Synopsis

Even Higher than Everest is a vastly entertaining, fact-based, yet dramatized story of a London cockney heiress who, in the 1930s, sent a small fleet of double winger biplanes on a daring and remarkably dangerous mission to fly over Mt. Everest and film the world’s highest and most famous mountain peak.

Author George Almond met the Himalayan heroes (Sherpa Tenzing and Lord Hunt), who explained how the first aerial photographs, taken in 1933, assisted their heroic ascent of Everest in 1953. Captivated by this dazzling and little known tale, the book – Even Higher than Everest – is a dramatized recount of the tenacity of the heiress Lucy Houston and her team of prestigious aviators whose five aircraft flew to the world’s highest mountains.  A short 1930s film from footage of Houston’s flight, titled Wings Over Everest, won an Oscar in 1936 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Commenting on his work, author George Almond says: “Inspired by true events of that first flight over Everest, the novel Even Higher Than Everest follows skilled personnel in finance, diplomacy, media, filming, engineering, and aviation, all aiming for a shared objective. How these characters blended successfully, overcoming constant setbacks and challenges, was in itself a major accomplishment. I have followed the truth, tweaking just a few elements, in recounting the event.”

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Praise

“Yay, George Almond! You DID it! You delivered a fine story- -and a fun story- -with your Higher Than Everest dramatization. I loved many aspects about this book. You had me on the edge of my seat with the actual flights over the Himalayas. I could SEE the mountains in my mind’s eye and could feel the tension and the dangers they faced.” – Amazon (Marla Bray)

Guest Post

10 Things You Might Not Know About George Almond’s Even Higher Than Everest

1.  In today’s world of jet aviation, it’s entirely usual to zoom around at altitudes much higher than Everest. Because of this, I’ve been asked once or twice, ‘What’s so special about flying over Everest?’.  Such questions came from folk who had no concept of how it was, in 1933, to sit in an open cockpit no bigger than an armchair. And then to take it to 30,000 feet above sea level, into an area of dangerous and awe-inspiring peaks where the Earth’s highest mountains top out. My task was to explain just that.

2.  I was a private pilot myself. I took my first flight in a Tiger Moth biplane at Plymouth airport and then progressed to Cessna etc. Flying such aircraft at altitudes above 10,000 feet generally requires oxygen, so I never flew higher. Even so, at that height, I felt out of my depth (read altitude for that!), though that might sound strange. It was a long, long way down to the ground. I experienced a similar anxiety when I once took a swim in the mid-Atlantic. Out of my depth, to put it mildly.

3. Everest was first discovered by Radhanath Sickdhar, a mathematician working for Sir George Everest, the Surveyor General of India in 1852. The mountain was then known then as Peak XV and its height was established at 29,002 feet (8,840 metres). It has since been re-estimated at around 29,032 feet because the Himalayas sit on lively tectonic plates that are testing one another.

4. The survey involved several thousand Indians and was named the Great Trigonometrical Survey. After Sir George Everest stood down, the Surveyor General’s role was given to Colonel Valentine Blacker, who completed the survey. He then perished in a duel with a fellow officer, both officers being killed. It was his relative in 1932, Colonel Blacker, who proposed the flight plan to make an aerial survey of the region.

5. One of the tasks assigned to the pilots was to seek for any signs of the missing climbers Mallory and Irvine, who had vanished near the peak nine years before the first flight. A cairn of rocks or even a tattered flag might have provided a clue. However, such proof was not seen or photographed by the pilots. In recent years, the remains of both climbers have been found frozen in the snow at lower altitude, indicating they fell to their deaths. If their cameras are ever found, any exposed film may finally solve the mystery of Mallory and Irvine.

6. Everest continues to attract attention from the media and courageous climbers who, traveling from some 110 nations, have managed to reach the summit. When researching my book, I met the chief pilot of Nepal Airlines, Emyl Wick, who expressed enormous praise for the 1933 aircrew. Wick had flown over Everest in a Pilatus Porter many times and revealed that he needed nerves of steel for the turbulence of such flights.

7. French pilot Didier Delsalle landed a helicopter on the summit in 2005, where he found the updraught so fierce that he had to ram the chopper’s skids down all the time. When the Everest pilots flew over in their single-engine biplanes, one pilot, the Glaswegian McIntyre, reported it was like flying over an exploding ammunition factory. This indicates it may be safer to fly over Everest than to climb it because to date at least 340 people have died attempting the conquest on foot.

