Returns to Greenland

In 1953, Wager returned to Kangerdlugssuaq for a summer expedition with a combined Oxford and Manchester Universities party under the joint leadership of L.R. Wager and W.A. Deer. The expedition lasted from July 13 until early October. Wager spent most of his time carrying out a very detailed examination of some of the critical areas of the Skaergaard Intrusion and then later, when the ice conditions in the fjord improved, crossed to the South Syenite Glacier to continue work on the Kangerdlugssuaq alkaline complex (Deer 1967, Brooks 1985, Hargreaves 1991; Fig. 7). Not surprisingly, Wager returned to Oxford with a further extensive collection of samples which enabled E.R. Vincent and G.M. Brown to begin a second phase of investigations into the Skaergaard complex (Vincent 1994).

Based on material collected during this expedition, Wager et al. (1957) were able to formulate the concept of sulfide immiscibility in the Skaergaard Intrusion (Brooks 1992). Once again, Malcolm Brown stresses Wager's ability to assess difficult conditions, in this case crossing the ice-packed Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord in August. For days before, Wager had ‘communicated with the weather.' The party could only cross the fjord in their small boats in a direct five-hour run and the weather rarely abated for that long. Eventually, Wager decided it was safe and they crossed with sledges and other loads rolling in the swell between towering icebergs. There was no doubt in the minds of the more junior members of the party that Wager's remarkable powers of leadership included an instinctive ability to assess such vital things as weather conditions, food requirements, ice and climbing conditions and, above all, the capabilities and limits of each member of the party. During this expedition they were stretched to their limits but never went dangerously beyond them (Hargreaves 1991).

In 1965, Wager and Deer obtained full financial support from the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) for a major expedition to East Greenland in 1966. This would have involved a programme to drill a deep borehole into the hidden part of the Skaergaard Intrusion and several minor holes in order to study processes of sedimentation in the layered series of the intrusion amongst other things (Deer 1967, Brooks 1985). This project was suggested to Wager by Alexander McBirney whom he met at the IUGG conference at Berkeley, California, in 1963 (Brooks 1985, Hargreaves 1991). Wager died before the expedition began but the expedition took place as planned under the leadership of W.A. Deer and a plaque was erected on the highest point of Skaergaardshalvö to commemorate a geologist and explorer of unique achievement (Deer 1967) (Fig 8). However, without Wager's drive and enthusiasm, the drill cores were never fully examined (Brooks 1985).

The geological results of Wager's four expeditions to East Greenland in the 1930s were published in four volumes of Meddelelser om Grønland (Wager 1934, 1935, 1947; Wager and Deer 1939). According to Wager's obituary in The Times, the account of the Skaergaard Intrusion by Wager and Deer in 1939 was judged by many to be the most significant single contribution yet made to to the science of petrology (Anon 1965).

In The Times obituary, it states that those who were his companions on these expeditions all remember his remarkable powers of leadership in the field under trying conditions. He had the gift shared by certain rare leaders, of inspiring a kind of blind faith in his ability due to his deep understanding of the factors controlling the spirit and stamina of his party, to the cautious commonsense which governed all his decisions, and to his insistence upon the detailed organization of any venture in which he was concerned (Anon 1965). Vincent (1968) considered Wager to be one of the toughest, most single-minded explorers that Britain has produced for a very long time.

Wager the Mountaineer

In his obituary of Wager in the Alpine Journal, Jack Longland mentioned how much Wager had learned as a boy, walking and scrambling over the Craven hills of Yorkshire to which he kept on returning to the end of his life (Longland 1966).

Wager must therefore have already been quite an experienced climber when he joined the Cambridge University Mountaineering Club (CUMC) immediately on going up to Cambridge in 1922. He became Treasurer of CUMC in 1924-25 and President in 1925-26 (Hargreaves 1991). Being a member involved frequent lectures by notables such as Geoffrey Winthrop Young who had made many new and difficult ascentsand meets in the vacations. These meets were quite serious affairs and not for the faint hearted. By autumn 1924, Wager had already participated in meets in Wales, the Lake District and Switzerland. In one trip to the Lake District in March 1925, he cycled there and back from Arncliffe (about 11 hours each way) with a week's climbing in between. The weather was wintry with snow and hail for much of the week! In June 1925, he spent several days in North Wales climbing in preparation for a month in the Swiss Alps where they climbed many of the main peaks. Percy Wyn Harris and Jack Longland, his future companions on the 1933 Everest expedition, were in the party.

