A LIGHTER LOOK AT DARK MEANINGS

Reading between the Journal's Lines

WILLIAM McKAY AITKEN

THERE WAS MUCH MORE FUN in the old days' Trevor Braham reports (HJ 35) quoting Kenneth Mason to the effect that 'one went where one liked and climbers did not have to do what the press desired'. This seems indisputable when you read Dougal Haston's comment on the fractious International Everest attempt (HJ 31) where a famous Japanese explorer-climber 'kept flashing up and down like a yo-yo' because of his newspaper commitments. And to prove the falling off in lofty early attitudes, on the same expedition the BBC's idea of fun and games — according to the Gaulist lobby — was to indulge in 'pot smoking orgies'. To ram home the decline and fall of high morality we have the review of the much delayed book on the Indian ascent of Everest (HJ 49) which echoes the sybaritic extravagance of those who insists on imitating the compulsions of empire builders. Increasing nobly by the year from the tectonic thrust of restless nature the 5 centimetres gained vertically seems in the case of successful summiters alas, to be displaced horizontally In their cranium necessitating a larger size of hat when they return to base. When an early reviewer remarked that 'Big heads are still plentiful on the Russian Pamirs' he overlooked to mention the Everest lecture circuit is likewise well-stocked.

Which brings us to General Bruce. He not ony started this lust for Everest but apparently originated the fun and gamesmanship in Himalayan expeditions. According to John Martyn's masterly resume of club activities (HJ 35) the irrepressible Bruce began these risque proceedings by removing the nether portion of his trousers. Perhaps the Indian usage 'half-pant' to describe these legless trews derived from the General's obsessive early morning habit of exercising with his Gurkha orderlies. According to Martyn To keep fit every day he climbed a nearby hill with his orderly on his back.' These extraordinary mvortings in" the shadow of Nun-Kun would have greatly shocked tin' Bullock Workmans who visited the area with the proper gravity expected from sahib-log. They are not likely — had they met General Bruce — to have asked 'Who was that orderly I saw on your back this morning?' and be told by the ever-chortling General 'That was no orderly. That was Karbir Bahadur'. Martyn also quotes the Times obituary to tell us that Bruce laughed at his own jokes 'immoderately', a happy state of affairs that did not surface in Himalayan print until Vol. 36 which free of the grey academic cover (thought fit by climbers in the thirties to reflect their enclosed musings) waxed to impressive thickness. (Including advertisements the longest was Vol. 30 with some 400 pages. The shortest was HJ 14 but not the thinnest. Vol. 16 contained 60 more pages but was printed on thinner paper.)

What seems odd about Bruce's decision to saw off his uniform at the knee 'to be able to move in the hills with greater rapidity' is that he seems to have overlooked the traditional solution of all his gualas (as depicted so sportively in pahari miniature paintings). For mobility, rather than cut down one's pantaloons the prospects of greater acceleration surely arises from going the whole hog and taking them off. But to show how the pioneering spirit always pays the price for its effrontery we are told that while Longstaff was climbing Trisul with Bruce's orderly (apparently not Sinbad-style on his back) the General was at base nursing a bad knee.

Talking of shorts John Martyn also details the delightful deviousness of a founder member of the Club, the distinguished forester E.O. Shebbeare author of a classic on elephant lore. On the liner out to India the outdoor loving Shebbeare preferred to dine at the captain's table in shorts and gym shoes. Obviously this reckless departure from the time — honoured custom of colonial officers — in no matter what density of jungle — changing into formal attire for their peg — lest the native bearers tom-tom the news that the end of empire was in the offing, infuriated the Peninsula and Orient code. Shebbeare duly turned up at the captain's table dressed in white tie and tails and it was not until pitching towards his cabin after toasts of loyalty that it was noticed under the Moss Bros accoutrements were his faithful shorts and sandshoes.

It is intriguing to contrast the maintenance of the world's two mightiest empires. The Romans forever showed a leg whereas the Brits until 1897 (the cut-off date for General Bruce's sartorial revolution) preferred the P & O mode. However extremities were allowed to appear in print and the reader of Boys Own magazine will be comforted to find in HJ 1 the most favoured mantra of a missionary island nation burdened with civilising a darkened east. This 'first white foot' syndrome suggests that colour blindness can be more than a physiological affliction. Chomolungma had been firmly in the sights of meditating Tibetans for nigh on a thousand years before British survey officers sought tu pull the wool over the public's eyes by claiming the locals never noticed it.

