What the weary troops needed to renew their vigour, MacCarthy decided, was…..some mountain climbing. But without heavy packs. The difference between climbing steep slopes with a pack and without one is something that cannot be imagined. It has to be tried. After days of heavy packing, the climber’s sense of balance goes to pieces when he suddenly steps out without a load. But it is a quick readjustment and one the climber is pleased to make.

They did it now, and in five hours they had circled to the north side of the mountain and reached a saddle at 18,800 feet that separated two high peaks. Thick fog blocked out the view as they waited in the bitter cold, straining their eyes to see ahead and pick out a route. Where should they turn next? Was one of these double peaks the summit? Which? Or was the highest point even farther away?

Next day, Foster, Read, and MacCarthy climbed back to the saddle again while the others went down for more food. This time, a gale was sweeping the saddle. Lying down in the snow, peering through icerimmed eyes over the edge of the saddle, they had a brief glimpse of another double peak about three miles away. As they lay in the snow to avoid being bowled over the edge by the gale, they started to argue. Was that the top? Or was there yet another in this damnable, never-ending ridge?

Only one thing was sure: even a camp at 17,000 feet, where sleep was difficult and the thought of hard work revolting, was not high enough. Windy Camp was too remote from the top for weak and exhausted men to make a safe “dash” to the still invisible summit.

As they turned in that night, the temperature was 32° below zero. At 7 a.m. next day, it was still 25 below, and snowing heavily, but all eight went down for supplies. For an hour in the afternoon, the sun poked holes through the layers of cloud and the temperature began to climb rapidly. At last, it seemed, the weather might help them. An hour later a gale whipped away the last vestige of summer and replaced it in minutes with Arctic winter. This was the worst weather so far, and almost trapped the party between camps. All took it in weary turn to punch foot-holes in the snow, and it was after 9 p.m. when they reached Windy Camp again.

Several fingers were frost-bitten from uncovering them for even the few seconds needed to tighten bootlaces or pack straps. But far more serious was the fact that Morgan’s feet, which had been frozen some years before, were now quite badly frost-bitten. This proved to MacCarthy that they had reached the limit of usefulness of the rubber shoepacks they were wearing. These are rubber shoe-pieces with leather boot-uppers attached to them. In the ever-wet going of the lower glaciers, they were a great success. Here, where the snow never melts and the temperature rarely gets as high as freezing-point, the rubber wasn’t necessary – and they were far from warm enough. They were big enough for only two pairs of socks. So the party switched to a type of Indian moccasins, dry-tanned and with room enough for up to five pairs of thick socks.

Keeping warm had now become the all-absorbing problem, and the tents were at once the focus and the shield of life. To keep out the crippling cold, each man was now wearing two sets of the heaviest woollen underwear, with long legs and sleeves; windproof canvas trousers; up to three woollen shirts; at least one sweater; and hooded, knee-length parkas of windproof drill cloth. Everybody wore a woollen balaclava helmet and two pairs of wool gloves with windproof overgauntlets. The tents in which they lived were eight feet square at the base, seven feet high at the one pole, tapering to eighteen inches at the other end. Each weighed ten pounds and slept four men.

Each one had a sewn-in waterproof groundsheet, and on top of this were individual air-mattresses of heavy-gauge rubber. Each of these weighed eight pounds, and a bicycle pump was used to inflate them. Finally came an eiderdown sleeping-bag weighing sixteen pounds. Two of these could be fastened together to make one bag about six feet wide. For twelve days, four of the climbers slept together in one of these. It kept them fairly warm, but they were so cramped that they all slept badly.

Another important aspect of keeping warm at these heights is food. At high altitudes the heartiest eater often becomes finicky. Mountaineers are generally marked individualists, and many acquire an almost fanatical belief in the value of one food or another. One climber, for instance, almost refused to join this party because he understood no cocoa was being taken. Without it in the diet, he said, the assault would not succeed. Another insisted that jam was the key to success on the mountain. He didn’t mind what else was taken provided there was enough jam to permit huge amounts at every meal.

Two of the party fell out on how to cook the bacon. One said vehemently that to be useful it must be burned to a crisp. The other swore it provided most benefit when not cooked but just warmed through.

MacCarthy, who drew up the menu, solved the problem as best he could. He provided far more than he thought the climbers could eat of a variety of meats, butter, cheese, dried eggs and vegetables, powdered milk, and brown sugar. Then for those who wanted to convince themselves they were eating something else, he provided liberal amounts of black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, curry, horseradish, and sauces. It seemed to work. Nobody made any real complaints.

