She had no connections with medicine nor any desire to take up climbing, a disposition that Ward regarded as an ideal counterbalance to his own obsessions.He developed a special interest in high-altitude physiology and while wintering at 5,800m on the "Silver Hut" scientific expedition in 1960-61 made an unofficial first ascent of Ama Dablam (6,828m), the so-called "Matterhorn of the Khumbu" and a big number on any climber's CV. A request to go to Bhutan to give the king some medical advice led to exploratory journeys into the remote north of the country. But this reasonable opinion for a medical officer - and Hunt did look pretty awful at this stage - was probably coloured with disappointment that he, as doctor, would not be at the sharp end of the climb. In the event, Hunt performed very well, carrying vital supplies to 8,335m. Ward had reached a high point of about 7,600m on the Lhotse Face, before his legs buckled "in the peculiarly jelly-like fashion of a drunkard's walk", and, though he returned to almost the same height in much better shape, during the final push he was on duty in the cwm as doctor.After Everest, Ward focused on qualifying as a surgeon rather than joining his companions on the lecture circuit Not for him the "the adulatory cheers of audiences".
Pugh tackled problems of oxygen uptake, acclimatisation, dehydration, diet, the right clothing and efficient stoves. Ward declared him to be "the one indispensable member of the team" but this intense championing of science rather irritated other Everesters who believed success was at least as much due to Hunt's meticulous planning and skilful leadership - or the drive and ambition of Hillary and Tenzing.On the mountain itself, Ward was critical of Hunt's decision to lead the team that was to establish the top camp, believing he was too old and exhausted to go so high. The Swiss didn't make it, yet in reaching within 250 metres of the summit Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay broke down huge psychological barriers. At the same time the British were able to work out the physiological problems of high-altitude climbing on an expedition to Cho Oyu.Ward firmly believed that the main reason for success on Everest in 1953 was that the British had at last got the science right, and for this he gave particular credit to Dr Griffith Pugh, a field physiologist from the Medical Research Council attached to both the Cho Oyu and 1953 expeditions. Ward seems, from his accounts, to have kept his scientist's open mind on the existence of such a being, but was seriously offended by "unworthy speculation" that the story of tracks was a practical joke and the prints enhanced by Shipton.When Ward heard the Swiss had got in first with permission for Everest in 1952 he was "incandescent with rage" at the incompetence of the Himalayan Committee However in retrospect it proved a blessing.
The door was almost open, but still barring the way was a crevasse some 20m wide stretching from one side of the cwm to the other. Next year a Swiss expedition would come, equipped with ladders, and almost steal a prize that the British somehow assumed was theirs by right.After leaving the icefall, the recce party set out for some agreeable exploration of the Mengluntse area (their name), to the west of the Khumbu, in the course of which Shipton, Ward and Sen Tensing found and photographed a set of footprints that has aroused intense interest ever since Tensing declared them immediately to be those of a yeti. "To carry loads up this way was to have a glimpse into purgatory," he wrote. Others were luckier and it became clear that the icefall could be breached, though Shipton balked at the prospect of sending porters repeatedly through such an unstable labyrinth.On 28 October, the whole team ascended the icefall and stood on the lip of the Western Cwm. The idea was for a reconnaissance expedition up Nepal's Khumbu valley to prospect a route into the Western Cwm. At first the mountaineering establishment, in the form of the Himalayan Committee, was sceptical, swayed by the verdict of Bill Tilman who had reached the Khumbu glacier in 1950 "Impossible.
