Prelude to Everest E-Book

Ian R Mitchell

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 451

Beschreibung

Acclaimed hillwalking writers Ian R Mitchell and George Rodway tell the fascinating story of Aberdeen-born Alexander Kellas, and his contribution to mountaineering from the 20th century to the present day. Now a largely neglected figure, Kellas is the pioneer of high altitude physiology, his climbing routes still in evidence today. Follow Kellas' journey, which takes him from the Scottish Cairngorms to the Himalaya, and discover how his struggles and explorations have impacted upon mountaineering today.

Leseprobe

GEORGE W RODWAY (left) and IAN R MITCHELL (right)

GEORGE W RODWAY PhD is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing and School of Medicine at the University of Nevada and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London’s Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine. He is the author of many scientific and historical articles and has been an active mountaineer in the Americas, the Himalayas and Europe for over 30 years, George lives in Nevada, USA.

IAN R MITCHELL is the author of numerous mountain and hillwalking books, and writes regularly for the outdoor press. With Dave Brown he won the prestigious Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing in 1991 and their acclaimed book Mountain Days and Bothy Nights was the only Scottish non-fiction work in the top 10 poll for World Book Day 2003. Ian has mountaineered widely in Europe and North America as well as in Scotland. He grew up in Kellas’ home town of Aberdeen and now lives in Glasgow.

FRONTISPIECE

The only known image of Alexander Kellas together with his sherpas. Taken at Tangu Dak bungalow sometime before 1914.

First published 2011

This edition published 2014

ISBN: 978-1-910324-08-0

Maps pp.9–14 (excluding p.13) © Jim Lewis

Typeset in 11pt Sabon by

3btype.com

Appendix ‘A Consideration of the Possibility of Ascending Mount Everest’ reproduced with permission of Mary Anne Liebert.

Every effort has been made to locate image copyright holders. Should there be any omissions please contact the publisher.

© Ian R Mitchell and George W Rodway

The authors’ right to be identified as authors of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

This book is dedicated to Professor John B West MD, PhD – for bringing his pre-eminent knowledge of the history of high altitude physiology and medicine to bear on the resurrection of the reputation of the all-but-forgotten Himalayan mountaineer and scientist AM Kellas nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Acknowledgements

WE WOULD LIKE to thank Doug Scott for providing a foreword to this book, and also Liz Smith, Peter Drummond, Mike Dey and Alexander and Laura Mitchell for their help and support.

We also owe a big debt of gratitude to all members of the 2009 Anglo-Indian-American Sikkim (AIAS) expedition who most kindly assisted this project by providing many of the images found in this work.

Further we would like to thank the Royal Geographical Society for permission to use the many images by Alexander Kellas which are published, mostly for the first time, in the book, as well as the Scottish Mountaineering Club, University College London, the University of Durham (Bentley-Beetham Collection) and the estate of Frank Smythe for permission to use other images which appear in the book. We are grateful to Doug Scott for providing us with the main cover image. Uncredited images are in the public domain.

A Note on Nomenclature

Himalayan nomenclature is a problematic issue. We have retained the original usage of place and mountain names by Kellas and others in the quoted text, but after first citation in the main text tried to utilise standard modern map usage, as far as was possible.

Contents

Dedication to John West

Acknowledgements

MAPS

1The Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

2The Valais and Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

3Sikkim, India

4Garhwal, India

5The Kamet Glacier, 1920

6Route of the Everest Expedition, 1921

Foreword by Doug Scott

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE The North East Scotland Background

Aberdeen and the Cairngorm Club

CHAPTER TWO Exploring the Cairngorm Mountains

Mountaineering Apprenticeship

CHAPTER THREE Scotland, London, the Alps

Scientist and Mountaineer

CHAPTER FOUR The Himalaya 1907–1911

Kangchenjunga on his mind

CHAPTER FIVE The Himalaya 1911–1914

Going Native

CHAPTER SIX The War Years and After

Preparing for Everest

CHAPTER SEVEN Prelude to Everest

The Kamet Expedition of 1920

CHAPTER EIGHT Sikkim and Everest 1920–1921

No Country for Middle-Aged Men?

CHAPTER NINE Kellas’ Place in Mountaineering History

The Man not in the Photograph

APPENDIXAlexander Kellas’ 1920 paper ‘A Consideration of the Possibility of Ascending Mount Everest’

FACSIMILE MAPS Northern Sikkim, to illustrate a paper by Dr AM Kellas, showing route of Dr Kellas 1911

Preliminary map to illustrate the route of the Mount Everest Expedition 1921

Bibliography

Chronology

Map 1 The Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

Map 2 The Valais and Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

Map 3 Sikkim, India

Map 4 Garhwal, India

Map 5 The Kamet Glacier, 1920

(Laltan Khan)

Map 6 Route of the Everest Expedition, 1921

Foreword

ALEXANDER KELLAS at his death in 1921, and for a considerable number of years afterwards, had an unrivalled reputation in the world of Himalayan Mountaineering.

This reputation was based upon the number of Himalayan climbs achieved, the lightweight style of his ascents and explorations, being the first to really champion the abilities of the Sherpa and his knowledge of high altitude physiology, which was second to none. For the latter reason alone he was such an important member of the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition during which he died.

