Hugh Ruttledge
Hugh Ruttledge (* October 24, 1884, † November 7, 1961 in Stoke at Plymouth ) was a British mountaineer and expedition leader of two expeditions to Mount Everest in 1933 and 1936.
Childhood and youth
Ruttledge was the son of Lt.- Colonel Edward Butler Ruttledge, who worked as a physician in the Indian colonial administration, and his wife Alice Dennison. Ruttledge was educated at schools in Dresden and Lausanne, and then went to Cheltenham College. In 1903 he enrolled at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. In 1906 he became the second graduation honors in the Classical tripos.
India and Mountaineering
Ruttledge was 1908, the entrance examination of the Indian colonial administration and spent a year at the University of London with the study of Indian law, history and languages , before he went to India in 1909.
He was first employed as an assistant in Rurki and Sitapur, then promoted to magistrates in Agra. He played polo and took part in field sports such as big game hunts, until he fell from his horse in 1915 and this accident a backbone Leiden ( verkrümmter back) gave ("a curved spine and a compacted hip" ) him. In 1915 he also married Dorothy Jessie Hair Elder in Agra, with whom he had one son and two daughters.
1917 moved Ruttledge to Lucknow to become the city administrative officer there. In 1921 he was appointed Deputy Commissioner there. During a visit to Europe in 1921 he began to climb in the Alps.
In 1925 he went as a Deputy Commissioner to Almora at the foot of the Himalayas, within sight of some of the high mountains. Despite his injuries, Ruttledge was more capable of climbing, and he sharpened his senses, to get to know every corner of his district. Together with his wife he began the glaciers and peaks to explore on India's northern border.
The highest peak in the British Empire was the Nanda Devi, surrounded by a series of mountains higher than 21,000 feet, so it was not very accessible. 1925 explored the Ruttledges together with Colonel RC Wilson of the Indian Army and Dr TH Somervell, the area around the mountain, in the hope of access to the mountain above the Thimphu and Milam Glacier; but they concluded that the company is potentially dangerous.
Together with his wife he undertook in July 1926, the pilgrim circumambulation of Mount Kailash; his wife was the first Western woman who took this ceremony. Ruttledge was in Tibet in official matters, but because the officer, whom she hoped to see the oldest of Garpon in Gartok, was prevented Ruttledge and his wife decided to make the pilgrimage called parikrama around Mount Kailas. Meanwhile explored Wilson (who accompanied on the trip ) and a Sherpa, who called himself "Satan" (sic ), the various approaches to the mountain. Ruttledge held the 2000 meters high north side of Kailas for too steep and unersteigbar ( ' utterly unclimbable '). He thought about an ascent of the mountain via the northeast ridge, but came to the conclusion that he had too little time to do so. While he returned to Almora, he wrote that he had about 600 miles beautiful trekking behind him, he completely put back on foot, to the astonishment and scandal of "right thinking" Indians and Tibetans. Ruttledge and his wife crossed the first known crossing of the Traill - pass filter between the Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot.
In 1927 he explored along with Tom Longstaff and supported by Sherpas Nandakini the valley and crossed the high pass between the Trishul and Nanda Ghunti.
Although Longstaff reported that many people in Ruttledges district harbored great respect for him, Ruttledge took back in 1929, very early in his resignation from the Indian colonial administration. Somervell commented as follows: "He was tired of making plans, of which he knew they were right, and to experience each time that the colonial administration knew better than the man on the spot " ( " He was so tired of making plans did he knew to be right, to place did the Government always thought they knew better than the man on the spot " ). At the time of his departure Ruttledge and his wife had exceeded twelve high passes.
Ruttledge attempted three times in the 1930s to reach the Nanda Devi, and did not make it three times. In a letter to the Times, he wrote that " the Nanda Devi imposes on her admirers an imposition that still outside their forces and perseverance subject ," and he added that the access to the Nanda Devi sanctuary was already difficult than to the North Pole to come.
