Mountaineering Club Sends Four On British-American Expedition

Adding to an impressive list of expeditions, four members of the Mountaineering Club will leave New York tomorrow to join the British-Himalaya Expedition in an attempt to climb Nanda Devi, the highest peak in the British Empire.

Nanda Devi is 25,662 feet in height and located in the Sikhim Himalaya range, about 60 miles from the Tibetan border. Although there are nine higher peaks than Nandi Devi, including Everest, none have ever been climbed, and, unless Everest goes down to defeat this summer, success in reaching the summit of Nanda Devi would give the Harvard climbers the honor of scaling the highest peak ever reached by man.

Adams Carter '36, Arthur B. Emmons 3rd, ocC, Charles S. Houston '35, and William F. Loomis '36 are the men who, with T. Graham Brown of Cardiff, Wales, and Noel E. Odell, also a Britisher, will represent the Club. Carter has climbed extensively in Alaska, Emmons was a member of the Moore-Burdsall Expedition in the summer of 1934, and Loomis has climbed in Alaska, the Alps, and British Columbia. Brown, a noted English Alpinist, was a member of the Foraker party and Odell was one of the group which made the attempt on Everest in 1924. Odell and Brown have both climbed in the Alps with undergraduates in the Club and several years ago were elected honorary members. The other two men who make up the party are Peter Lloyd and Tilman, both of England.

Mountain Inaccessible

Nanda Devi lies in a region difficult of approach in the headwaters of the Ganges. The mountain itself is technically hard, being of the precipitous Materhorn type and rising sharply from a plateau 15,000 feet in elevation.

The most interesting feature of this peak however, is the problem of getting through the range of mountains which surround it and almost completely prevent access to it. These peaks lie in an unbroken range of about 22,000 feet and enclose a valley or plateau in the center of which stands the single peak Nanda Devi.

In one place alone it is possible to break through. The Rishinala, the gorge made by glacial waters draining from these peaks out of the valley, provides a long chimney 4,000 feet deep, along the walls of which it will be necessary to pack the supplies. Shipton and Tilman, two Englishmen who discovered the gorge in 1924 and the only men ever to enter this valley, found that it took them two days to work through the Rishinala before they were able to get to the valley.

Loomis has been in India for some time and has been attempting to establish a cache of food at the base of the mountain before the monsoon, which begins very soon, prevents any passage through the gorge. This bad weather, which will last until the end of August, will make it impossible to do more than go in to the entrance of the Rishinala where the party will wait until the first of September. Conditions should then be excellent for climbing until about the twentieth when the weather begins to make climbing dangerous.

Carter will leave via the Pacific Coast since he is entering a phi race is Portland, Oregon, but the others will leave for New York to go via London.