But despite the care that had gone into the planning, now at 17,000 feet they were faced with the serious fact that Morgan’s feet were badly frost-bitten. He must go down. There was no way to get around it, because cold at high altitude is a vastly different thing from the same temperature at sea-level. Extra warmth and simple treatment would not cure it here.

This is chiefly because the thin air forces the body to adjust in many ways to overcome the lack of oxygen. The same volume of air goes into the lungs with each breath as at sea-level, but it contains much less oxygen. And even that is absorbed less readily by the blood, as it is under less atmospheric pressure.

At sea-level the air is at a pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch. By 20,000 feet, the pressure has dropped to a mere 6.75 pounds. Researcher Carpe made some simple tests as he went through the wearying ascent that indicate a practical result of the drop in pressure and the lack of oxygen. At sea-level, he found he could hold his breath comfortably for 75 seconds when he was at rest. At 18,500 feet, he could barely hold it for 20 seconds. Up to 14,000 feet, he found that the time he could hold his breath shortened in the same ratio as the air density declined. Above 14,000 feet, the time dropped sharply. Years later, scientists working on Everest and other high peaks found that above 20,000 feet or so, no matter how much the climber eats and drinks, there is actual loss of weight and muscular wasting as the body starts to degenerate.

Animals kept for experiments in an atmosphere corresponding to 20,000 feet showed degenerative changes in the liver and other organs. Nobody has yet had the temerity to keep man in similar conditions as long, but high-altitude physiologists say the same sort of changes would occur in man too.

Even at far lower levels, the body has to make some startling changes. When air pressure is normal, the automatic breathing that we rarely stop to think about is controlled by a part of the brain that reacts to the pressure of nitrogen in the body. When this pressure drops, the automatic control does not work. This may not be too bad when one can consciously think about it, but what happens at night when we drop off to sleep?

Fortunately, the body is marvellously able to switch over to an emergency control system, in which the level of oxygen in the blood controls the automatic breathing. However, the change from one system to another is often a tough one for the body to make. In camp at 13,800 feet, Morgan had suffered a pronounced Cheyne-Stokes respiration – the alarming “death-rattle” heard as a dying man struggles for air. Morgan’s system was doing just the same thing – hunting for enough air during the critical change-over period.

Another major adjustment the body makes to get more oxygen into the tissues is a striking increase in the number of red corpuscles in the blood. These are the vehicles for carrying oxygen to the tissues. Increasing the number causes a great thickening of the blood; it becomes sluggish, and cold hands and feet become a perennial problem, despite the best equipment.

The breathing speeds up too. This gives off not only a lot of body heat, but also a great deal of moisture. Measurements indicate that probably three pints of fluid are lost in this way alone in a day’s climbing. This, unless it is carefully watched, tends to dehydrate the system even more, and makes the blood even less efficient as a central heating plant for the body.

All these conditions, then, were causing some problems by the time Morgan’s feet became affected, and there was no doubt that his decision to go down was wise. For all the problems that had troubled them so far would be redoubled from here on. At the very least, one more camp had to be set up, and even the most efficient body would be balanced on the thin edge of safety.

Henry Hall, so close to one of the finest prizes of his long climbing career, casually did something that showed why he was one of the best known and most respected of United States climbers. He gave up his chance at the peak and offered to take Morgan down to safety. But first, he insisted, he must take the biggest and heaviest pack up to the next camp-site. It didn’t matter too much if he wore himself out, he said – he was going downhill from then on. But it would at least lessen by a fraction the odds against the others making it.

He did his last big carry on June 20, when all except Morgan moved up in a storm to a tiny saddle at I8,500 feet. This held for many years the record as the highest regular camp established in North America. On the basis that on a mountain a record altitude figure is worth a dozen adjectives, this has been known ever since as the Camp of Eighteen-Five. Then everybody, travelling light, raced back to Windy Camp. Once more it earned its name. All night long, arctic blasts kept the canvas taut and twanging, and everyone came to feel he was living in an oversized, reverberating drum.

At 10 a.m. the wind eased off long enough for Hall and Morgan to set off down. They shook hands quickly with the remaining six climbers, and wished them well; then, looking frail and puny, they vanished within a rope’s length into the swirling clouds of snow. No sooner had they gone than the gale swept back. By 3 p.m. all six had crept into their sleeping-bags, morose and a little anxious about both the prospects above and the pair going down. But there was nothing they could do about either, and they had time to reflect on the futility of man’s boast that he “conquers” peaks. When impersonal nature makes a personal issue of it, the strongest climber hasn’t a hope of winning. All the great feats of mountaineering have been achieved by skilful men who were ready and waiting for the momentary relaxation of nature’s guard that would let them slip in.

