1933 British Mount Everest expedition

The 1933 British Mount Everest expedition was, after the reconnaissance expedition of 1921, and the 1922 and 1924 expeditions, the fourth British expedition to Mount Everest and the third with the intention of making the first ascent.

Like the previous expeditions to climb the mountain, the 1933 expedition was unsuccessful, although in two separate attempts Lawrence Wager and Percy Wyn-Harris, and then F. S. Smythe, set an altitude record for climbing without supplemental oxygen that was not broken until Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1978. During Wager and Wyn-Harris's attempt, the ice-axe belonging to Andrew Irvine, who disappeared with Mallory on the 1924 attempt while going for the summit, was found on the flanks of the north face.

Following the unsuccessful attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1922 and 1924, the British waited eight years before the 13th Dalai Lama granted permission in August 1932 for the mountain to be approached from Tibet in the north, on the condition that all the climbers taking part were British. This permission was won by the combined work of the India Office, the government of India and Lt-Col J. L. R. Weir, the British political agent in Sikkim. There was an urgency to their work owing to a British fear that the Germans, who had recently mounted expeditions to Kangchenjunga and Nanga Parbat, might next be targeting Mount Everest.

It fell to the Mount Everest Committee, the body that funded all pre-war attempts on Mount Everest, to appoint a leader for the expedition. The most obvious choice, General C. G. Bruce, was unavailable; two other suitable men, both of whom – like Bruce – had been on earlier expeditions to Mount Everest, were approached but declined the offer: Brigadier E. F. Norton, who had recently been appointed to a position in Aldershot, and Major Geoffrey Bruce, who was on the point of assuming a post in Quetta. Hugh Ruttledge was chosen as leader, with the proviso that, at forty-eight years of age, he was not to undertake any climbing on the upper reaches of the mountain. His choice surprised everyone, including Ruttledge, who, although a veteran Himalayan explorer, had not done much in the way of cutting-edge mountaineering; he also suffered from a limp as a result of a "pig-sticking accident".

...
Wikipedia