Sandy in his room working on the Oxygen Apparatus

23rd January 1924

Sandy, thanks to Odell's nomination and the reference of George Abraham (founding member of the The Fell & Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District), was selected for the Everest expedition team. The Mount Everest Committee started to bombard him with paperwork, but of all of this what caught the attention of his 'mechanical-mind' was the oxygen sets, as proven by the photos that capture him at Merton, his room transformed in an impromptu workshop where he could spend his nights not on books but on the work desk.

Soon after he signed the agreement he made contact with Percy Unna, the member of the oxygen subcommittee charged with making arrangements for the equipment to be ready in time for February. Unna had been forewarned by Odell that Sandy was handy with mechanical matters and it did not take Sandy long to persuade Unna to let him have a 1922 oxygen set which he took back to Oxford and began to work on in the labs there, although parts of it frequently found their way into his rooms. One of his fellow students recalled him cocooned in his room, clouds of pipe smoke billowing from the door, ‘struggling with a somewhat imperfect oxygen apparatus'. He examined the mechanism of the set very carefully and then dismantled it completely in an effort to reduce the complexity of the workings and to make the apparatus lighter and more user-friendly. 

Planning and repairing the oxygen sets would be the constant of Sandy's Everest adventure, as these required his attention until the very last days of the expedition.