Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain by Harriet Tuckey Read Free Book Online

British embassy in Kathmandu, asking him to apply at once for the following year. Unbeknownst to Shipton, Colonel Proud’s boss, Ambassador Summerhayes, had already taken the precaution of asking the Maharajah of Nepal for a permit for a British expedition the following year, but had learned, to his consternation, that the Swiss already had verbal permission for 1952, precluding a British visit in the same year. The news sent shock waves through the British climbing establishment.
    For almost half a century the Royal Geographical Society had labored under the illusion that it had exclusive rights of access to Everest. Since beginning life in 1830 as one of Britain’s gentlemanly learned societies, the RGS had maneuvered itself to the forefront of mapping, measuring, and exploring the fringes of the known world, and had come to be regarded as “the spiritual home of British exploration.” The Society had helped to organize and sponsor heroic pioneering expeditions such as Scott’s and Shackleton’s ventures in the Antarctic, ran courses on mapping and surveying that were heavily patronized by colonial civil servants, and was an important source of geographical information and advice for government departments, including the India Office. 19
    In the early part of the twentieth century, Mount Everest, as yet unexplored, unmapped, and unclimbed, presented the RGS with a perfect challenge. Many illustrious members of the society were sorely disappointed that Britain, the nation that controlled the largest empire the world had ever seen, had failed to be first to reach either the North Pole (claimed by American Robert Peary in 1909) or the South Pole, where Captain Scott (heavily sponsored by the RGS) lost out to Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1911. Mount Everest was seen as “the Third Pole”; winning it would restore British honor. And in the glory days of the British Empire, it was tempting for the RGS to feel that Everest was their very own mountain of destiny.
    The sense of ownership—“Dammit, it’s our mountain!”—had been fully confirmed in 1921 when Tibet granted the first permit to climb Everest to the British, represented by the RGS. The RGS immediately turned to Britain’s premier climbing gentlemen’s club, the Alpine Club. The Everest Committee representing both institutions was formed to organize and finance the expedition.
    The British government invariably consulted the RGS about the suitability of proposed climbing expeditions to Everest, British and foreign alike, so the Everest Committee was able to influence their fate, and established an effective monopoly.
    After the failure of the first three British expeditions in 1921, 1922, and 1924, a Swiss application in 1924 was dismissed as an “attempt to take advantage of the preliminary spade work which has been done and . . . snatch the final victory.” 20 A German application in 1925 met with a similar fate, as did a further Swiss application in 1926 and an Italian application in 1928, and so it went on.
    Officials at the India Office generally found it “impossible not to sympathise” with the committee’s desire for exclusivity, though they worried that it was “not a sportsmanlike attitude.” But having accepted that it was in Britain’s interest to keep the competition at bay, British diplomats used three lines of defense against foreign expeditions. The first was to refuse to pass foreign applications for Everest on to Tibet, telling aspirants they had no chance of success due to the “sensitivities” of the political situation.
    In cases where this tactic would be politically embarrassing, applications were passed on, but diplomats put pressure on the Tibetan government to refuse them in consideration of “favours” granted to Tibet, such as “the helpful attitude we took up when the Dalai Lama asked for arms and ammunition during the tension with China.” 21 Britain’s own requests for Everest were often refused, but the