A third plan for the summit

26th May 1924

At this point, summit hopes were starting to fade. The change of plans for the rescue had been the second time they had to retreat from the mountain, but now the end of the season was approaching, and so was the monsoon. A meeting was held, and it was decided that out of the fifty-five porters they had started with, only fifteen were fit to go up the mountain again. Such a drastic reduction in porter numbers meant that a revised summit plan had to be considered and to Sandy’s great disappointment it did not include him in either of the first parties. 

Bruce’s plan, which was eventually adopted, was to drop the oxygen attempt as the apparatus was heavy and required many more porters than were available. There would therefore be two attempts, a day apart, both without oxygen. Mallory doubted that he personally would be strong enough to climb high again, but he had more experience than anyone else so he agreed to make the choice of the two climbing parties. As Geoffrey Bruce was the only really fit man among them he chose him to be his partner and Somervell and Norton to make up the second party. Odell and Sandy were reserves.