Chatting with the Library team about their latest reading challenge and possible authors visit from Matt Dickinson, prompted a look into our mountaineering archive material. Matt Dickinson is a film maker, writer and made a successful attempt of the North Face of Everest in 1996, during some of the worst recorded weather conditions. One of the archive items that sparked interest was this letter.
Written by Frank Smythe (OB Bees 1918) to Headmaster C M Cox and posted from Mount Everest Expedition Camp 2 (19500') on the 28th April 1933. The envelope has the postmark for the Everest Expedition Base Camp. Smythe tells of the conditions whilst marching through Tibet and how “the mountain, the cold and the altitude were natural selectors of the unfittest”. Another OB Raymond Greene (St. John's 1920) was the Senior Medical Officer on the team.
Smythe was a member of a reconnaissance party trying to find the best route across the second step and up the final pyramid. He writes in his letter “that it is a mountaineering problem of the greatest interest". He signs off by wishing the school the best of luck for a good cricket season and if he was back in August or earlier, he'd much like to bowl a few half volleys in the leg at the OB week.