[Leica] Leica on Everest: an Apology

[marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)]

I have long maintained that no one could document 
a Leica being carried high on Mount Everest until 
the 1982 Canadian climb.  It has been suggested 
that the noted photographer, Frank Smythe, 
carried one up with him in 1936, but no one can 
find proof of this and Smythe died with his '36 
records in complete disarray.  (Smythe had taken 
a plate camera high with him in '33 when he tied 
the high point set by Fitch in '22 and Norton in 
'24, though he did not have the camera with him 
at that time.  Norton's partner in 1924, Howard 
Somervell, did get a picture of Norton returning 
from his high point on a Kodak Vest Pocket with a 
Zeiss-derived B&L Anastigmat lens;  this camera 
was one of the two VP's lost two days later with 
Mallory and Irvine in their fatal climb.  Thank 
heavens Somervell loaded the camera with fresh 
film before handing it over to Mallory, so that 
we have the image of Norton returning as a battered and exhausted man.)

I just happened to glance over my copy of THAT 
UNTRAVELLED WORLD, the memoir of Eric Shipton, 
and, facing page 80, there is a picture of 
Michael Spender holding what is obviously a 
Leica, probably a Leica A.  Spender was the 
brother of the noted poet, Stephen Spender, and 
was the cartographer on the '36 climb, as a 
result of which he made some magnificent off-set 
projections of the North Face, the best made 
until the National Geographic map from the 
1980's.  (There was a literary bent to the 1930's 
climbs:  Graham Green's brother was the surgeon 
on the '33 and '36 Expeditions, while Smythe, 
Tillman, and Shipton were established authors in their own right.)

Contax first made it to Everest with the '53 
Expedition but no Contax seems to have made it 
above the South Col;  the epic picture of Tenzing 
at the summit was shot on a Prewar Retina 114 
with a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens and on 
Kodachrome 10, to boot.  A Contax IIa went high 
when Woody Sayres, Woodrow Wilson's grandson, 
made that deliciously illegal climb of the North Face in 1963.)

So, yes, the evidence is that Spender had a Leica 
on Everest in '36, and I stand corrected.  The 
evidence has been in my library for years and I 
never thought to LOOK AT THE PICTURES!

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!