Mukut: The Crown

Mukut: The Crown, originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

First Ascent: - 1951: Mukut Parbat was climbed via the steep northwest ridge by a crack New Zealand team that included Edmund Hillary, George Lowe, H. E. Riddiford (leader), F. M. Cotter and Pasang Dawa Lama. Summitters were Riddiford, Cotter and Pasang Dawa Lama

Mukut Parvat has an interesting history specially for those interested in Mountain Lore..

This was Edmund's Hillary's first Himalyan Expedition and sowed the seeds which would later see him along with Tezing Norga to become the first men to Climb Everest.

NZ MUKUT EXPEDITION 1951 :

With advice from the Everest veteran Noel Odell ( the last man to see Mallory alive on Everest and who was then a professor of Geology at Otago University), they chose a mountain called Mukut Parbat in northern Garhwal (Odell had visited this area along with Bill Tillman while making the first ascent of Nanda Devi in 1936). For this unclimbed 7,000-metre peak, they chose to attack the via the steep northwest ridge by a crack

As this was their first Himalyan Expedition they took just standard alpine equipment. Interviewed many years later for Mountain magazine, Hillary recalled: 'I had a pair of boots that should have been in a museum, but I managed to get one-and-a-half pairs of socks into them.'

On summit day Hillary with his usual climbing partner George Lowe (who had introduced Hillary to climbing) set out first but were soon brought to a halt due to Lowe's footwear and the onset of frostbite . they returned to their high camp and watched Riddiford , Cotter and Pasang draw inexorably closer to the summit finally making it late in the day. This marked the first ascent of the peak.
Neither Hillary nor Lowe got to the summit, despite doing most of the hard work lower down the mountain. Hillary was deeply disappointed, although impressed at the stubborn resolution of Riddiford, who had been unwell..

Although Hillary himself didn't reach the summit of Mukut Parbat in 1951, he did climb six peaks over 6,000 metres. Noticing an Indian newspaper announcement that the famous English explorer Eric Shipton was about to leave on a reconnaissance expedition to the south side of Everest, Hillary wrote to Shipton asking whether the great man could use the services of some well-acclimatised Kiwi climbers. Unknown to Hillary, the president of the New Zealand Alpine Club had also sent a similar request.

Shipton had a soft spot for New Zealanders, and a telegram arrived in Garhwal saying that two climbers could join the expedition. After an acrimonious discussion, it was agreed that the self-appointed leader, Earle Riddiford, should go, along with Hillary, who had just enough money left to last until Nepal. Ed Cotter and George Lowe returned to New Zealand.

Hillary knew that he should really have returned too, to rejoin his family in the apiary. But he was the sort of person who knew when selfishness--or at least self-interest - was the right course. As he said in his Mountain interview, 'Eric Shipton was the great hero of New Zealand mountaineering': you just didn't turn down that kind of opportunity. And so, a week or two later, in a smoky room beside the Arun river in eastern Nepal, Hillary and Riddiford met the legendary explorer and his fellow British expeditioners--Tom Bourdillon, Bill Murray and the young surgeon who had initiated the expedition, Michael Ward to start exploring in the Sola Khumbu and discovering the route via The Icefall and the Western Cwm to the South Col and the summit of Everest.