Henry Treise Morshead DSO FRGS (23 November 1882 – 17 May 1931) was an English surveyor, explorer and mountaineer.
He is remembered for several achievements – with Frederick Bailey he explored the Tsangpo Gorge and finally confirmed that the Yarlung Tsangpo flows into the Brahmaputra River after cascading through Himalaya; also he was a member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest expeditions and in 1922 he climbed to a height of over 25,000 feet (7,600 m).
[8] On leave in 1916, he met Evelyn (Evie) Widdicombe who was Secretary and Librarian for the Froebel Society for the Promotion of the Kindergarten System.
Her family had moved to Canada when Evie was a child where her father, Harry Templer Widdicombe, failed to make his fortune so her mother had returned to England with the children.
[1] North of Himalaya, the Yarlung Tsangpo River flows east through the Tibetan Plateau and then turns south into a series of massive gorges in Himalayan mountains.
[15] When they were at Lagung, just east of Namcha Barwa, they were arrested by the Nyerpa of Pome who took them to Showa on the Po Tsangpo river.
[3][26] In 1920 he accompanied Alexander Kellas in an attempt to climb the 25,447-foot (7,756 m) Kamet but the porters could not be persuaded to establish a camp at 23,500 feet (7,200 m).
It appears very doubtful if the present-day expense of importing Alpine guides can ever justify their employment in future Himalayan exploration".
During this expedition he climbed Kama Changri at 21,300 feet (6,500 m) and with George Mallory was the first to establish the camp on the 22,350-foot (6,810 m) Lhakpa La.
[3] Because he had only been allowed leave at the last minute his expedition clothing had to be bought at Darjeeling bazaar and it was inadequate.
[28] On 20 May 1922 with Mallory, Howard Somervell and Teddy Norton, Morshead was in the first assault team, which attempted reaching the summit without oxygen.
After surviving the night on the Col they descended to the glacier the next day but by then Somervell thought that Morshead was "not far from death".
Norton, the expedition leader, wrote of him, "he kept going doggedly without complaint and in spite of a bad fall on an ice slope, knowing that the safety of the whole party depended on his determination to 'stay the course'".
[3] For the 1924 Everest expedition Morshead was not considered able to participate as a climber because of his injuries but he was offered the role of base camp and transport officer.
[37] In 1927, he joined a Cambridge University expedition to Spitsbergen after which he returned to India overland as far as Basra, Iraq.
[3][40] Until this time his family had always lived with him but his eldest son became old enough for school and so returned to England, initially with the nanny.
[41] In February 1931 Morshead stayed in Burma while the rest of the family returned to England for reasons of schooling.
Henry disapproved of a local leader of the community, Syed Ali, who had been seen out horse riding with Ruth.