Читать книгу The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 онлайн

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What was very much brought home to us was the absolute necessity of windproof material to keep out the tremendous cold of these winds. Fortunately, I had a very efficient mackintosh which covered everything, but even then I suffered very considerably from the cold. It simply blew through and through wool, and riding without windproof clothing would have been very painful. It was also very fortunate for us that the weather was really fine and the sun shone all day. I think we should have been in a very bad way indeed if the blizzard had occurred on the second day out from Phari, and not on the first.

However, by night we were all comfortably settled down, although the whole of our advance stores did not arrive until after ten o’clock at night again. Unfortunately, three of our porters who had stayed behind with the slowest of the bullocks lost their way after dark. They stayed out the whole night without bedding or covering, and in the morning continued to the nunnery of Tatsang, which was about 4 or 5 miles further down the valley and rather off our direct route. We here heard of them and retrieved them. These men had not yet been issued with their full clothes, and how they managed to sit out the night clothed as they were and without any damage of any kind passes one’s comprehension. So low was the temperature that night that the quickly flowing stream outside our camp was frozen solid.