Everest diaries of mountaineer Edward Norton to be published
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Version 0 of 1. The private diaries and sketchbooks of a mountaineer who tackled Everest with tragic climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine will be published for the first time, almost 100 years after they died. Edward “Teddy” Norton was an important member of the 1922 and 1924 expeditions, leading the latter when Mallory and Irvine disappeared. Norton set world altitude records for climbing without oxygen, reaching a 28,126ft level that remained unbeaten for more than half a century. Yet, he never wanted his diaries to be published because he assumed they would not interest anyone else. His family thought differently, and has now released the material to the excitement of historians. The volume, titled Everest Revealed: The Private Diaries and Sketches of Edward Norton 1922-24, will be published by The History Press in October. In its preface, Norton’s grandson, Christopher, observes that these expeditions have continued to attract wide public interest beyond mountaineers, fuelled by the discovery of Mallory’s body in 1999: “So it seems appropriate, in this 90th anniversary of … the 1924 expedition, to make this material more widely available.” The diaries, written in pencil in leather-bound notebooks, paint a picture of the acute hardships endured to climb the world’s highest peak. Norton wrote of a “real bad go of snow blindness, v. painful” and likened the relentless “bitter” winds to a toothache, from which he “couldn’t get away”. In one entry he recorded: “[Henry] Morshead had all fingers of both hands frostbitten & Mallory most of them. [Howard] Somervell one finger slightly bitten, in addition to my ear.” Some of Morshead’s fingers were subsequently amputated. In other entries, Norton wrote of their “useless” feet, “an awful looking sight – all covered with bandages”. Among numerous references to utter exhaustion, he wrote of their “most pronounced ‘glacier lassitude’”, the worst he had felt, hardly able to “drag one foot in front of the other”. He continued: “If one sits down one can hardly get up again.” He thought that was due to “evaporation from the skin”. There was also the “difficulty” of negotiating snow slopes that “turned out to be the hardest glassy ice”. “I slipped badly … and carried away everyone except Mallory who belayed very neatly … After this we crawled down somehow.” He paid tribute to the skills of Mallory and Somervell, “two fine mountaineers backing up and belaying splendidly all the way”. Comradeship amid adversity is a strong theme: “I had put down my rucksack (stuffed spherical with spare woollies, socks, bedroom slippers &c.) … and it had disappeared with one leap to the Main Rongbuk Glacier below. Consequently I was none too well off for clothes – tho’ of course the others helped me out.” An avalanche that hurled seven of the porters over an ice cliff to their deaths was a loss that “cast a gloom over everything”. When Mallory and Irvine went missing, Norton sensed their tragic fate: “Of all the truly miserable days I have spent at [Camp] III this by far the worst. By now it appears almost inevitable that disaster has overtaken poor gallant Mallory & Irvine – 10 to 1 they have ‘fallen off’ high up.” Such accounts, though haunting, are sparsely worded, cold epitomes of the stiff upper lip. But Graham Hoyland, author of Last Hours on Everest, said: “They were all products of the first world war. Norton was a military man. They were only too used to having their colleagues dying only six years before. They were very used to empty chairs at the mess table. It sounds blasé or heartless now. But actually it was a way of dealing with these multiple bereavements … I think a lot were suffering from survivor guilt … They were pretty scarred guys.” In 1993, Hoyland became the 15th Briton to climb Everest. His evidence led to the discovery of Mallory’s body. He said: “Norton to me is one of the great stars of those early Everesters … I am very excited about the prospect of seeing this new material from those iconic early Everest expeditions.” Part of Norton’s mission was to collect samples of flora and fauna for the Natural History Museum in London. The forthcoming volume includes landscapes, wildlife and flowers, which he painted despite relentless Tibetan winds and other extreme obstacles. Christopher Norton observed: “The sketches in particular provide a vivid picture in colour of a world, which is generally seen through the lens of black-and-white photography.” The diaries’ publication is all the more poignant in a year when an avalanche killed at least 12 local climbers in what was seen as one of the most lethal accidents in recent history. |