Charles Evans came within 300ft of becoming the first man to reach the top of the 29,029ft Mount Everest. That was on 26 May, 1953, in company with Tom Bourdillon. Three days later Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing reached the summit.
Evans and Bourdillon were on the South Summit and the top of the world’s tallest mountain was clearly visible to them. Unfortunately, the oxygen in their cylinders was about to run out and they calculated there was too little daylight to reach the top and descend safely. They wisely decided to turn back agonisingly short of their ultimate goal. The deputy leader and quartermaster of the 1953 Everest assault, Evans made an enormous contribution in the mission and the information he supplied to Hillary and Tenzing proved invaluable in their historic ascent.
He made three visits to Nepal prior to the conquest of Everest. In 1950, he took part in an attempt on Annapurna, reaching a height of 24,000ft, and he was a key member of a party which attempted Deo Tibba in 1951. In 1952 he climbed with Eric Shipton on Cho Oyu. The Everest expedition, an achievement which set the seal on Coronation Year, stands out as one of Evans’s greatest achievements, although in 1955 he led a successful assault on Kangchenjunga, the third highest Himalayan peak, which was climbed for the first time.
Educated at Shrewsbury School and University College, Oxford, where he read medicine, Evans joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1943 and was posted to the Far East. During his service he was mentioned in dispatches and acquired an abiding interest in the Himalayas.
When he was de-mobbed in 1947 he became surgical registrar at Liverpool Regional Hospitals. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late Fifties and that brought to a close one of the great British mountaineering careers.
In 1957 he became Principal of UCNW, Bangor, retiring in 1984, and was Vice- Chancellor, University of Wales 1965-67. Among a string of honours bestowed on him during his remarkable career he was appointed Hunterian Professor by the Royal College of Surgeons in 1953 and for three years served as president of the Alpine Club. He was awarded the Cullum Medal of the American Geographical Society in 1954, the Livingstone Medal of the Scottish Geographical Society in 1955 and the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1956.
He wrote three books – Eye on Everest (1955), On Climbing (1956) and Kangchenjunga – the untrodden peak (1956) – and he was knighted in 1969.
Robert Charles Evans (Mountaineer) Born in Derwen, North Wales, on 19 October, 1918; Died in Deganwy on 5 December, 1955