8. The author was inspired to write Even Higher Than Everest after meeting world famous Sherpa Tenzing, who made the first successful conquest. The aerial survey assisted route planning which was vital in the so-called death zone.

9. George Almond has no desire to fly over Everest but is a member of a team who are keen to revisit this aviation epic. The team includes eminent professional pilots from the USA and UK and a brand new reproduction of the original biplane is now being built in the UK. When finished, it will be able to challenge the skies above Everest and then tour some of the world’s busiest airports, no doubt turning many heads in the process.

10, Almond has spent much of his life on unusual adventures. After making a 1500 mile horseback ride across Spain and France, he worked on cattle ranches in Alberta and Texas. Then he sailed as a crewman in a square-rig brigantine from Plymouth in UK, though the Panama Canal and then five weeks later reached Hawaii where the ship played a role in a movie, Another task came his way as barman on The Flying Scotsman steam train when it travelled from Boston to Houston in 1969.

Excerpt

As he ducked back into his cockpit, out of the ripping blast of the slipstream, Blacker became aware of another problem. This, he realized, was not the best of times to be feeling drowsy. He quickly ran a check as a cramping sensation registered in his feet and he felt the lightheaded emptiness that implied a reduced flow of oxygen. Hadn’t they given him a foretaste in the bubble at Farnborough? And this felt alarmingly similar. He immediately scribbled a message to Clydesdale about the problem as the Westland fell into a sweeping downdraft. Lucy bucked up, then down, then up again, jumping like a feather in a gale. Blacker was forced to grab the cockpit coaming with each buck as the biplane floundered insanely.

But recovery came as Clydesdale activated the spare oxygen supply.

Blacker felt the revitalizing rush in his lungs before another fist of wind came charging down from the mountains. This blow punched the Westland, pushing her down several hundred feet in a single second while leaving his stomach far above. Blacker looked towards the front cockpit where Clydesdale sat, calm, stoic and fearless, looking out over the trembling wingtips as he surfed Lucy through each wave of the jet stream.

All the time, the turbo-charger lashed the 650 horse power of the Pegasus compelling it to fire on stubbornly, shovelling air over the wings while they closed on their target some ten miles ahead. But was it ten miles or five? It might have been one or two. Blacker found it difficult to estimate the distance because the terrain was so huge and dominant, so unexpectedly different and daunting at close quarters. He searched around for Mac’s Wallace and thought he saw the flash of wings in the distance.

Up here it looked like a fly lost in the atrium of a West End theatre. Blacker seized the Williamson P14 plate camera and began taking shots of Makalu. The mountain was hewn like a switchblade knife thrust into glacier arteries. He exposed several plates at Everest while the Westland rolled and pitched. He checked his belt and the line that kept him hooked within the cockpit. Bloody hell! Blacker grinned inside his oxygen mask.

This was going to be some ride!

Passing over the monstrous haft of Makalu, Blacker’s heart bypassed several beats. The altimeter was still stuck on 28,000 feet. The snow pip on the summit remained high above and they were closing on the most unforgiving surface imaginable at a groundspeed of 50 miles an hour.

Blacker bent down and heaved open the flaps of a trap door in his cabin floor, allowing more air to scythe up towards his mask and goggles. Now he was looking straight down onto the silvered shoulders and buttresses of the great mountain, all moving this way and that while Lucy danced in the air above. He took several photos and then shut the trapdoor to concentrate on the peak action.

Then as suddenly as the downdraft had begun, a reverse action set in. A surging up-draft helped Clydesdale coax Lucy’s nose up and up, pushing her towards the final gradients and cliffs of the dominant landmass.

Blacker repositioned his camera as Clydesdale drove the valiant biplane towards the snow-capped crest.

Seconds later, with the engine still thrusting against the elements, Lucy the Westland passed over the snowy peak of the great mountain with only a few hundred feet to spare. Clydesdale turned and raised his gloved hand.

Blacker waved back in unspoken triumph.

They had done it!

– Excerpted from Even Higher Than Everest by George Almond, Paragon Publishing, 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

George Almond, the grandson of a Wyoming horse rancher, enjoys revisiting great adventures. Born in London and educated in France and Oxford University he has ridden horseback 1500 miles across Europe, worked for Calgary Stampede’s Champion Chuck Wagon driver,  sailed two oceans with the world’s most experienced square-rig sea captain, taken the Flying Scotsman steam train from Boston to Houston where he was hired by Neiman Marcus. These days Almond makes his home in Europe, working on other books, including one about Jack Rackham and his two lady pirates who formerly sailed the Caribbean, preying upon merchant vessels.