I just watched the movie Tenzing, directed and produced by Jennifer Podeem. Plenty of stunning scenery and it was great to see the first successful ascent of Everest (Chomolungma), in 1953, from Tenzing Norgay‘s perspective. It’s hard to create a drama when we all know the outcome, but the film was primarily an opportunity to celebrate Tenzing’s life and contribution, and to appreciate the vital role that sherpas have played in Himalayan mountaineering.

The film gives the impression that Tenzing only climbed Everest, but in fact he climbed elsewhere in the Himalayas. In 1946 he climbed with my Dad, attempting to summit an unclimbed peak, Bandarpunch (6,315m, 20,700ft), in the Garhwal Himalaya, Uttarakhand, India. Dad and Tenzing were both born in 1914, so 33 years old at that time. Dad had learned climbing at school in Switzerland and he took a month’s leave to join a group led by his old teacher, Jack Gibson. The other climbers in the party were RL Holdsworth, Lt Nandu Jayal and sherpas Tenzing Norgay, Dawa Thundup and Dhian Singh.

They were attempting the climb during the summer holidays, July, which is monsoon season, because Gibson and Holdsworth were both teachers at the Doon School, a secular school for Indian boys, founded in the 1930s. Dad only had four weeks leave, so they were climbing at the wrong time of year and under time pressure, preventing them from acclimatising properly to the altitude. Dad describes the sherpas as “immensely tough, always cheerful, very willing and most obliging and have my greatest admiration.”

They got as far as the top of a ridge at 5,500m (18,100ft) where they had to camp, “it was very narrow – we had to knock the snow off the top to get a flat place on which to pitch the tents,” said Dad. He says he slept well, but Holdsworth’s account in the Alpine Journal (May 1948) mentions that they had no mattresses and were sleeping on the snow, their cork mattresses being too heavy to carry up to this altitude.

The next morning, Dad and Gibson were defeated by altitude sickness on the way up a rock face and Holdsworth continued towards the summit with Tenzing, Nandu and Dawa. They got further than any previous attempt but were too exhausted to summit and safely return. Dad says “we didn’t reach the summit but despite this it was a huge success.” He must have been thrilled when Everest was eventually summited, understanding from personal experience the enormous difficulty of the achievement. I don’t know if he wrote to Tenzing but I’m sure he must have been very proud and delighted for him.

A fuller account of Dad’s climb can be found in Stranger In My Heart.