18 SEPTEMBER 1953, Page 6

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

THE account of an unsuccessful Russian attempt on Everest from the north, published in an Italian Alpine review and summarised in The Times by its Geneva correspondent, is highly circumstantial. Thirty-five climbers and five scientists left Moscow for Lhasa on October 16th, flying in five military aircraft via Novosibirsk and Irkutsk. A month later (i.e. about mid-November) the expedition set forth from its base-camp on the Rongbuk Glacier. It was back there on December 27th. The entire assault party of six, whose names are given, had been lost after reaching a height of 26,800 feet, and a search for them, after lasting eighteen days, had to be called off because of the advent of what would seem to have been a rather unseasonable monsoon.