Perils on Mount Everest: expedition leader’s story - archive, 1935

3 December 1935: Eric Shipton describes finding the body of adventurer Maurice Wilson, reported lost on a previous Everest expedition

Perils of the Mount Everest exploration were mentioned by Mr Eric E Shipton, leader of the reconnaissance party which recently returned to England, in a lecture last night to the Royal Geographical Society.

Mr Shipton said that his party narrowly escaped being swept away by an avalanche on the icy slopes of the North Col, which were in a terribly dangerous condition during the monsoon period. A few hundred yards from the site of Camp III, the body of Maurice Wilson (lost on a previous expedition) was found. It was evident, said Mr Shipton, that he had died in his sleep from exhaustion and not from starvation, as he had found a dump of food which had been left in 1933 and which was still well stocked. He had clearly been lying in a tent when he died, but the tent had been blown away from his body by the spring gales.

An exploration of the western approaches to the mountain revealed no possible line of attack, said Mr Shipton. Twenty-six peaks, all of altitudes between 20,000 and 23,000 feet, were scaled by the expedition; twenty-four of them had hitherto been unclimbed.

Body found on Everest – solitary climber attempt of two years ago

4 September 1935

Calcutta, September 3
The body of Mr Maurice Wilson, the young English airman who flew from Heston to India in 1933 with the intention of landing on the mountain and planting the union jack on its summit, and who finally tried to climb it on foot alone, has been found by the leaders of the British mountaineering party which is carrying out reconnaissance work for the new Mount Everest expedition next year.

The body was found just above Camp 3 on the mountain. By its side was lying a notebook and a roll of films. It was buried in a nearby crevasse by the reconnaissance party and a cairn was raised over the grave. Captain Wilson had apparently died in his tent, which had subsequently been carried away by high winds.

Story of the attempt
Captain Maurice Wilson, who was a member of the London Aero Club and the son of Mr Mark Wilson, a Bradford manufacturer, served in the West Yorkshire Regiment during the war, and was awarded the Military Cross. He flew to India in a Gipsy Moth machine, hoping to land it at 10,000 feet from the summit and then climb to the top, but was thwarted in this by the refusal of the King of Nepal to grant him permission to fly over his State.

He then sold his aeroplane and decided to try and make the attempt on foot. This also was forbidden, but after spending some months at Darjeeling preparing and training for the hazardous expedition – he is said to have learned to live on dates and cereals – he disguised himself as an Indian porter and set off on the attempt. Up to Camp 3 (21,000 ft up the mountain) he was accompanied by three porters whom he had secretly recruited at Darjeeling, but they were then sent back, and in May last year he started on the last stage of the ascent alone. The porters waited for him for a month, but he never came back.

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