I couldn’t resist another description of one of the first British parties to explore Everest in 1922, from the brilliant [amazon_link id=”0099563835″ target=”_blank” ]Into The Silence[/amazon_link] by Wade Davis. This time it’s Lieutenant F.M.Bailey:

“A brilliant naturalist, he discovered scores of new species, including the legendary Himalayan blue poppy that bears his name. He once saved his own life by using a butterfly net to self-arrest and thus escape a snow slide as it grew into an avalanche. Seriously wounded three times during the war, in France and at Gallipoli, he became a British spy, a master of a dozen disguises, traveling as a Buddhist priest, an Austrian soldier, and an Armenian prisoner of war, and causing the Bolsheviks in Tashkent and Samarkand such grief that he would live with a Soviet bounty on his head for the rest of his days.”

The intrepid explorer and spy later wrote some books himself including [amazon_link id=”0192803875″ target=”_blank” ]Mission to Tashkent[/amazon_link]. All of the characters on the early Everest missions are extraordinary.

[amazon_image id=”0099563835″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest[/amazon_image]

[amazon_image id=”0192803875″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Mission to Tashkent[/amazon_image]