 6”. What Frank kept secret until his death in 1949 was a surprising discovery he patently made during his next expedition to Everest in 1936: Apparently if not likely Smythe spotted the body of George Mallory. The mystery of Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who started for a summit attempt in 1924 but did not return, has not been solved completely until today.

Seen something queer

Frank Smythe

Now Tony Smythe, doing research for a book about his father, found a copy of a letter which Frank had obviously written after his Everest expedition 1936 and sent to Edward Norton, the leader of the expedition 1924. “I was scanning the face from base camp through a high-powered telescope last year when I saw something queer in a gully below the scree shelf”, the copy of the letter read. “Of course it was a long way away and very small, but I’ve a six/six eyesight and do not believe it was a rock. This object was at precisely the point where Mallory and Irvine would have fallen had they rolled on over the scree slopes.”

No press please!

Smythe was apparently referring to the presumed place where both climbers could have fallen to death: Members of the expedition in 1933 had found Irvine’s ice axe on 8460 meters. About 300 meters lower, 100 meters in horizontal Mallory’s corpse was found in fact in 1999. Did Frank Smythe identify this position already in 1936? In any case he didn’t want to publish his discovery. “It’s not to be written about as the press would make an unpleasant sensation”, says Frank in the copy of the letter. Edward Norton seems to have kept the secret.

Irvine’s body still missing

Smythe was probably right in his assessment of the media as it turned out more than 60 years later. The discovery of Mallory’s body by US climber Conrad Anker on 1 May 1999 spread like wildfire and made headlines all over the world. German Mallory expert Jochen Hemmleb was largely responsible for the success because he had interpreted all available informations with detective precision and limited the search area. If Hemmleb had known the letter of Frank Smythe, it would have saved him a lot of work. The body of Andrew Irvine is still missing, his camera too. Therefore those voices will not fall silent which want to make us believe that in 1924 Mallory and Irvine were the first who climbed Mount Everest and died only afterwards during the descent .