Fortunately the first white foot in the Journal is also the last. But It Is curious that the reviewer who introduced it Sir Francis Younghusband should be regarded in his time as a propounder of universal mysticism. No doubt when his punitive column to Lhasa cut down the primitively nrtned defenders with machine-gun fire the Lamas would have concluded thai the efficacy of his teachings relied heavily on the doctrine of rebirth.

What, one wonders did the only founding Indian member of the loinmittee — the Raja of Jubbal — feel on reading about-the brave young bianco-spatted hero savagely supported by 'a scratch lot of Bnltls and Ladakhis' (who are added to later in Vol. 1 by Major Shewen's description of the hill neighbours of Jubbal as 'rapacious and dirty', a summing up exactly of how the orthodox East views white feet!). Luckily he did not single out the Raja's loyal subjects In their mobile trouserless state.

Significantly the early journals went by the subtitle of 'records of the Himalayan Club' which implies that oneupmanship was de rigeur. Though note that Fanny Bullock Workman's claims to altitude are hut meagrely acknowledged: 'Her height is probably approximately correct'. Apparently the pigmentation of one's feet was not the sole criterion for being first in the untrodden outback. A union jack could work Wonders in doubtful cases. Students of social behaviour might even put forward the theory that the logo of the Club in its early days Could have been a WASP1 rather than a heathen chorten.

Footnote

  1. White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant.

 

This brings us to the most outrageous flaunting of extremities which Orcurred in the launch issue of another mountaineering magazine albeit In tl»' presence of a president of the Himalayan Club. The photograph shows a visibly wilting Noel Odell (revisiting India after many years) before a declamatory Delhi VIP whom the cameraman has entirely cut out save for his voluble fist. To make amends the caption-maker he spelled out the agony of the part-missing guest: 'Only his right arm is visible'.

Well with good right arms, first white feet and fleet-footed base-camp runners fresh with the news-breaking story for Elizabeth Hawley, what possibly could go wrong now? According to Ms. Hawley (HJ 44) just about everything. First you get a Frenchman from the top relaying to his leader at base the equivalent of 'Monsieur Holdie smoked a pipe on Kamet'. This gets retailed to a runner whose Nepali translator thinks he knows French and English idiomatically and who comes near in transmitting idiotically — 'Herman Buhl flew a kite on Nanga Parbat'. By the time it is eventually flashed around the world the message is garbled into : 'Aleister Crowley smoked a kipper on K2'.

French mouths (and feet) according to the English mountaineering press are always being put where least desired and in that sturdy Vol. 31 Ken Wilson and Mike Pearson have meticulously dredged up the battle lines as viewed from the white cliffs of Dover: 'Lazy Continental Blighters versus the Commonwealth'. (To be fair to Ken and Mike their story broke before British Leyland merged to make malingering history.) No respectable publication can be expected to reprint the traded abuses that flew between tents along with polyglottal snowballs and stones, the latter not falling as is customary on expeditions from the displeasure of heaven but flung by a feminist to the accompaniment of atrociously accented English abuse that went something like: They expect Alain Prost (hat-size 42) to work as a mechanic for the perfidious Rover-Honda group. Never. This is not me but Paris Match they have insulted'.

Which brings us back to the deleterious effect of the demanding press. In his book Games Climbers Play (published the same year the disembodied right arm found itself in print — to make Noel Odell look as though he had seen the ghost of Mallory), Ken Wilson exposed the gruesome side of modern climbing motivation. Part Seven for example lists — in order of seriousness — the problems faced by the average mountaineer — 'Epics, Risk, Falling, Death, Obituary, Retirement'. One chapter by Reinhold Messner is entitled 'Murder of the Impossible'. This is not an obituary for Dr. Herriigkoffer.

Why is it that preachers of cosmic harmony, whether of the Younghusband variety or the Dyrenfurth, end up with their expeditions mowing down the opposition, whether by word or deed — 'There was talk of cowardice, dictatorship, lies and drunkenness' (HJ 31). Possibly the upright notions of high altitude morality (as enunciated by one who has never been there) require a closer look. With regard to a famous test case where Indian climbers above 4321m2 have been instructed to sleep with their feet pointing towards the opposite sex, by a quirk of coincidence I did happen to witness the beginning and end of this debate.

Footnote

  1. At which height climbing is believed to start by official minds. (You've only been trekking up the north face of the Eiger.)

 

I was lost on the Gangotri glacier and redirected by the expedition that gave rise to the 'feet first' theory. The matter became public knowledge for the good reason that the offended person happened to be going steady with a journalist to whom the beans were duly wpllt. Thus it seems more important than the direction of one's feet to establish the professional fallout likely from one's contacts in freezing situations. Also the ruling is of little help to trekkers stranded on the north face of the Eiger. Do you face up or down or add to Umgal Haston's complaint of yo-yoing?