So it was now. As suddenly as if somebody had flicked a switch, the wind dropped a few minutes after they crawled into their sleeping bags. The clouds vanished, and sunshine flooded the slopes. They scurried around packing, and by 10 p.m. were settled in for the night at 18,500 feet. Their two small Brownie tents, smaller and a little lighter than the ones they had used so far, made a brave show of pretending to be safe and comfortable at this near-limit of man’s ability.

They found that night and the next morning that the effects of altitude were really beginning to hit everybody. Everything they did was slow and clumsy. Several just lay in their bags and looked with half-glazed eyes at jobs that must be done, thinking dully of ways to avoid them. Even the exertion of getting into the bags, or turning over inside them, set the heart pounding. That night, the temperature was seven degrees below zero – thirty-nine degrees below freezing-point, Fahrenheit. In fact from June 16 to June 26 the thermometer went above zero only once. So befuddled were they next morning, June 22, that it was 11 a.m. before they could start. Thick-gloved hands fumbled drunkenly with packstraps and snow-shoe bindings, and the main thing that got them going was the collective, not individual, feeling that it just had to be done. All pleasure had long since vanished from the undertaking. This feeling of collective responsibility is one of the major benefits of team psychology. It is nothing unusual for all the members of a climbing rope to feel inside that this is the limit; each feels too tired and dispirited to go on. But nobody will admit it, so they do go on. And what each man thought to himself to be impossible is once again accomplished.

So it was now as they moved away from the Camp of Eighteen-Five. Their route at first took them down from the saddle, skirting the double peak so they would not have to fight for valuable height, only to lose it again on the other side. Yet though they were going down, they made only one and a half miles before deep, soft snow halted them on a plateau at 17,800 feet. This they decided to call Plateau Camp, and with faltering, half-desperate movements they pitched their tents near what was later to be grimly known as Hurricane Hill.

It was fortunate they stopped. As the last man crawled panting through the entrance sleeve, a violent gust of wind raced over the hill, bringing a blizzard that shrieked all night. Hardly anybody could even doze as the night crept slowly on. The splendid peace and tranquillity of the heights that the poets praise was nowhere evident. The wind made so much noise that they rather fancied they were spending the night inside a busy railway tunnel. Much of the time they clutched the vibrating bamboo tent-poles, expecting any moment to see the fabric split and tear apart.

But once again came the seeming surrender of nature that lures men on to try impossible deeds. By 10 a.m. the storm had blown out and the clouds of snow whipped up by its passing had settled down again.

The sun came out – and came nearer to immobilizing the party than even the blizzards. The fearful glare from new white snow was almost intolerable, and the severe pains of approaching snow-blindness shot through MacCarthy’s eyes, though he wore two pairs of the darkest snow-goggles made. He was leading the first rope, followed by Carpe, with Foster bringing up the rear. So the rope switched around, to put Foster in front – Foster, whom MacCarthy called “our sheet anchor no matter what the difficulty”. Foster seemed to take all types of problems in his stride, and versatility was his forte. He had already been a member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, and, at thirty·five had been Deputy-Minister of Public Works for the province, was to become chief of police in Vancouver, and a major-general in the Second World War. In addition to the D.S.O. and two bars he won in the First World War, he also won the Croix de Guerre from France and Belgium – and many years later in England, another colonel was to state that Foster had turned down a nomination for the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth’s highest award for bravery.

Billy Foster led them on the wandering route among crevasses, over a shoulder of ice, and to the base of a steep slope supporting the saddle between two peaks. The Double Peak was clearly visible now, but it was impossible to say which of the summits was the higher.

A brief rest here, and MacCarthy tenaciously took back the lead. During the I924 reconnaissance he had tried vainly to decide which of these giant twin peaks was the summit. At various times he and his binoculars had awarded the title to each. Now he set off up the nearest one, with the feeling that this was probably not the summit, but that the only way to find out was to go up it.

The slope was now steeper than anything they had met so far on the mountain. Two weak men would find it almost impossible to hold a third who slipped. But their eight-pointed crampons bit firmly into the icy crust. All they had to do was keep placing each foot in turn in front of, and a little above, the other.

Please stay tuned for the exciting conclusion: Mount Logan – Part 4