The Mount Everest Committee was a body formed by the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society to co-ordinate and finance the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest and all subsequent British expeditions to climb the mountain until 1947. It was then renamed the Joint Himalayan Committee; this latter committee organised and financed the successful first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.
Although Mount Everest as a mountaineering objective had been on the horizon of British alpinists for some time – Clinton Thomas Dent [1] writing in 1885, had sketched the idea of an ascent and Dr A. M. Kellas's study 'A Consideration of the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalaya' of 1916 had asserted that it was certainly possible physiologically – the initiative to form the Mount Everest Committee came from a talk given to the Royal Geographical Society in 1919 by Captain John Noel about his travels in the Everest region, and the resultant discussion. [2]
In 1920, at the behest of Sir Francis Younghusband (the first chairman of the committee), Colonel Charles Howard-Bury – the leader of the 1921 expedition – persuaded Sir Charles Bell to use his considerable influence with Tibetan officials to negotiate permission for a passage to Mount Everest from the northern side (the Nepalese approaches from the south were closed to foreign entry). Permission was granted by the Tibetan government for the British to proceed in the following year, 1921. [3]
To co-ordinate and finance the reconnaissance expedition, a joint body – the Mount Everest Committee – was formed, composed of high-ranking members of the two interested parties – the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society.
According to Sir Francis Younghusband:
Diplomacy having achieved its object and human obstacles being overcome it was possible to go full steam ahead organizing an Expedition. And climbing Mount Everest was a matter which interested both the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club. It interested the former because the Society will not admit that there is any spot on the earth's surface on which British man should not at least try to set his foot. And it interested the latter because climbing mountains is their especial province. It was decided, therefore, to make the Expedition a joint effort of the two societies. And this was the more desirable because the Geographical Society had greater facilities for organizing exploring expeditions, while the Alpine Club had better means of choosing the personnel. A joint Committee, called the Mount Everest Committee, was therefore formed, composed of three members each of the two societies. And it was arranged that during the first phase, while the mountain was being reconnoitred, the President of the Royal Geographical Society should be chairman; and in the second phase, when the mountain was to be climbed, the President of the Alpine Club should preside.
— . [4]
The first serious attempt on the summit was on the 1922 expedition. However, a diplomatic debacle after the 1924 expedition, later known as the Affair of the Dancing Lamas led to expeditions being banned until 1933. The embarrassment to the committee was so great that the affair was covered up for over fifty years. [5]
 |
The committee began the organisation for the full-scale 1953 attempt (in case the Swiss attempt in 1952 failed) in 1951, when it arranged the 1951 reconnaissance expedition.
In 1952, the following year, the Cho Oyu expedition was undertaken, which was also to test oxygen apparatus for 1953. But Cho Oyu was not climbed. [10] Members included Edmund Hillary. Hunt had asked earlier Everest climbers for comments on his 1953 plans; Teddy Norton advised him that previous assault camps had been too low, and that in 1953 it should be on or very close under the Southern Summit. [11]
John Hunt, the leader of the 1953 expedition, decided to recruit British and Commonwealth members (New Zealand and Kenya had potential members) rather than an "international" team, and the two New Zealand members not known to Hunt (Hillary and Lowe) were known to Shipton and others. He wanted climbers experienced in snow and ice (not rock climbers) and between 25 and 40 (although Band was 23 and Hunt himself was 42). A "large" party of ten was required, plus an expedition doctor; so Ward (doctor), Pugh (physiologist, sponsored by the Medical Research Council) and Stobart (cameraman, sponsored by Countryman Films) were added. A few months later Tenzing was invited to join the climbing party. [12]
There were five reserve mountaineers also prepared to assist the expedition: J. H. Emlyn Jones, John Jackson, Anthony Rawlinson, Hamish Nicol and Jack Tucker. [13] The various British mountaineering clubs had been requested to submit lists of qualified candidates to be considered by the committee, "whose responsibility it was to issue the formal invitations". [14]
According to Hunt, the committee's responsibility for drumming up funds for the 1953 expedition was not a welcome one:
One of the principal tasks of the Joint Himalayan Committee in addition to those of conceiving the idea of an Everest expedition, seeking political sanction, deciding matters of policy in preparation, is to finance it. Only those who have had this care can fully appreciate the work and anxiety of raising very substantial funds for an enterprise of this nature, coloured as it inevitably is in the mind of the public by a succession of failures, with no financial security other than the pockets of the Committee members themselves.
— [15]
A number of organisations contributed to the committee, including The Times newspaper, which had also supported earlier expeditions. [16]
On 2 June, four days after the successful ascent, Hunt sent a runner to 'carry messages to Namche Bazar, to go thence by the good offices of the Indian wireless station to Kathmandu. Cables of humble appreciation were sent to the Queen and the Prime Minister, another to the Himalayan Committee saying that I proposed to bring Tenzing and Hillary to England – George Lowe had already planned to come.' [17]
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
Sir Christian John Storey Bonington, CVO, CBE, DL is a British mountaineer.