Everest Expedition 1933
1933 received the British by the authorities in Tibet for the first time after 1924, the permission to make further summit attempts on Everest. The mission of the Mount Everest Committee was to find an expedition leader for the fourth expedition, which was difficult because of the inability of Charles Granville Bruce (Head of previous British expeditions to the mountain ), and due to the refusal of Major Geoffrey Bruce and Edward Felix Norton to achieve this position. How Ruttledge wrote that it was " necessary to find someone who has experience with people in the Himalayas has, as well as one with knowledge of mountain climbing, and so was probably randomly lot to me."
The team for this experiment, which since then undertook the default route via the North Col, consisted of a combination of military people, and the " Oxbridge " graduates, and included anyone who had already been present at trial of 1924. The British team consisted of Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton, Jack Longland, Eugene Birnie, Percy Wyn -Harris, Edward Shebbeare, Lawrence Wager, George Wood -Johnson, Hugh Boustead, Colin Crawford, Tom Brocklebank, E. Thompson and William Maclean, with Raymond Greene (brother of Graham Greene) as expedition doctor and William " Smidge " Smyth - Windham as a radio operator.
The highest point that was reached, measured 8570 m, but the route was found to be too heavy, and the vital Camp V, at one of the rare days of good weather (May 20 ) would have to be built, was due to disagreements in the team never built. It was during this expedition that Wyn -Harris on 8500m height about 20 m below the ridge found the ice ax by Andrew Irvine who disappeared near the summit on June 8, 1924 together with George Mallory.
One of the Sherpas on the expedition (as well as the trial of 1936) was Tenzing Norgay, who then along with Edmund Hillary in 1953 created the first ascent.
Ruttledge in 1934 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society: " For his travels in the Himalayas and his expedition leaders on Mount Everest 1933". ( ". For his journeys in the Himalayas and his leadership of the Mount Everest Expedition, 1933" ), although the Mount Everest Committee initiated an investigation into the causes of failure of this expedition, Ruttledge was found not guilty; almost all members of the expedition had brought their admiration for him to express.
Everest Expedition 1936
Due to the almost universal support for his leadership in the travel Ruttledge 1933 was also selected again in 1935, his second expedition (the sixth British ) to take on the Everest, which was the largest to date to conquer the Everest, together with veterans the 1933er expedition - Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton and Percy Wyn -Harris - more team members were Charles Warren, Edmund Wigram, Edwin Kempson, Peter Oliver, James Gavin, John Morris and Gordon Noel Humphreys. William Smyth - Windham was again the chief radio operator. Although they reached the North Col, Ruttledge blew from the expedition, as severe storms and deep snow above 7,000 meters showed the early onset of the monsoon.
Tenzing Norgay wrote about Ruttledge and the 1936er Expedition:
"Mr Ruttledge was too old as a mountaineer, but he was a wonderful man, friendly and warm, and all the Sherpas were proud to be on the road with him. This was a very large expedition, with more Sahibs than ever before, and a total of sixty Sherpas, five times as much as 1935. " (1935, there had been a very small, underfunded, shaped by the notorious avarice of the then head expedition, which was unsuccessful. )
More life
1932 Ruttledge was planning a life as a farmer and eventually bought the island Gometra, near the Isle of Mull. After his return from the 1936er expedition to Everest, he decided that a life at sea was preferable, and he bought several boats " a 42 -foot Watson- life rescue boat and later a larger sailing vessel" to fulfill his idea. In 1950 he moved away from the coast and bought a house in the area of Dartmoor.
Ruttledge died in Stoke at Plymouth on 7 November 1961.
Bibliography
- Hugh Ruttledge: Everest: The Unfinished Adventure, Hodder and Staughton, 1937
- Audrey Salkeld: Ruttledge, Hugh (1884-1961), mountaineer. In: HCG Matthew, Brian Harrison ( ed.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, from the earliest times to the year 2000 ( ODNB ), Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0 - 19-861411 -X, online status: January 2011 ( license required) (English)