Peter Lloyd

Engineer and Everest expedition member

Peter Lloyd, engineer and mountaineer: born Sheffield 26 June 1907; Deputy Director, National Gas Turbine Establishment, Pyestock 1950-60; CBE 1957; Director-General, Research and Development, Ministries of Aviation and Technology 1961-69; Head of British Defence Research and Supply Staff, Canberra 1969-72; President, Alpine Club 1977-79; Chairman, Mount Everest Foundation 1982-84; married 1932 Nora Patten (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1947), 1951 Joyce Campbell; died Toowoomba, Queensland 11 April 2003.

Peter Lloyd was the last surviving European member of the pre-war British attempts on Mount Everest. His professional life as an engineer was devoted to the development of the gas-turbine engine, but his mechanical skills were also applied to Everest: during the 1938 expedition he helped develop the oxygen equipment eventually used on the first ascent in 1953.

His selection for the 1938 expedition was prompted in spite of – not because of – his scientific and mechanical skills. The expedition leader, Bill Tilman, had a profound mistrust of science, was famous for keeping logistics simple and believed that, if Everest was to be climbed at all, it should be without the aid of supplementary oxygen. Nevertheless, Lloyd was allowed to test oxygen equipment on the mountain, while his companions climbed mainly without. He helped establish the highest camp on the North Ridge at 27,200 feet, from where Eric Shipton and Frank Smythe attempted to continue to the summit. They were defeated by extreme cold and deep snow, as were Tilman and Lloyd on a second attempt two days later.

This was the sixth attempt on Everest and the last British expedition to the north, Tibetan, side for 44 years. Although it got no higher than any previous attempts, it did confirm Tilman's belief that a small, low-budget "show" could make as big a dent in the mountain's defences as large, cumbersome, high-budget expedition. After the Second World War, however, the imperative for success – after so many failed attempts – ruled out the lightweight approach and for the 1953 attempt John Hunt was chosen to lead a full-scale, oxygen-assisted assault.

Hunt was brilliant at motivating people to help behind the scenes, and one of these was Lloyd, who was put in charge of oxygen equipment, alongside another well-known climber, Alf Bridge, and an actual member of the 1953 expedition, Tom Bourdillon. In 1938 Lloyd had carried out comparative tests on two systems – open- and closed-circuit oxygen. He was convinced that the former, which mixes available air with bottled oxygen, was more practical, but Bourdillon was determined to develop the closed-circuit system, which delivers the climber a supply of pure oxygen and the potential for a very rapid climbing rate.

Hunt, hedging his bets, decided to take both and selected Bourdillon to make the first attempt using his closed-circuit system. Bourdillon and his companion, Charles Evans, did make astonishingly fast progress, getting within 300 feet of the summit before technical problems forced them to turn round. Three days later Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit using the less temperamental open circuit system, vindicating Lloyd's belief that it was the most reliable.

Peter Lloyd was born in Sheffield in 1907. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, in Norfolk, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Chemistry and became president of the university mountaineering club. His first rock climbing, in the Lake District, was in the distinguished company of such explorers as Gino Watkins, Jack Longland and Lawrence Wager.

His first alpine season, in 1926, was with the author of The Delectable Mountains, Douglas Busk. His working life started in the Gas Light and Coke Company. Held back from active service in 1939 by his reserved profession, he agitated to be moved to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, working first at Exeter, then, in 1941, moving to Farnborough, where he worked with Hayne Constant on the gas-turbine engine. In 1944 Constant's group was merged with that of Frank Whittle, in Leicestershire, developing the pure jet propulsion which was to revolutionise the aviation industry.

After the war Lloyd's career concentrated on advancing the technology of the gas turbine. In 1950 he became Deputy Director of the National Gas Turbine Establishment and was appointed CBE in 1957. In 1961 he was made Director-General of Research andDevelopment at the Ministries of Aviation and Technology in London, then moved to Canberra, Australia, to become head of British Defence Research and Development Staff. He later returned to England to join Booth International Holdings.

Fellow professionals remember Peter Lloyd as an astute leader and excellent lecturer. In addition, his scientific and practical skills helped solve the problem of getting two human beings to the summit of the world's highest mountain. However, his two most interesting expeditions were to less well-trodden slopes.

His first great Himalayan venture was the 1936 Anglo-American Nanda Devi expedition. The team hoped to attempt the world's third highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, but failed to get permission. The leader, Bill Tilman, commented, "Like most oracular pronouncements no reasons were given", then concluded philosophically that on the lower – but still formidable – peak of Nanda Devi the team at least had a better chance of success.

It proved a hugely happy and successful expedition, repeating the spectacular approach route, pioneered by Tilman and Shipton two years earlier, up the spectacular Rishi Gorge, which guards the high meadows of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. The team included two outstanding American climbers, Adams Carter and Charles Houston, as well as the famous Sherpa Pasang Kikuli, later to die on K2. On the British side, Tilman and Lloyd were joined by the Mont Blanc pioneer T. Graham Brown and Noel Odell, a veteran of the 1924 Everest expedition.

Fearful of the danger to porters posed by the difficult gorge approach, Tilman cut supplies to a minimum, "scrapping and bagging" to reduce the load. Forty years later Carter commented that at one point Tilman decreed that only strictly nutritional food would be taken to base camp, "which meant", said Carter, "leaving everything edible behind". I later asked Lloyd how he found Tilman's notorious frugality, but he assured me that he had never gone hungry on a Tilman expedition.

Lloyd helped establish the highest camp, from where Tilman and Odell continued to the summit of Nanda Devi. At 25,645ft it was the highest summit yet reached by Man and the highest peak lying entirely in the British Empire. Two years later Tilman invited Lloyd to Everest. After the war, in 1949, the two men took part in the first ever mountaineering expedition to the newly opened kingdom of Nepal.

One condition of entry was that some serious scientific work should be done, so, against all his better instincts, Tilman invited a geologist, R.S. Scott, and the botanist Oleg Polunin. Tilman himself agreed to collect beetles, while Lloyd, "to whom theodolites were strange but who was familiar with much more recondite instruments", was put in charge of surveying a huge tract of unfamiliar country on the Nepal-Tibet frontier, at the head of the Langtang valley. Tenzing Norgay, who would climb Everest four years later, was in charge of the Sherpa team. For the thousands of trekkers and climbers who now visit this beautiful region it is a salutary thought that no Europeans had ever been there before 1949, when Tilman and Lloyd unravelled the mysteries of its complicated glaciers, crossed several difficult passes and made the first ascent of the now popular 19,641ft Paldor Peak.

Professional and married life left Peter Lloyd little time for major expeditions after 1949, although he did visit Turkish Kurdistan in 1961. Like many of his fellow "Everesters" he became President of the Alpine Club, serving from 1977 to 1979. As a new young member I can remember the sad evening in 1977 when, amidst the usual humdrum presidential notices, he announced that his old friend Bill Tilman had disappeared with all hands on a yacht bound for Antarctica. With Eric Shipton dying the same year, it seemed the end of a glorious era. Peter Lloyd lived much longer, retiring with his second wife to Toowoomba in Queensland.

Stephen Venables