Everest Anniversary Part 3: Human packhorses push up

By TIM WATKIN

Sir Edmund Hillary spent May 10, 1953, acting as a high-altitude pack-horse, carting a load of equipment 1000m up Mt Everest.

"By the evening," expedition leader Sir John Hunt has written, "I was at IV (6460m) and Ed had returned to Camp III (6155m) after delivering a first consignment.

Hillary and Tenzing were, according to Hunt's instructions, in charge of the "low-level ferries", while support crew were moving equipment and exploring routes higher up.

Army brigadier Hunt's organisation was central to the expedition's success.

He had decided on two, two-man assault teams, each with a support crew. The second team, no more than 24 hours behind the first, could act as support or push on to the summit. But who would take on which tasks?

This most critical of decisions Hunt made on May 7. After a meeting with Sir Edmund and Charles Evans, he gathered his team into the mess tent. "It was the biggest event before the bid for the summit itself," he wrote.

"As we went inside it was impossible not to feel the air of suppressed excitement and anticipation," Hillary wrote the next year.

"On every face I could read the same thought," Hillary wrote, "Hurry up John! Tell us what job you've given me!"

The first assault team was to be Evans and Tom Bourdillon. Sir Edmund and Tenzing would be the second summit party.

Hillary told the Herald recently that as the fittest of the team he had been confident of being chosen.

It seems Hunt saw the second team as the most likely summiters. Writing of the first team in The Ascent of Everest, he said "the primary objective would be the South Peak. Only if the oxygen apparatus and supply were alike satisfactory, the weather fair and the terrain between the two peaks such as to allow them time to get there and back within safe limits, should they attempt to go farther."

Charles Wylie and Wilfrid Noyce were chosen to establish a stores depot at Camp V and organise the final lift to the South Col. Before that, however, the expedition had to find a route up the Lhotse Face.

"This job I had decided to give to George Lowe, a master of ice craft, with George Band and Mike Westmacott and four of our best Sherpas to assist him," Hunt wrote. "I would say that the air of expectancy and tension had now been replaced by one of confidence and satisfaction."

Hillary agreed, adding that "when Hunt came to his name, Tenzing smiled as though well satisfied".

But that day the plan suffered its first setback. Band fell ill at Camp III and had to retreat to Lobuje. Lowe pushed on and on this day 50 years ago, was spending his first night at Camp V (6705m). The next day, he would begin cutting steps, and securing rope between there and Camp VI (7010m). But his efforts were severelynte were hampered by atrocious weather.

Planning alone would not guarantee success, and even courage could be thwarted by Chomolungma, or mother goddess of the earth, as the Sherpas call Everest.

* Sir Edmund is due in Nepal on May 23 with every living mountaineer who has climbed Mt Everest for a celebration on May 29 in the capital, Kathmandu.