“Mallory and Bruce made a preliminary climb on the first of June with eight porters, including Dorji Pasang, one of the men who reached the highest camp in 1922. On that expedition he had been one of my photographic men, but had been detached from my work to serve the climbers as one of the “ Tigers.” Now in 1924 he was commandeered for the climbers again. Dorji was a magnificent specimen of a Sherpa, but this year he failed to repeat his former records.”

John Baptist Lucius Noel (1890-1989)

Until recently it was believed that George Mallory was the only mountaineer to attend the first 3 British Everest expeditions. New research suggests the porter Pasang Dorjay accompanied him.

A “Pasang Dorji” (bracketed “no coat”)  is recorded in Guy Bullock’s list of Sherpa and Tibetan porters accompanying the preliminary expedition of 1921, as well in the list of porters “hired in Darjeeling” in 1922. A 1924 drawing of “Dorji Passan” in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, also by Francis Helps, includes the mysterious epithet of “Thunder Wednesday.”

Though no information can be found to explain the nickname of “Thunder Wednesday”, the language of colleagues gives an insight into Pasang’s reputation and alludes to a growing reliance on local guides, culminating in the successful partnership of Edmund Hilary and Tenzing almost 3 decades later

The North Face

Unlike the successful attempt of 1953, the 1924 expedition were unable to pass through the closed kingdom of Nepal and were forced to approach Everest from the north face (Tibetan side).

"when we left Darjeeling the porter corps consisted of seventy men, of whom about half were Sherpas and half Bhotias. The Sherpas are natives of the southern slops of the main Himalayan chain, and the Bhotias of the Tibetan plateaux to the north of the range. Both speak Tibetan as their mother tongue... The five weeks' trek to the Rongbuk Base Camp was spent in getting the men well nourished and in the best possible physical condition before the work on the mountain began.”

The group would contend with temperatures as low as -30 degrees Celsius, poor visibility and strong winds, leading the Everest Dispatches of 1924 to conclude that given “the weather encountered in 1922…” nothing would have prevented “the smooth continuance of the plan...” Before their disappearance, Mallory and Irvine were last sighted approximately 800ft from the summit. Whether or not they reached the top and perished on the way back down has been the subject of debate ever since.

Francis William Helps

Francis William Helps (1890-1972) served as the official artist to the 1924 Everest expedition and produced most of his work in the Chumbi Valley. The filmmaker and photographer John Baptist Lucius Noel, who also travelled with the group, describes how: 

He had come to paint portraits of the hill people and the Tibetans, the first time a valuable collection of portraits of these people had been made. He met with difficulty and religious scruple and could not get his models to sit more than once or twice. But being a rapid painter, he produced forty large canvases and as many pencil sketches during five months.

In the 60 works exhibited by Francis Helps at the Alpine Club in 1925, just 1 depicts a named porter. Generic titles such as “Lepcha Man”, “Bhutia Girl”, “Tibetan Beggar” and “Soldier of Sikkim” give the abiding sense of scientific observation, of an artist there to produce an ethnographic record of unknown people in of an undocumented land. 

In the following drawing the mountaineer Dorji Passan looks disdainfully at the viewer,  as if to suggest that sitting for his portrait constitutes a frustrating waste of time. The artist, Francis Helps alludes to similar pressures in his introductory notes, where he suggests that he was short of time and that many potential subjects would refuse to have their portrait made through “religious scruples” and “superstitions.”

These paintings were produced while I was accompanying Capt. Noel’s Photographic party of the Mount Everest Expedition of 1924 through Sikkim and the Chumbi Valley of Tibet. They are intended as a pictorial record of the people encountered by the Expedition during their long journey from Darjeeling to Mount Everest. Time was short – too short – and the religious scruples and innumerable superstitions of these simple folk put many difficulties in my way. I left India with a strong sense of the inadequacy of my work, yet rejoicing that it had been my good fortune to serve the Expedition, albeit in a humble capacity.

Francis William Helps, Alpine Club Exhibition 1925