Conquest of Everest

Famed Alpinist George Mallory was once asked: "Why do you climb this mountain?" His answer has been the climbers' answer ever since: "Because it's there."

The message that flashed from the foot of Everest on coronation-eve sounded heartbroken: "BAD SNOW CONDITIONS.

EXPEDITION ABANDONED BASE CAMP

TWENTYNINTH . . ." But the cable was a ruse, coded to prevent a leakage of the great news that the British Ambassador to Nepal was relaying to London. Decoded, the message ran: HILLARY & TENZING

CLIMBED MAY 29TH . . .

Thus, with laconic drama, the ninth British Everest expedition told of the conquest of earth's highest spire. In reaching the roof of the world simply because it is there, the New Zealander and the Sherpa mountaineer had done what Columbus, Scott and Lindbergh had gloriously done before: asserted that puny man can measure all things earthly.

The conquerors of Everest came down from the mountain last week to find a world avidly curious. This was their story:

The Trek. The ascent had been planned with the thoroughness of a commando raid: vast preparation for a brief but crucial hour. The expedition assembled in March at Katmandu, capital of Nepal. Its leader was John Hunt, 43, a grizzled British colonel whose knowledge of mountains (Kangchenjunga, K-36) and men (in World War II, he commanded Pathans, Gurkhas, Dogras and Scots) quickly won respect.

Three hundred and fifty porters (at 49¢ a day) divided up the baggage into 50-lb. packs and struck out, in two caravans, toward the valley of the Sun Kosi. The track lay through rhododendrons, oak trees and patches of fern; then the country roughened, and three great ridges rose before them. From the first, Chyanjma-la. the leaders looked north and saw Everest face-to-face—a hunchbacked Atlas with the sky of Tibet on his back. At last they entered the valley that drains Everest itself.

Northward were the Himalayan pastures, where the gentle Sherpa tribesmen live. The trail crossed giant mountains, crowding the icy torrent of the Dudh Kosi and soaring on the other side to 20,000 ft. Sometimes by day there were rain and sleet; sometimes there were hornets that can drive a man mad. And so, on March 25, they came to Namche Bazar, the chief of the Sherpa towns.

First Base Camp. The Namche people blessed them and gave them almond cakes. Rested, they went on, and came to a pale red shrine, Thyangboche Monastery (at 13,000 ft.).

Beautiful Thyangboche was where they made their First Base Camp. Towering above was the Everest trinity: Lhotse (27,890) and Nuptse (25,680), joined by a razor edge; beyond, Everest itself, plumed in a wisp of vapor that streams from the summit at 29,002 ft. The three giants together enclose a vast glacial basin known as the Western Cwm (a Welsh word that rhymes with tomb). This was the key to the climb.

At 21,000 ft., the eastward end of the Cwm is sealed by the South Col, a 25,850 ft. ridge that joins Everest to Lhotse. Westward, the Cwm falls away in a giant ice fall that leaps precipitously down 4,000 ft. Beyond, at the foot of Nuptse, is the Khumbu glacier, the only known entrance to the Cwm.