Dr. K. Biswas

5. Dr. K. Biswas

Soli Mehta

6. Soli Mehta

Another Club anecdote that I happened to learn more about refers to Kolahoi where one of the first Indian essays in serious climbing on arriving at the top discovered a note left by one Leakey identified as a 'BOR', which translated into the pecking order of those stratified days as slightly better than 'Corporal' Johnston, the remarkable free-lince surveyor-explorer who had the audacity to get into the 'first white foot' (as opposed to the 'feet first') act despite the fact that his country-born foot was off-white. For all working purposes British Other Ranks were rated as Fanny Bullock Workmans. A dim view was taken of persons of ordinary rank doing their thing in the Himalaya, since any achievement by lesser mortals would detract from the heroic notions of this arena assiduously put out by the heaven-born, as the ICS3 were known. For example, no Commissioner of Kumaon worthy of his hire would neglect to risk snow-blindness in better acquainting himself with the eastern flank of Nanda Devi which allowed rimcho flounderings over Traill's Pass. According to my informer, who had accompanied Leakey of India to build gliders, the BOR's luggage consisted of a trunk full of climbing hardware. When the glider scheme Ml through Leakey cleverly took himself off to the mountains for Wi'i'ks at a time leaving his employers a forwarding address at a pl.uc he made sure to arrive at before he could be contacted. For thnv months he outwitted the postman until his trunk was empty and he returned to find the fetter he had-rightly guessed was dogging his (basically OK but lowly) feet all this time. What is said amounted to You're fired. Go home immediately.'

As has been intimated BOR-type humour was first allowed space the Journal in Vol. 36 when Terry King gives a refreshingly relaxed iol( <it the usefulness of the institution of liaison officer. Peter Boardman Joe Tasker had in a similar vein stripped the veneer off these rim mental varnishings in the best-selling Shining Mountain. Readers more sad than funny that the LO should have slipped off home vr than enjoy a front seat for the most spectacular ascent of world's most aesthetic peak. The surprising thing about King's response is its humour because traditionally Chota Sahibs were expected go mottled with rage at the way Indian bureaucrats had perfected Hurra Sahib's system of red tape. Also the article is significant for slipping in a reference to the nuclear spying device placed (whereabouts unknown) in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary by a million-dollar team of Indian and American Everesters circa 1965. Curiously for such hush-hush manoeuvres several references occur in sporting publications and the alert student of skullduggery has a fascinating glimpse of how easy it is to stump the stonewallers who continue to pretend that such pollution was unthinkable. For example, a brochure put out to commemorate the successful IMF mixed4 ascent of Nanda Devi in 1981 contains an article by an old soldier who describes — unwittingly — the start of the nuclear caper when he is visited by senior defence bureaucrats and overnight, after years of languishing deck class is transferred to an air-conditioned room. Another article in a later IMF journal refers to a curious cultural trek of American students into the Sanctuary to study 'thought processes' led not by a meditating yogi but Dr. Thomas Mutch the NASA expert in space photography. On another visit Mutch disappeared after an accident on Nun and his companions initially went to the press with a story that he had been kidnapped. Next in the disapearing act came the young, sturdy Czech defector Thomas Gross who was granted Swiss citizenship in a matter of days while most refugees have to wait years. He showed up in Goa playing a guitar and then spent the whole winter of 1981 inside the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. Conveniently a Czech party exiting from the Sanctuary set him up with a season's supplies that extended to a stove with chimney. (It's only non-defectors like you and me who can't even get a kind look out of these big expeditions.) Thomas then made the first winter descent of the Rishi ganga and returned to Goa to play his guitar. Out of the blue a police dragnet was sent to pick him up when he was involved in a bizarre triple murder of fellow hippes. Though he was a strapping six footer Gross walked away back into the blue and was never seen again. Oddly the code-name of the covert Nanda Devi operation was 'Blue Mountain' while the Redskin nickname of Thomas — which I photographed on a rock at his camp on Changabang glacier — was 'Blue Eagle'. But in view of the fact that the porters confirmed he took size 12 boots this name may be a gross attempt at a cover-up!

Footnote

  1. Indian Civil Service.
  2. The Indian Mountaineering Foundation, men-women mixed team.

 

----------------------SUMMARY---------------------

A lighter look at the Himalayan Journal and other literature. The author is the Hon. Librarian of the Himalayan Club and a well known writer.

 

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