Maurice Wilson on Everest — Faith, a fast, and a lonely death on the ice

In late May 1934, on the East Rongbuk Glacier beneath the North Col of Mount Everest, the British adventurer Maurice Wilson died alone in a small tent at roughly 6,400 metres, having tried to climb the highest mountain on Earth with almost no mountaineering training. He had reached India by light aircraft, slipped illegally into Tibet disguised as a monk, and walked to the foot of the peak convinced that prayer and fasting would carry him to the summit. They did not. His body, tent and diary were found the following year, in July 1935, by Eric Shipton’s reconnaissance expedition.

Wilson was not a member of any organised effort; he was a thirty-six-year-old solo enthusiast acting against the advice of the Royal Geographical Society, the Air Ministry and the British authorities in India. A decorated veteran of the First World War, he had become persuaded after a period of illness and recovery that a thirty-five-day regime of fasting and faith could cure any ailment and overcome any obstacle, and he chose Everest as the public proof of his idea. His plan combined two feats he was unqualified for: a long-distance flight in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth he had only just learned to fly, and the ascent of an 8,849-metre peak that the best-equipped expeditions of the age had failed to climb.

His three Sherpa companions — Tewang, Rinzing and Tsering, all veterans of the official 1933 Everest expedition — guided him from Darjeeling across Tibet to the Rongbuk Monastery and waited at Camp III as he made his final attempts. They are central to the story and were treated kindly by Wilson in his diary, even as his judgement failed; they urged him to turn back, and when he would not, it was their later testimony and Shipton’s expedition that established how and where he died. Wilson’s last diary entry, dated 31 May 1934, read simply: “Off again, gorgeous day.”