Kellas, Alexander Mitchell (1868-1921), chemist and mountaineer

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Kellas, Alexander Mitchell (1868-1921), chemist and mountaineer

21 June 1868 - 5 June 1921

Dr Alexander Kellas was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition. He died en route to Mount Everest.

Kellas was born on 21 June 1868 in Aberdeen, the son of James Fowler Kellas, secretary to the local marine board, and his wife, Mary Boyd. He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school and then attended Aberdeen University, Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh, and Heidelberg University, where he gained a PhD. He was keenly interested in chemistry and even more enthusiastic for mountaineering. The two interests combined to make him pre-eminent for a time in the field of high-altitude physiology. He was able to combine research at low pressure in the laboratory with practical studies at altitude in the Himalayas.

Kellas had a great love for wild mountain places. He was not given to technical climbing but was supremely interested in mountain geography and exploration, in the course of which he reached numerous unclimbed Himalayan summits. He began mountaineering in the Cairngorms while a student at Aberdeen University.

In his late thirties Kellas made his first visit to the Himalayas. He made six expeditions to Sikkim from 1907 to 1920. He did a phenomenal amount of climbing and yet very little is known about him because he was of a retiring nature and wrote very little of his achievements. Unusual in that he generally climbed without European companions, he was accompanied by an ever loyal group of local porters whom he trained in the basic alpine skills. He possessed phenomenal energy and tenacity.

During the First World War, Kellas channelled his energies into high-altitude research and the effect of diminished atmospheric pressure on human physiology, a subject of great importance to the Air Ministry.

In 1919 Kellas suffered a breakdown in health from overwork, resigned his lectureship in London, and returned to Aberdeen. He recovered the following year and set out again for the Himalayas to carry out more experiments at altitude on himself and his high-altitude porters. He reached a height of 23,622 ft on Kamet. After several months in the Garhwal he travelled over to Sikkim, where in November 1920 he climbed north of the Kang La to obtain photographs of the peaks north of Everest that were then unknown.

Kellas returned to the Kang La region in April 1921 and climbed a higher peak to see more of Everest's north side. He then climbed Narsingh (19,110 ft) before turning his attention to working out a way through the icefall on Kabru. He had time to reach only 21,000 ft. He returned to Darjeeling just one week before he was to join the first expedition to Mount Everest, led by Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury.

Kellas was chosen to be a member of the climbing team of four at the age of 53. He had far more experience of high-altitude climbing than any contemporary. He had alone built up a good rapport with the Sherpa Bhotias hill men and, by emphasising the importance of adequate training and of treating them with respect, had shown their value to any mountaineering enterprise.

After only a week of rest from his attempts to see more of the Everest region and his prolonged work on Kabru, Kellas had no time to recuperate properly for the rigours of the Tibetan plateau. He went down with dysentery and had to be carried on a stretcher. Just before Kampa Dzong the accumulated strain of his spring climbing, the biting cold of the plateau, and rampant dysentery overtaxed his heart. He died, on 5 June 1921, among his faithful porters, as he had insisted his countrymen went on ahead.

Kellas was buried on a hillside to the south of Kampa Dzong in sight of the peaks of Sikkim, where he had made so many first ascents.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography