Frank Smythe's Everest Sighting (1933)

The Encounter

On 1 June 1933, during the British Everest expedition led by Hugh Ruttledge, the English mountaineer Frank Smythe was descending the North Col route toward Camp VI after turning back near 28,120 feet. His climbing partner Eric Shipton had fallen ill at Camp VI, so Smythe was on the mountain alone. Smythe reported seeing two objects in the sky. According to the account later quoted in the Himalayan Journal, he described them as "two curious looking objects floating in the sky." They were dark rather than luminous, hovered motionless, and "seemed slowly to pulsate." He tested his own perception by looking away and back, and the objects remained in place. They disappeared when a mist drifted across the mountain.

The expedition's own accounts of the day are sparse, and the sighting is recorded mainly through later retellings. Wikipedia's list of reported UFO sightings dates it to 1 June 1933 and places it on the China-Nepal border near Everest. The 1933 expedition article repeats the claim but cites only secondary sources for it.

Investigation and Commentary

The sighting drew little public attention in the sources consulted, and no formal inquiry is recorded. It was preserved mainly through the Himalayan Club. In a 1993 Himalayan Journal essay, "The Climbing Partner," Champak Chatterji recounted the episode and asked whether it was "the first chronicled UFO sighting on the Himalaya." He also noted that a colleague mocked the report as "Frank's pulsating teapots," and he closed on the line "We shall not know." The essay also raised, without resolving, whether Smythe's perception was distorted by stress, exhaustion, or something beyond ordinary explanation.

No physical evidence, photographs, or corroborating witnesses have been identified. The only testimony is Smythe's own, reported secondhand.

Explanations

The most common naturalistic reading is hypoxia combined with fatigue. At around 28,000 feet, without supplemental oxygen, climbers commonly suffer impaired judgment and visual distortion. Sustained staring at a bright sky or sun, and drifting cloud or mist, can also produce apparent hovering or pulsating points of light. Atmospheric optics such as sun halos and ice-crystal displays are further candidates, although Smythe's description of dark rather than luminous objects complicates a simple optical-artifact explanation.

Skeptics also point to the gap between the event and its reporting. Smythe's own full published account has not been located in the sources consulted for this entry, and the date and details reach the public mainly through later summaries. Supporters of the account stress Smythe's reputation as a careful, experienced mountaineer and his reported attempts to rule out error by checking his own vision.

Why It Matters

The Everest sighting predates the Kenneth Arnold report of 1947 by fourteen years and is one of the few such reports from the high Himalaya. It is cited mainly as a curiosity within the mountaineering literature and the broader UFO catalogue rather than as a case with independent verification. Its significance lies in showing how extreme-environment testimony, from pilots, polar explorers, and climbers, has repeatedly been folded into the UFO record, and how difficult such accounts are to evaluate once they pass through secondhand retelling.

Smythe himself (1900-1949) was a prominent British mountaineer whose record included the first ascents of two Brenva Face routes on Mont Blanc (with T. Graham Brown, 1927-1928), the 1931 first ascent of Kamet, and the discovery of the Valley of Flowers with R. L. Holdsworth. He took part in the 1933 and 1936 Everest expeditions.