Читать книгу The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 онлайн

55 страница из 72

About the time the other party left for the Base Camp, Finch and Geoffrey Bruce set off for the camp on the Chang La, Camp IV, taking with them twelve laden coolies to carry their outfit. I will not attempt to describe their subsequent mountaineering operations in detail, as these must be left to Finch’s narrative in a subsequent chapter, but there are a great many points to which attention might be drawn. First, although Geoffrey Bruce is thoroughly accustomed to work on the hillside, he had never before this big attempt, and before the few practice walks that he had with Finch, attempted a snow mountain in his life; the nearest thing he had been to it was following game in Kashmir. It was, therefore, for him a very great test. The same also applies to the Gurkha; although he is a born mountain man and has hardly been off the hillside the whole of his life, up to the time of the climb he knew nothing about snow and ice as understood by a Swiss mountaineer. However, they had a first-rate leader, and his trust in them proved anything but ill-placed.