The British Joint Himalayan Committee, successor to the Mount Everest Committee, was given permission for an expedition to explore the region north of Annapurna - Annapurna IV, Manaslu and Himalchuli - at the same time as the French attempt on the mountain itself. Bill Tilman, the leader, was returning home when he happened to meet Oscar Houston, an American lawyer, in Kathmandu. Houston was planning a trekking holiday in Nepal with his son and two family friends, Betsy Cowles and Anderson Bakewell, to explore the Solu Khumbu valley just south of Mount Everest. Houston had met Tilman in 1936 when his son, Charlie Houston, had participated with him in the British-American Himalayan Expedition to Nanda Devi and he invited Tilman to join the party. Despite his reservations about what was planned - Oscar was sixty-seven, though very active for his years, and, moreover, Tilman had never been on an expedition that included a woman - Tilman grasped the opportunity. Previous Everest explorations from the north, particularly the 1921 expedition and the