1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition

Precipitated by unexpected permission from Tibet, the 1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition was planned at short notice as a preliminary to an attempt on the summit of Mount Everest in 1936. After exceptionally rancorous arguments involving the Mount Everest Committee in London, Eric Shipton was appointed leader following his successful trekking style of expedition to the Nanda Devi region in India in 1934.

Compared with what had gone before and what followed it was a small, low-cost affair. The approach was from the north side of the mountain and the climbing was planned to be after the monsoon. The monsoon was unusually late that year and, beset by the weather and in difficult conditions of snow, little was achieved regarding the summit. However, a very large number of lesser peaks were climbed for the first time and a southern route up the Western Cwm was identified as a possible line of approach if Nepal could ever be persuaded to change its policy of not admitting climbers.

Eventually, the expedition would have considerable influence on post-war British efforts on Everest from Nepal, with Shipton himself leading the 1951 southern reconnaissance.

The British had been sending expeditions to Mount Everest since the 1921 reconnaissance but none had managed to reach the summit. These had been planned and financed by the Mount Everest Committee, a joint committee of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club. With the 1933 expedition a new team of climbers had reached as high as ever before and it was felt they had done well. Even if the leader, Hugh Ruttledge, had not been a conspicuous success, no criticisms of his leadership had been voiced. The mountaineering establishment did not think that the decision against using supplementary oxygen had contributed to the expedition not reaching the summit. Anyway, the Mount Everest Committee requested permission from Tibet for a further attempt on the mountain and reappointed Ruttledge as leader. This did not please some people, particularly the younger climbers, who viewed the requirement to be the technical climbing of the mountain, to be led from the front, and not a geographical exploration planned and led by men with no recent experience of mountaineering. The mild-mannered Ruttledge (who was 50 years old and walked with a limp) took the brunt of the criticism and in March 1934 his offer to resign from the leadership was accepted by the committee which expressed its regret and said it was in any case unlikely there would be an expedition in the near future.

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