Peter Boardman was an English mountaineer and author. He is best known for a series of bold and lightweight expeditions to the Himalayas, often in partnership with Joe Tasker, and for his contribution to mountain literature. Boardman and Tasker died on the North East Ridge of Mount Everest in 1982. The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established in their memory.
Henry Cecil John Hunt, Baron Hunt, was a British Army officer who is best known as the leader of the successful 1953 British expedition to Mount Everest.
Douglas Keith Scott was an English mountaineer, noted for being on the team that made the first ascent of the south-west face of Mount Everest on 24 September 1975. In receiving one of mountaineering's highest honours, the Piolet d'Or Lifetime Achievement Award, his personal style and climbs were described as "visionary".
The Oxford University Mountaineering Club (OUMC) was founded in 1909 by Arnold Lunn, then a Balliol undergraduate; he did not earn a degree.
George Christopher Band was an English mountaineer. He was the youngest climber on the 1953 British expedition to Mount Everest on which Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to ascent the mountain. In 1955, he and Joe Brown were the first climbers to ascend Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
John Angelo Jackson was an English mountaineer, explorer and educationalist.
Elizabeth Hawley was an American journalist, author, and chronicler of Himalayan mountaineering expeditions. Hawley's The Himalayan Database became the unofficial record for climbs in the Nepalese Himalaya. She was also the honorary consul in Nepal for New Zealand.
Peter Lloyd CBE, was a mountaineer and engineer, a President of the Alpine Club.
Thomas Duncan Bourdillon was an English mountaineer and member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition which made the first ascent of Mount Everest. He died in Valais, Switzerland, on 29 July 1956 aged 32.
Captain John Percy Farrar, also known as Percy Farrar and as J. P. Farrar, was an English soldier and mountaineer. He was President of the Alpine Club from 1917 to 1919 and a member of the Mount Everest Committee. Farrar's obituary in The Times stated that he 'was known by repute to every one interested in mountaineering in England and on the Continent, and his personal friends at home and abroad were legion'.
Barry Chapman Bishop was an American mountaineer, scientist, photographer and scholar. With teammates Jim Whittaker, Lute Jerstad, Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein, he was a member of the American Mount Everest Expedition led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, the first American team to summit Mount Everest on May 22, 1963. He reached the summit of Mount Everest by the South Col route on May 22, 1963 with fellow American Lute Jerstad, sharing the honor of becoming the second and third Americans to stand on Everest's summit. Prior to his Everest summit, Bishop participated in several other notable first ascents; the West Butress route on Denali in 1951, and the South West ridge route on 6,170 meter Himalayan peak Ama Dablam in 1961. He worked for the National Geographic Society for most of his life, beginning as a picture editor in 1959 and serving as a photographer, writer, and scientist with the society until his retirement in 1994. He was killed in an automobile accident near Pocatello, Idaho later that year.
Expedition climbing, is a type of mountaineering that uses a series of well-stocked camps on the mountain that lead to the summit, and which are supplied by teams of mountain porters. In addition, expedition climbing can also employ multiple 'climbing teams' to work on the climbing route—not all of whom are expected to make the summit—and allows the use of supports such as fixed ropes, aluminum ladders, supplementary oxygen, and sherpa climbers. By its nature, expedition climbing often requires weeks to complete a given climbing route, and months of pre-planning given the greater scale of people and equipment that need to be coordinated for the climb.
The 1953 British Mount Everest expedition was the ninth mountaineering expedition to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest, and the first confirmed to have succeeded when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit on 29 May 1953. Led by Colonel John Hunt, it was organised and financed by the Joint Himalayan Committee. News of the expedition's success reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, on 2 June that year.
The British Army Mountaineering Association (AMA) is the governing body for climbing competitions and the representative body for mountaineering in the British Army. It is a member of the British Mountaineering Council and is the largest climbing club in the United Kingdom.
Precipitated by unexpected permission from Tibet, the 1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition was planned at short notice as a preliminary to an attempt on the summit of Mount Everest in 1936. After exceptionally rancorous arguments involving the Mount Everest Committee in London, Eric Shipton was appointed leader following his successful trekking style of expedition to the Nanda Devi region in India in 1934.
The Affair of the Dancing Lamas was an Anglo–Tibetan diplomatic controversy stemming mainly from the visit to Britain in 1924–25 of a party of Tibetan monks as part of a publicity stunt for The Epic of Everest – the official film of the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition.
The 1951 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition ran between 27 August 1951 and 21 November 1951 with Eric Shipton as leader.