Wager described his philosophy of guideless climbing in the Cambridge Mountaineering Journal of 1925-26. Those with a little more experience in the Alps form a party with one or two less experienced climbers and attempt easy climbs. As a result, the leader has the responsibilites of leadership at an early stage and the others share something of the responsibility and learn something about route finding. Such a party will work better as a unit than one consisting of a guide, a porter and two beginners. This approach tends to lead to a better and safer attitude to mountaineering than more difficult expeditions led by a guide whose rapid and accurate judgement of conditions prevents the beginner from realizing the dangers of climbing and whose skill masks the difficulties of technique.

Wager went to the Alps for about a month every year between 1924 and 1928 usually from about mid-July to mid-August. In 1928, he was in the remoter Dauphiné Alps with Jack Longland and others (Longland 1966, Hargreaves 1991). It was on remote peaks such as the Aiguilles D'Arves that they found themselves entirely on their own and often would not see another climber in days. It was on these neglected mountains that they could explore new routes. One new traverse that year was the Pic Gaspard to the Pave where Wager's eye for a line brought them safely down the steep and muddled west Face of the Pic Gaspard where they had spent the previous afternoon reconnoitring the route up the other side of the mountain. By this time, Wager had achieved a reputation as one of the best and safest young rock-climbers in Britain (Dunham 1966, Deer 1967). He had completed his apprenticeship and was ready for Everest!

On December 19, 1932, Wager was invited to join the 1933 Mount Everest Expedition as a last-minute replacement for N. Odell (Ruttledge 1934a,b, Deer 1967, Hargreaves 1991, Venables 2003). The expedition arrived in Bombay on 10 February, 1933, and four of them, Wager, Hugh Ruttledge, the expedition leader, Jack Longland and Percy Wyn Harris, took the train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. They arrived at Darjeeling on February 17 and began the long trek towards Tibet through lush vegetation, then climbing up to 14,900 ft at the Tibet boundary. Everybody was affected by headaches at this altitude. Between March 11 and 15, Eric Shipton, Longland, Wyn Harris and Wager climbed Chumunko at 17,500 ft to acclimatize. Wager was in the second party that covered 350 miles from the Tibet boundary to Base Camp between March 20 and April 17. He arrived at Base Camp with the ‘hill trots' from which it took him a week to recover. However, by April 30, he was able to scramble up to 20,000 ft. Fig. 9 shows the members of the expedition.

At Tengke Dzong, half way between Darjeeling and Everest, the combined first and second parties improvized a sports day, which attracted every Tibetan man, woman and child from miles around (Ruttledge 1934). It began with rudimentary football involving a seething mass of Tibetans. Hugh Boustead who had won many Service boxing championships and captained the British Pentathlon team at the Olympic Games in 1920 then gave lessons in boxing and finally Jack Longland gave an exhibition of pole-jumping (Fig. 10). Of course, Tibetans are never passive spectators and Longland's exhibition was followed by some spectacular jumping and falling by them.

Following their arrival at Base Camp at 16,800 ft, it took Wager, Wyn Harris, Longland and Birnie until May 28 to reach Camp V at 25,700 ft because of bad weather and the steepness of the new route up to the North Col. On May 29, Wager, Wyn Harris and Longland managed to get up to Camp VI with eight porters.

