EVEREST 1933 by Ruttledge Hugh - 1934

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1934. First edition, early issue, December 1934, only two months after the first issue and in the same binding and dustjacket as the first issue. With 59 sepia full-page illustrations from the original photographs, 3 diagrams in text and with 4 maps, 3 of which are folding. Large, thick 8vo, publisher’s original royal blue cloth lettered in gilt on the spine and in the pictorially decorated original dustjacket. xv, 390, including index. A very bright, fresh and clean copy, solid and quite fine, the jacket is handsome with a bit of mellowing and a bit of wear to the tips and edges, still very well preserved. IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION, EARLY ISSUE. A SCARCE ACCOUNT OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST TREKS UP EVEREST, SCARCE IN SUCH EXCELLENT CONDITION. This is the story of the Mount Everest Expedition of 1933, led by Hugh Ruttledge, the author, and describes one of the earliest attempts made to climb Mount Everest. This expedition did not stand alone in the series of man’s effort to reach the higher summits of the world, but was rather a stage in the evolution of mountaineering, in the adaption of the body to exotic conditions, and in the mastery of matter by the spirit. It began with experience dearly won by other men through toil and danger... and it was an expedition which stretched men to their breaking points. For the first time, mountaineers were able to sustain sleep conditions at the highest altitudes and were able to adapt rather successfully to conditions in the highest regions.
“Hugh Ruttledge led this expedition, which was one of the first to attempt the climb of Mount Everest. Ruttledge's team included Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton, Wyn Harris and L. R. Wager, and it was the latter two who managed to reach 28,200 feet in their attempt to determine the possibility of climbing the northeast ridge. Their decision was that the ridge could not be climbed and they were forced to traverse the face instead. This work is a classic in the history of the climbing of Mount Everest, a feat finally accomplished twenty years later by Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal.” Kahn ‘04
The climbing of Everest was a challenge still unmet when this expedition ended. But the foray made set still another important building block into the journey that would eventually succeed in 1953 under the leadership of Sir Edmund Hillary. A classic work in the mountaineering genre.