New York 1955, 1st US edition. 300 pp, 52 b/w and color photos, illustrations, maps, illustrated end papers. Black cloth hardcover with a very nice dust jacket or no dust jacket. Fine.
Noyce's climbing on the Lhotse Face opened the route to the South Col, enabling Hillary and Tenzing to reach the summit. Best account of the first ascent. This is often called the best written book on the first ascent of Everest.
He is however best known for his role on the successful 1953 Everest expedition and the book that he wrote, South Col.
The title comes about because Noyce was the first member of the 1953 Everest expedition to accomplish the ascent of the South Col, the small plateau just below the summit, from which Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer the world's highest mountain.
In his account Noyce account communicates all the drama, excitement and vitality of one of the greatest feats of exploration of all time.
It is Noyce’s deeply personal approach that transports the reader to climbers as they huddle together in a precariously pitched tent on the Lhotse Face. It is Noyce who captures the intense cold, the shrieking winds, the savage beauty of the icefall, the bottomless crevasses and the towering peaks. He was always a sensitive and poetic recorder of the mountain scene.
It is Noyce's attention to detail, mood and impression, and his masterful characterization of all the members of the party that makes this a unique and intimate account of the expedition and a valuable insight into human nature in extreme conditions. The book also contains nine poems Noyce wrote on the expedition at various altitudes up to 24000 feet.
Noyce had no ax to grind. He was a friend of Sir John Hunt. Not involved in the final summit ascent he can write objectively about it and without the cloud of modesty that Hillary and Tensing brought to it and show it for the tremendous achievement that it was.
