Supplies were carried from Base Camp at 16,500 feet (5,030 metres) to an advanced base atCamp III. From there, on May 13, a camp was established on the North Col. With great difficulty a higher camp was set at 25,000 feet (7,620metres) on the sheltered side of the North Ridge. On the next morning,May 21, Mallory, Norton, and Somervell left Morshead, who was suffering from frostbite, and pushed on through trying windy conditions to 27,000 feet (8,230 metres) near the crest of the Northeast Ridge. On May 25 Finch and Captain Bruce set out from Camp III using oxygen.
Finch, a proponent of oxygen, was justified by the results. The party, with the Gurkha Tejbir Bura, established Camp V at 25,500 feet (7,772metres). There they were stormbound for a day and two nights, but the next morning Finch and Bruce reached 27,300 feet (8,320 metres) and returned the same day to Camp III. A third attempt during the early monsoon snow ended in disaster. On June 7 Mallory, Crawford, and Somervell, with 14 Sherpas, were crossing the North Col slopes. Nine Sherpas were swept by an avalanche over an ice cliff, and seven were killed. Mallory's party was carried down 150 feet (45 metres) but not injured.
Brigadier-General Charles Granville Bruce Bruce (1866–1939)
Charlie Bruce (known as “Bruiser”), hard-drinking Himalayan veteran and larger-than-life leader of the 1922 expedition, was a fluent Nepali speaker who, both in 1922 and 1924, bridged perfectly the cultural divide between sahib and Sherpa. However, malaria forced him to relinquish his leadership of the 1924 expedition to Norton while he was still en route to the mountain.
Bruce served a swashbuckling career with the Gurkhas (1889–1920) and was severely wounded at Gallipoli in World War I. Bruce’s extensive mountaineering experience included climbing with Conway in the Karakoram (1892), with Mummery on Nanga Parbat (1895), and with Longstaff on Trisul (1907). From 1931 to 1936 he was Honorary Colonel of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles of the Indian Army. When Bruce was felled by a stroke in 1939, Raymond Greene was his doctor.
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