As well as testing conditions during and after the monsoon, the expedition was to test likely climbers for 1936 and follow up the exploratory work of the 1921 reconnaissance. Explicitly there was to be no summit attempt and supplementary oxygen was not going to be used. Tilman initially regretted having to abandon the Nanda Devi summit attempt but Shipton persuaded him by the lightweight exploratory nature of what was being planned. Charles Warren and Edmund Wigram, both Cambridge medics, Edwin Kempson a Cambridge mathematician, and Dan Bryant, an ice climber from New Zealand agreed to take part. Shipton considered this complement quite ample but he found he had a surveyor, Michael Spender added to the team. Spender had made himself extremely unpopular on earlier expeditions due to his conceit and there were rumours that his inclusion was due to mischief making. All the same, Shipton and Spender became close friends.