No . 132 The Trusty Servant
NW ). Morshead , who led a Survey of India detachment to map Tibet , travelled enormous distances with his team of porters , travelling as far as the Tibetan border with Nepal far to the south west . Combined with the exertions of Oliver Wheeler , a Canadian , who used the more detailed method of photographic surveying , the detachment mapped an astonishing 12,000 square miles of Tibet at a scale of 4 inches to 1 mile . Wheeler , who operated almost alone throughout the expedition , spent more time at altitude than any other expedition member and succeeded in mapping the area closest to Everest at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile .
Although Mallory identified through a break in the clouds that the North Col and NW ridge of Everest would provide the only possible approach , he overlooked the better approach via the East Rongbuk Glacier . ( The only reason that Mallory was standing on Lingtren on 24 th June was because his previous attempts at photography had been found to be incompetent – he had been inserting the photographic plates back to front – and so had raced up at the last minute in the hope of some lastminute images .) Instead of following the East Rongbuk Glacier , spotted too late by Wheeler , but which would be the approach route in 1922 and ’ 24 , the whole expedition retreated north before circling east to approach Everest again via the Kama Valley and the Kharta Glacier . Having no prior experience of monsoon weather in the Himalaya , the expedition continued to explore on an Alpine timetable . Thus it was that Mallory , who had first seen the North Col from above the Rongbuk Valley on 24 th June , did not see it from the east side until mid-August . Poor weather postponed efforts to reach the North Col , although Mallory and Bullock reached the high point between the the Kharta and East Rongbuk glaciers , known as Lhakpa La ( or
Bullock ' s Plaque Windy Gap ) on 10 th September .
A final attempt to reach the North Col , when the weather cleared towards the end of September , saw Mallory , Bullock and the surveyor , Wheeler , at a camp at Lhakpa La on 22 nd September . They descended to the top of the East Rongbuk Glacier where they spent a most uncomfortable and windswept night 1,000 feet below the North Col , before setting out in the early morning of 24 th September for their objective . Although the party climbed to the col , the high winds that whistled over the shoulders of Everest in September made further progress impossible and the three , with their porters , were hastened from the mountain by the gales , to re-join , briefly , the rest of the expedition before it dispersed and made its various ways back to
Darjeeling .
The expedition had achieved its objectives : Mallory had spied a climbing route for future expeditions ; Wheeler had identified the East Rombuk Glacier as the better route into the North Col ; and Morshead , Wheeler ( and two other scientists – Wollaston the naturalist and Heron , a geologist ) had achieved extraordinary feats of exploration and mapping of a previously unknown part of the world . They also learnt that the Himalayan climbing season was much shorter and earlier than the European equivalent .
The romance of Mallory ’ s great Himalayan adventures has made it easy to overlook the other Wykehamists involved . Of the climbers , both Mallory and Morshead already had plaques commemorating them on the wall of Cloisters , so the College took the opportunity of the exhibition and commemoration on 23 rd September 2021 to dedicate a third plaque to Guy Bullock . It simply states :
GUY HENRY BULLOCK 1887 – 1956 DIPLOMAT AND MOUNTAINEER SCHOLAR OF THIS COLLEGE 1901 – 1906
Enlargements of the original images taken during the expeditions hang in Cloisters
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