Since I am both an outdoor enthusiast and a lover of outdoor “gear,” I subscribe to the Adventure 16 newsletter. Adventure 16 is a Southern California outdoor equipment retailer. A couple times a month the local store holds an informal seminar or slideshow about some kick-ass expedition or nature trip that has taken place or soon will. In theory, you’ll be so amped after the presentation that you will buy lots of gear from the store, hoping someday to emulate the feat that you have just heard about. My most recent newsletter featured a blurb about an upcoming event that will relate details about an adventure that I had surprisingly never heard of:
In the 1960’s, the CIA and the Indian Government attempted to deploy a plutonium-powered spy device on Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot in the Indian Himalayas. While Nanda Kot’s device was successfully deployed, Nada Devi rejected all attempts to place the device on her summit and the plutonium was lost and never recovered. In August 2005, Pete Takeda and his crew retraced the spy route on Nanda Kot, visiting the camps used to stage the 1936 first ascent and the spy missions of the 1960’s. Don’t miss this amazing journey! FREE!San Diego Store: Mon., Jan. 9
West Los Angeles Store: Tues., Jan. 10
This sounds like the beginning to a Tom Clancy novel. I am intrigued. Must-learn-more. As you may have expected, there is in fact an entire book written on this subject: Spy On The Roof Of The World : Espionage and Survival in the Himalayas.
In this cross between a travel adventure story and an espionage novel, Sydney Wignall tells how he became an ad hoc spy for a renegade faction of Indian intelligence operatives in 1955. Wignall had set out to climb the highest mountain in Tibet, but was recruited to investigate Chinese military activity in the region. After being caught, he spent months in a rat-infested, sub-freezing cell as he underwent interrogation. When international pressure forced his release, his captors “released” him and two companions in a nearly impenetrable wintertime wilderness and said “Go home.” Yet Wignall survived—and managed to smuggle out vital information. It is an exhilarating story that only now can be told. [Link]
- Renegade faction of Indian intelligence
- Months in a rat-infested cell
- Interrogation
- Impenetrable wintertime
If that list isn’t enough to get me to open my wallet and drop some money on new gear at Adventure 16, then frankly I’m not much of a man.
Wignall disclosed in the book that when he led the Indian mountaineering team in a victorious return from Qomolangma Mountains in May 1965, as soon as they got down from the plane in Palam Airport, New Delhi, they were brought to a secluded place by Balbir Singh, director of Indian intelligence bureau. Singh told Wignall that R.N. Kao (called the first ancestor of Indian intelligence circle), director of the Indian Aviation Research Center, was waiting behind the airplane to see him. R. N. Kao informed Wignall and seven other persons that they would go to the United States to carry out a task two weeks later.
On June 19, 1965, Wignall and his party secretly flew to New York to contact an official in charge of CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) affairs. Afterwards, they were sent by the American side to Alaska to conduct three-week secret training. It was only then they came to know that the CIA of the United States asked them to help install a secret nuclear test monitoring instrument on the 8,598-meter high Kanchanjunga Peak on the Chinese border, so as to come to know the situation in China’s nuclear test base.
After Wignall and his party returned to India, they began, with the help of the US side, making preparations for the mountaineering expedition. The movement proceeded in a very covert manner, so even the then Indian chief of staff of the three services was not in the know…Although there existed many contradictions in US-Indian relations at that time, both sides could easily come to a consensus on this issue, India also closely watched China’s nuclear tests. Just as an Indian personage named Data who had participated in the action said: China’s nuclear power is very advanced, we should collect information in this respect. [Link]
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An example of a SNAP |
And what about that missing plutonium? What was its ultimate fate?
…[The CIA] designed a portable monitoring station designed to be lugged up the mountain in component parts. The whole thing was to be powered by something called SNAP - Space Nuclear Auxiliary Power
Originally designed for the military, SNAP was a cone shaped contraption providing power through several pounds of plutonium. Seemed like a perfect idea, and better than lugging up a ton of batteries, until they lost the damn thing.
In 1965, an expedition headed up the mountain. Two thousand feet from the summit, weather conditions forced the climbers to turn back. They left the monitoring station on the mountain, intending to return and set it up when the conditions permitted.
In 1966, they discovered that an avalanche had swept away the station, plutonium and all. It was buried under thousands of pounds of rock and snow…To this day, the SNAP has not been found. Tests indicated no contamination, so the search for the generator was abandoned. But, despite weak assurances, it’s probably only a matter of time before it breaks. [Link]
How freaking cool! What I would not give to have been a part of the expedition that retraced the original journey…even if it carried the possibility of being irradiated by plutonium 
. As for that book, I will have to get myself a stocking stuffer this year.
