Posted by andy bolger on June 07, 2000 at 23:12:10 from th-gt147-040.pool.dircon.co.uk:
“We must have one of them for Kanchenjunga,” (S.D.) said Titty in August 1931.
Kanchenjunga properly spelt “Kangchenjunga” was believed to be the highest mountain in the World in 1845. It attracted expeditions by the botanist Joseph Hoke in 1841 and by Freshfiels, Garwood and Sella who wrote about their circumnavigation of the mountain in 1899. Six years latter it was the scene of a “shameful disaster” involving one of mountaineering’s more colourful proponents, Alistair Crowley (any connection with A.R. in his London literary days?)
Two years before the S .& A.’s successfully “topped out” the German climber Bauer reached 24,000 feet on the mountain. This was a “reccy” for Dyhrenfurh’s international Expedition in 1930 which involved the British climber and writer Frank Smyth . It must have been news reports of this expedition that inspired Titty’s imagination. This is very fitting as this relationship between landscape and imagination forms the basis of Smyth’s best known work “Spirit of the Hills”.
Facts about Kanchenjunga (sic) from John Tuck’s book of the same name published by Panther in 1955.