On May 30, Wager and Wyn Harris made the first assault on the summit. They set off at 5:30 AM following a very cold night and got up to the second step but found it impossible to climb (Fig. 11). They then traversed across the north face 200 to 300 ft below the crest, crossed the great snow couloir and reached approximately the same point as Norton and Summerville in 1924 at about 28,100 ft. This was to remain the record for highest on Everest without oxygen until Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed Everest in 1978. Wager and Wyn Harris then wisely decided to return to Camp VI. It was already 12:30 PM and it would have required at least four hours to reach the summit. On the way back, they attempted to tackle the second step once more but were too exhausted for further climbing. On the way down, they reached Camp VI twelve hours after setting out to find the second assault party consisting of F.S. Smythe and Eric Shipton already there (Deer 1967).

After an hour's rest, they descended the north ridge to Camp V where they stayed the night (Fig. 12). The following morning, they continued down the North Col to Camp IV. Going down the snow band, they glissaded on their bottoms because it was far too strenuous to stand up (Hargeaves 1991). However, Wager, despite his extreme exhaustion, forced himself up to the NE shoulder of the mountain and became the only climber to have looked down on the SE face of Everest until Hillary and Tenzing were able to do so twenty years later (Deer 1967). The last drag into camp was just about all they were capable of achieving. When Dr. McLean, the expedition Medical Officer, examined Wager and Wyn Harris, he found both were temporarily suffering from dilated hearts resulting from their experiences at high altitude without oxygen. On June 1, they were still very exhausted but descended to Camp III. They reached Base Camp on June 5 after a most tiring walk but managed to pass their time there smoothly and luxuriously! After their climb, Hugh Ruttledge, the expedition leader, was able to say of Wager and Wyn Harris that, ‘knowing these men as I do, they would not turn aside from a climb within the limits of the possible' (Brown 1966).

Meanwhile, Smythe and Shipton set out for the summit on June 1 but Shipton was forced to return early because of exhaustion. Smythe reached the same point as Wager and Wyn Harris by 10 AM but could not continue because a sprinkling of snow on these slabs made them unclimbable. He was mortified at having to turn back with success almost in view.

In the discussion of the expedition, Brigadier E.F. Norton who, as Colonel Norton, was the highest up Everest in 1924 having also reached the second step, pointed out that the monsoon in 1933 was the earliest of the century. As a result, he concluded that it was the weather, and nothing but the weather, which had cheated this party of the top that year (Ruttledge 1934).

On the long march out of Tibet beginning on July 13, Wager and Shipton opted to leave the main body of the expedition and crossed from the Lashar plain in Tibet to the Lhonak Valley in N.W. Sikkim (Hargreaves 1991). This was a very remote journey with porters. They crossed Lhonak La, which is over 18,000 ft in snow and poor visibility, but the trip was a great success. Wager left Shipton in Sikkim but met up with him again in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) where Shipton's mother had a tea estate. They came back to England together and arrived about 7 September. When he arrived home, he was obliged to present many lectures around the country to raise money for the Mount Everest Committee as well as to continue with his teaching and research at Reading. He was a busy man. During his time on the Everest expedition, Wager had become interested in the drainage pattern of the Arun River and its relation to the rise of the Himalaya based mainly on observations made during the trek into Tibet (Deer 1967) and the Lachi series of North Sikkim during his trek back from Everest through Tibet (Hargreaves 1991).

In December 1929, Wager met seventeen-year old Phyllis Worthington at a Morris and Folk Dancing Week in Sussex. In 1934, he contrived to meet her again through her sister by organizing a large picnic on Sunday 17 June 1934 on the Thames near Reading. At this time, he had become quite famous because of his exploits on Everest. On Saturday 30 June, he handed Phyllis the plans for his proposed expedition to Kanderlugssuak in 1935 during a train journey to Frinton and said ‘You will need to know more about this'. At the half way stop, they had a long walk and just decided to marry. On 10 July, he left to go to Scotland to be picked up by the Pourquoi Pas to go to Greenland with the French explorer, Dr. Charcot. However, the Pourquoi Pas could only limp to Iceland and back. The Wagers married on 12 October 1934, and had five children between 1937 and 1945, of whom the fourth, Jane, went on to compile Wager's biography for the grandchildren he never knew (Hargreaves 1991). By all accounts, the Wagers were ideally suited.

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