Strangely, since the 1950s reference to Kellas in relevant mountaineering literature has diminished to the point where his achievements are all but unknown to the vast majority of mountaineers.

He did not write books of his exploits that perpetuated the memory of those contemporaries that did, such as Mummery, Collie, Younghusband, Longstaff and others to follow.

This book is therefore timely if not long overdue. In it the reader will discover all the climbs and explorations Kellas made, and it traces from early schoolboy days his journey from the Cairngorm Mountains to the remote Himalayan peaks of Sikkim and the Garhwal.

There is much more to this story than simply a list of events, for it is not only about his life but also about the times in which Kellas lived. It is good to be reminded just how fit our predecessors were before the motor car; in 1885 aged 17 he and his younger brother Henry walked the 35 miles from Ballater to the Shelter Stone in 12 hours, excluding an hour’s rest. The latter part of the journey being over rough country into the heart of the Cairngorm Mountains.

Kellas had without doubt enormous stamina and was able to keep going with inadequate food, clothes, and shelter for days at a time when young, which characterised his later Himalayan explorations. There are many threads running through the narrative that help us understand Kellas’ journey through life. It was a life that was extremely hard and often lonely since he appears to have been set apart from full social contact by inner voices leading to quite severe psychosis in later life.

It was only in the Himalaya, it seems, that he could find relief and be at peace with himself in the company of local people looking around the next corner or over that distant col. I had to read this book to write this foreword but once started I found it a compulsive and fascinating account of one of the great pioneers of Himalayan climbing.

Doug Scott

Kathmandu

Introduction

EVERY BOOK HAS ITS own particular genesis, but the current volume’s origin was possibly more particular than most, and involved a good deal of serendipity. Both of its authors had been independent admirers of Kellas for some time, but were unaware of each other’s interest in the man and his achievement, or even of each other’s existence.

To his shame Ian Mitchell had not heard of Alec Kellas until shortly before the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest in 2003, when the mountaineer’s name floated occasionally to the surface, though without there being any proper recognition of his real stature. It may be argued that few others were aware of the Scottish Himalayan pioneer either, but Ian was born and bred in Aberdeen, as was Kellas himself, and spent his mountaineering apprenticeship in the Cairngorm Mountains – as had Kellas himself. To rectify this neglect Ian wrote a popular piece outlining some of Kellas’ main mountaineering achievements for the Scots Magazine in 2003, based largely on the obituaries published at his death in 1921. Pressure of other work prevented him then carrying this interest forward, as did his awareness that he lacked the scientific background to be able to contemplate undertaking a full biography of his fellow Aberdonian, who was both a mountaineer and a high-altitude physiologist.

George Rodway was fortunate in that his scientific and professional training brought him into contact with the eminent high-altitude physiologist John B West, whose admiration for Kellas had led him to the publishing of several articles on the neglected mountaineer, and also to the publishing of long-forgotten material by Kellas himself, from the 1980s onwards. George found a passion for Kellas was infectious and he too began to correct this historical oversight with the publication of various materials, mainly in scientific journals. Then in 2005 he wrote an article for the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal on Kellas’ preparatory work for the first Everest Expedition, including an assessment of his scientific high-altitude biology work on Kamet.

It was over three years later when circumstances allowed Ian’s thoughts to return to Kellas, and when talking casually to Laura Mitchell (no relation) of the BBC in Aberdeen, with whom he was working on a totally different project, he mentioned that he was interested in the unsung mountaineer from the city. ‘He was an ancestor of mine,’ Laura informed him, and subsequently she sent Ian family materials of interest. Spurred on by this chance discovery, Ian wrote an initial letter to George inquiring as to the latter’s further intentions regarding Kellas, and George replied by return with the offer of a joint project, confessing himself not equipped to deal with the Scottish background, and with no prospect of having the time to become so for many years.

It was a fortuitous fit. Ian knew the Scottish material, and could cover Kellas’ period in London and also his Alpine experience, whilst George was not only a high altitude physiologist but also a Himalayan mountaineer, being familiar with Kellas’ main area of exploration and ascents in Sikkim. Both were experienced in collaborative writing ventures. It is a collaboration which has taken George back to Sikkim, Ian to the Alps, and both of us to Kellas’ beloved spot at the Shelter Stone in the Cairngorm mountains, where we survived a hurricane and the consumption of a bottle of malt whisky. Hopefully the appearance of this full-scale biography of Alexander Kellas will help to establish – or rather re-establish after three-quarters of a century of neglect – his reputation as a great Himalayan mountaineering pioneer, in the year of the centenary of his annus mirabilis, when Kellas not only climbed several virgin Himalayan peaks over 20,000ft, but also ascended – in Pauhunri – the highest summit then ascended by man. Tragically Kellas was unaware of this as measurements a century ago erroneously gave the height of Trisul, ascended by Longstaff in 1907, as being greater than that of Pauhunri. As with many other aspects of Kellas’ achievement, this work aims to set the record straight.

Ian R Mitchell

George W Rodway

CHAPTER TWO

Exploring the Cairngorm Mountains

Mountaineering Apprenticeship

ACCOUNTS OF KELLAS’ early years, for example in the several obituaries after his death or in the relevant Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB