THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD

Auckland, New Zealand

26 March 1930

(page 8)

UNCONQUERED PEAK.

ASCENT OF KANCHENJUNGA.

INTERNATIONAL EXPEDITION.

FAMOUS MOUNTAINEERS.

The strongest mountaineering expedition that has ever visited the Himalaya has set out from Europe to attempt the ascent of Kanchenjunga, the second highest peak in the world. Famous climbers of four nations—Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Great Britain—are taking part in this expedition, which is the third to attempt the unconquered peak. Professor G. O. Dyhrenfurth, of Germany, will lead the expedition. He will be accompanied by Frau Dyhrenfurth, and by Herr H. Hoerlin, Herr U. Wieland, and Dr. H. Richter; by Herr M. Kurz and Herr C. Duvanel, of Switzerland; by Herr E. Schneider, of Austria; and by Mr. F. S., Smyth, of Great Britain. It is hoped that Mr. E. 0. Shebbeare, a member of the last Mount Everest expedition and forest officer for Sikkim, will be able to join the party.

The Time has arranged to publish a series of exclusive despatches describing the adventure, and will have a special correspondent with the climbers. Arrangements have been made for the publication of the articles in the New Zealand Herald.

The advance party sailed from Venice on February 24 and the remainder of the expedition sailed from Venice on March 9. The expedition will leave Darjeeling toward the end of March, and the attempt on Kanchenjunga will be made at the end of April or the beginning of May before the monsoon, which normally breaks in this district during the latter half of May.

Photographic Records.

Primarily it is a young men's adventure, with the object of conquering a great unsealed peak. However, the party will not be blind to all save the actual goal of their climb, and it is hoped that, if the conditions are reasonably favourable, the most tangible result of the expedition will be a film—the highest cinematographic pictures ever taken anywhere—and an extensive series of panoramas and " still " photographs. Two members, of the party are geologists, and in the intervals of climbing they will have plenty of new material to study. No expedition of this kind would conceivably ignore the natural history of the unexplored regions through which it will pass, and one member of the party is a cartographer. All except the Nepalese side of the mountain has been mapped with some exactitude, but many of the details of the higher regions are missing and the heads of the glaciers on the Nepalese side have never been surveyed.

Two expeditions have previously attempted the ascent of Kanchenjunga. The first, a Swiss expedition in which Mr. Aleister Crowley took part, in 1905, attacked the southern face of the mountain above the Yalung Glacier, but met with, disaster, one climber and three porters being swept into a crevasse by an avalanche. The second expedition, consisting of experienced Bavarian mountaineers, assaulted the tremendous eastern face of the mountain from the Zemu Glacier in 1929, but were forced to retreat by bad weather after reaching a height of 24,600 ft. So difficult was the long ice ridge chosen as the line of ascent that the climbers took three weeks in overcoming 2300 ft. of height.

A Team of Experts.

The party may indeed be regarded as the hardiest and most expert team of mountaineers that has yet been got together to attempt one peak. All its members are widely experienced both in winter and in summer mountaineering, many of them being Alpine climbers of international fame, and every one of them expert ski-runners. Kanchenjunga is 28,150 feet high, and so great a part does physical fitness play in the success or failure at this great altitude that all the party must needs be in perfect health and training and at the height of their powers. The expedition is equipped and organised with the greatest care, after a close study of the experiences of previous expeditions. Herr Duvanel, who has taken many cinematograph films in the Alps, and Mr. Smythe are expert photographers.

The leader of the party, Professor Gunter Dyhrenfurth, Is a mountaineer of wide experience and a professor of geology at Zurich. He has ascended more than 700 peaks in the Alps and Hohe Tatra, mostly without guides, including 56 new routes and first ascents. His climbs include such great ascents as his traverse of the Aletschorn in the Bernese Oberland by the north-east and south-west ridges and traverses of the Matterhorn by the Zmutt ridge and of Castor, Pollux, and the Lyskamm in one day and the Anderson ridge of the Schreckhorn. He has also made a large number of rock climbs 'in the Eastern Alps on little known but difficult peaks, including the great south wall of the Grohmannspitze and the north wall of the Langkofel, which rank as two of the most difficult climbs in the Dolomites.

Mountaineer From Childhood.

He is 44 years of age. His father, Dr. Oskar Dyhrenfurth, now 80 years old, has been a wonderful mountaineer. He climbed the Jungfrau at the age of 69, and at the age of 74 made a solitary climb on the Dachstein, in which he fell badly, but recovered. His son, Professor Dyhrenfurth, made his first climb at the age of nine, and at the age of 13 climbed the Rosengartenspitze, one of the best-known peaks in the Dolomites. He was severely injured in 1921, when he fell 21 feet, owing to a rope breaking while he was descending the Drusenfluh. He is a most active man and an all-round sportsman. During the war he was in command of a corps of mountain guides on the Italian front, where he spent winter and summer at heights of over 10,000 feet, in redoubts among the Ortler mountains and in dug-outs cut in the solid ice of glaciers. He has written several monographs on Alpine mountaineering and on geology, and is a keen photographer.

Frau Dyhrenfurth is perhaps best know a as an international lawn tennis player—she is one of the very best players in mixed doubles in Germany, Austria and Switzerland—but she is also an experienced mountaineer and expert ski-runner. She has accompanied her husband on many expeditions, but few women have taken part in great climbs in the high Himalaya. She will share that distinction with Mrs. Bullock Workman and Mrs. Ruttledge.