Eric Shipton

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Eric Shipton (1 August 1907 - 28 March 1977) was a distinguished British Himalayan mountaineer.

Born in Ceylon and educated in Britain, Shipton began climbing in the Alps. In 1928 he went to Kenya as a coffee grower, and first climbed Nelion, a peak of Mount Kenya in 1929. It was also in Kenya's community of Europeans that he met his future climbing partners Bill Tilman and Percy Wyn-Harris. Together with Wyn-Harris he climbed the twin peaks of Mount Kenya. With Frank Smythe, Shipton was the among the first climbers to stand on the summit of Kamet, 7816 metres, in 1931, the highest peak climbed at that time. Shipton was involved with most of the Mount Everest expeditions during the 1930s and later, including Hugh Ruttledge's expeditions of 1933 and 1936, the 1935 Mt Everest expedition [1], and the pioneering 1951 expedition which chalked out the now famous route over the Khumbu Glacier. Shipton and Tilman also discovered the access route to the Nanda Devi sanctuary through the Rishi Ganga gorge in 1934. Their shoe-string budget expedition operated in the Kumaon-Garhwal mountains continuously from pre-monsoon to post-monsoon, and set a record for single-expedition achievement that has never been equalled.

Later in life, he turned to writing and exploration. He was HM Consul at Kashgar in Central Asia in the late 1940s, and during a visit from Bill Tilman they tried to climb Mustagh Ata, 7546 metres, reaching the broad summit dome. He took the opportunity of his Kashgar posting to explore other Central Asian mountains. Later in life he completed a traverse across the Southern Patagonia Ice Cap.

The first western exploration of the Rolwaling Himal was made by Shipton in 1951 during the reconnaissance of Mount Everest.

While exploring the Barun gorge he named Island Peak.

Shipton, along with one British and two Chilean explorers, was the first to traverse both the North and South Patagonian ice fields from north to south.

Because of his belief in the efficacy of small expeditions as compared to military-style 'sieges', Eric Shipton was stepped down from the leadership of the 1953 Everest expedition, along with Andrew Croft, in favour of Major John Hunt - "I leave London absolutely shattered" he would write. Yet Shipton's quiet and spare climbing style, and his spirit of exploration, have kept alive the memory of this climber's climber in the world of mountaineering.

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[edit] Honours


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[edit] Books

  • Shipton, Eric. Nanda Devi. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1936.
  • Shipton, Eric. Blank on the map. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1938.
  • Shipton, Eric. Upon That Mountain. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1943.
  • Shipton, Eric. The Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition 1951. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1952.
  • Shipton, Eric. Mountains of Tartary. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1953.
  • Shipton, Eric. Land of Tempest. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1963.
  • Shipton, Eric. That Untravelled World. Charles Scribner and Sons, 1969. ISBN 0-340-04330-X (Hodder & Stoughton (1969))
  • Shipton, Eric. The Six Mountain-Travel Books. Mountaineers' Books, 1997. ISBN 0-89886-539-5 (A collection of the first six books listed.)
  • Tilman, H.W. Two Mountains and a River
  • Unsworth, Walt. Everest
  • Steele, Peter. Everest and Beyond. Mountaineers' Books, 1998.
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