Science: Kanchenjunga Couloir

Death slipped up on a German party climbing Himalayan Mount Kanchenjunga last week, struck twice, causing anguish which when transcribed became one of the finest bits of journalistic writing this summer.

Two years ago Dr. Paul Bauer took Bavarian mountain climbers to scale 28,146-ft. Kanchenjunga on the India-Thibet frontier. Blizzards and avalanches thwarted the party. Last year another German group under Professor Günther 0. Dyhrenfurth tried, failed, turned to and surmounted neighboring Jonsong Peak, altitude 24,340 ft. This summer Dr. Bauer again essayed Kanchenjunga.

Last week his men—Germans, Indians and Thibetans—were high up the Zemu Glacier. They had rounded its crumbling snout the previous fortnight. The party had been cheery. Now they were plodding on, apathetic from the sight of double-dealing Death.

The episode, which Dr. Bauer reported to the London Times and the New York Times, was this:

“The larger party was on its way to pitch Camp Eight. At 2 p.m. we attained the place where two years ago a temporary camp called the Little Camp, was established. Both sides of the ridge fall with terrific steepness.

“This year the route for 120 feet was through the flank and then for a rope’s length [80 ft.] through an ice couloir. After that one stood on a wide rib leading in a few minutes, rather easily, to the terrace of Camp Eight.

“Hans Hartmann and Dr. Karl Wien passed the spot, which was by no means too difficult for skilled mountaineers. Hermann Schaller was just about to ascend the steep couloir, and I watched him from near by; for my rope team, consisting of Hans Prischer, myself and a porter, was to follow at once.

“Quietly and surely Schaller cleared the steps formerly cut. Passang, the second man on the rope, elderly and reliable, followed for a few metres, and a third man, Tsain Narboo, stood on the boulder at the beginning of the couloir and managed the rope.

“Suddenly Passang’s body shot downward, followed immediately by Schaller, who in a high curve shot over him through the air into the snow-filled couloir.

”For a fraction of a second I hoped the rope might break the fall, though at once I was aware that no rope could halt this double fall. The bodies flew down the terrifically steep couloir. The porter of my rope team screamed with horror and looked as if he were going to throw himself down the abyss. We all felt an uncanny desire to follow them.

“Dulled with terror, we realized the terrible disaster. With a rope we fixed the porter to the rock over which the rest of the rope was double slung. We proceeded to Camp Eight, where we recalled Hartmann and Dr. Wien, for the whole party to descend and search for our poor friends. Six in all passed the night on an ice ledge a metre wide on the range of the couloir. Next day almost the entire expedition gathered in the highest basin of the Zemu Glacier.

“[Two days later] we found both at the base of the couloir and it was evident they had been killed at once. The couloir breaks sheer for several hundred metres.

“Next day we brought the dead down through the soft snow to an island of rock emerging from the sea of ice and surrounded by an incomparable mountain circus. There we buried them today, not trying to hide our tears, and joined all our forces to build a tomb worthy of the man who gave his life for a great cause.

“The grave was planted over and over with green flowers. From a height of 5.400 metres it looks out over the Zemu Glacier and behind rise the ruddy sheer walls of Kanchenjunga. At the head we have erected a gigantic cairn.”