Читать книгу The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 онлайн

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Morris all this time was on the line of communication. He had the whole of the service of evacuation to arrange, and was laying out his convoys of Tibetan coolies and others with that point of view in his mind. It was lucky he did so. The great foe, generally speaking, on Everest during the dry period is the horrible West wind, but now the monsoon had to all intents and purposes arrived. The West wind now was our one and only friend. If it would again blow for a short period, the mountain would probably return temporarily to a fairly safe condition. The South wind is a warm and wet, though fairly strong, current, but the result of even a short visit from it absolutely ruins the mountain-side. However, at Camp III they enjoyed one full day of sunshine, followed by a very low temperature (12° below zero) the following night, and it was considered, owing both to the strength of the sun and to the fact that the West wind had temporarily got the better of the South wind, that the mountain would in all probability be safely solidified so as to render an attempt justifiable. Therefore on the morning of June 7 a start was made to reach the North Col, with the object of spending a night there and making an assault on the mountain the following day. It was also proposed to carry up as much oxygen as possible to the greatest height they could get the porters to go, and from that point only to use the remaining oxygen to make a push over the summit. I think this was a thoroughly sound proposition. They were all acclimatised, and it seems to me that it is probably better, especially if there is any chance of a shortage of oxygen, to use one’s acclimatisation to go as high as one can without undue fatigue, and from thence on to use the oxygen. No doubt it would be possible and of advantage, if the oxygen apparatus should ever be improved, to use it for the whole of an ascent, say, from 20,000 feet or so, but against that comes the chance that, in case of any cessation of the oxygen supply, the danger would be very much greater.