In 1926, Hugh Ruttledge studied the north face, which he estimated was 6,000 feet (1,800 m) high and utterly unclimbable and thought about an ascent of the northeast ridge, but he ran out of time. Ruttledge had been exploring the area with Colonel R. C. Wilson, who was on the other side of the mountain with his Sherpa named Tseten. According to Wilson, Tseten told Wilson, 'Sahib, we can climb that!' ... as he too saw that this [the SE ridge] represented a feasible route to the summit. Further excerpts from Wilson's article in the Alpine Journal (vol. 40, 1928) show that he was serious about climbing Kailash, but Colonel Wilson, Just when I discovered an easy walk to the summit of the mountain, heavy snow began to fall, making the ascent impossible.. Herbert Tichy was in the area in 1936, attempting to climb Gurla Mandhata. When he asked one of the Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it - he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit. Reinhold Messner was given the opportunity by the Chinese government to climb in the mid-1980s but he declined.