Captain Noel kinematographing the Ascent 242 of Mount Everest from the Chang La The British Members of the Second 248 Climbing Party Chang La and North-east Shoulder of 290 Mount Everest Religious Banners in Shekar Monastery 314 Romoo, the Lepcha Collector who assisted 322 Dr. Longstaff and Major Norton Karma Paul, the Expedition’s Interpreter 322 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAPS Sketch Map of Mount Everest and the 366 Rongbuk Glaciers The Route of the Mount Everest 367 Expedition, 1922 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION By SIR FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION Colonel Howard-Bury and the members of the Expedition of 1921 had effected the object with which they had been despatched. They were not sent out to climb Mount Everest. It would be impossible to reach the summit in a single effort. They were sent to reconnoitre the mountain from every direction and discover what was for certain the easiest way up. For it was quite certain that only by the easiest way possible—and only if there were an easy way—would the summit ever be reached. In the Alps, nowadays, men look about for the most difficult way up a mountain. Hundreds every year ascend even the Matterhorn by the easiest ways up. So men with any turn for adventure have to look about for the difficult ways. With Mount Everest it is very different. The exhaustion produced from the difficulty of breathing in enough oxygen at the great heights is so fearful that only by a way that entails the least possible exertion can the summit be reached. Hence the necessity for spending the first season in thoroughly prospecting the mountain. And this was all the more necessary because no European so far had been within sixty miles of Mount Everest, so that not even the approaches to the mountain were known. During 1921, under the leadership of Colonel Howard-Bury, this reconnaissance was most thoroughly carried out. Mr. Mallory found what was quite certainly the easiest—indeed the only practicable—way up the mountain, and Major Morshead and Captain Wheeler mapped the mountain itself and the country round. They brought back also much valuable experience of the conditions under which a definite “all-out” attempt to reach the summit might be made. Ample data were therefore now at the disposal of the Mount Everest Committee for organising an expedition to make this attempt.