원정 개요

E-mail from Jim Milledge - Dec 21, 2003

Dear Richard

I am pleased to hear that you are working on Liz Hawley's mountaineering
archive for the AAC.

Re Puma Dablam. You are quite right I made the first ascent with Sherpa
Ang Tsering Panch, the last name a nick-name from some previous
expedition meaning Ang Tsering the fifth, of course; I don't know why. You
are right we climbed it on Nov 18th 1960. Pat Barcham (from New Zealand,
now dead) and Gumi Dorgi made the second ascent a few days later. I have
been through my diary to try and fix the date. I see he was with me and Ed
Hillary on Nov 20th going gown to Changmitang (a village just N of
Tangboche where we rented a house). My entry for Nov 21st says nearly all
expedition members present (at Changmitang) and we had a group photo. I
assume Pat was there. He may have left later that day for the Silver Hut.
On the 22nd I note that "a number of men had had tummy trouble and George
(Lowe) was back with it. He (George) had started out with Pat to climb
Puma Dablam." Presumably George had turned back with his tummy trouble. I
presume I got this news over the radio. That seems to fix the date of Pat
and Gumi's climb as Nov 22nd although that seems a very fast ascent, we
usually took two days from Changmitang to the Silver Hut. Perhaps he
returned to Mingbo on the 20th and to the SH on the 21st.

I gave the name Puma Dablam (daughter Dablam) and it appears as such in
Ed's book (High in the Thin Cold Air), on Barry Bishop's map in the Nat.
Geographic article (Oct 1963) and in a articles in the AJ and NZAJ. On
Bradford Washburn's map it is un-named and I wrote to him suggesting my
name and he replied very positively saying that in the second edition he
would adopted it but I don't think there has been a second edition. I
wonder where the name Ombigaichen comes from? I see it is now on a number
of new maps and, of course, on the list of trekking peaks. A pity, I think
Puma Dablam was a good name for it.

I am not clear what you want in the next three questions. It was not a
Puma Dablam expedition. Ang Tsering and I just made a day trip from the
Silver Hut and climbed it taking I think about 4 hours to get up and about
3 hours down. This was the third attempt, the other two failed due to
running out of time (there were no Sherpas on the two failed attempts).

This "Silver Hut" expedition was not quite the usual single peak
expedition. The full title was, "Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering
Expedition 1960-61" It started post monsoon 1960 and ended pre-monsoon
1961, 9 months long. In the first phase most of the party went yeti
hunting in the Rolwaling Valley. I and three others with Sherpas went to
Solu Khumbu and set up various camps including the Silver Hut site at
5800m on the Mingbo Glacier below Puma Dablam. We had a tented base camp
at Mingbo(4500m) and a transit "Green Hut" at 5180m. Also the house at
Changmitang (4200m?). We spent the Winter at Mingbo or (mostly) in the
Silver Hut doing physiology on ourselves. In the Spring we went over to
make an attempt on Makalu.

Home village of the two Sherpas? I think Gumi Dorgi came form Kumjung or
Khundi. Ang Tsering Panch did not come from either of those villages. I do
not remember his village but I think he was from Solu district.