Buried In Avalanche

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 980, 24 May 1930, Page 9

Buried In Avalanche

TRAGEDY ON KUNCHINJUNGA Veteran Porter Crushed To Death CLIMBING PARTY DASHES TO SAFETY ' Times Cable. Reed. Noon. LONDON, Friday. DISASTER ended the first attempt to reach the first terrace and establish Camp Number Three on Kunehinjunga. An avalanche killed the porter Chettan. a veteran of three Everest expeditions and of the 1929 Kunehinjunga expedition.

The remainder o£ the party o£ five Europeans and eleven porters escaped miraculously. Everyone, after a careful study, was satisfied the route was reasonably safe. The party set out at 9.5 on the fatal journey. The weather was ominously warm, but previous experience had shown that avalanches usually fall during dense cold and at night time. Smythe said he heard a tremendous roar and was horified to see an enormous portion of ice wall immediately on the actual route breaking away and hundreds of thousands of tons of ice like a huge tidal wave sweeping with' frightful force across the snowslopes below, on which the ascending party was crawling. The party halted momentarily and then dashed frantically to the left. The next moment a rolling snow cloud

swept down, blotting them out like insects. “It was the most ghastly sight I ever witnessed,” he went on. “The roar increased as the snow clouds swept down with incredible velocity. “The avalanche narrowly missed the camp. I started for the scene, fearing the worst, but when the snow clouds settled it was revealed that the ma jority of the members were safe owing to a bend in the path. “If they had been ten minutes earlier or later the avalanche would have engulfed them.” Two coolies who were bruised found Chettan’s hand sticking out from the ice-blocks and dug him out, crushed and suffocated. The members of the expedition decided to abandon the proposed route in favour of a longer and unexplored one. Mr. Smythe concludes: “I am finishing the dispatch amid a thunderous roll of avalanches.”