LOST ON EVEREST: THE SEARCH FOR MALLORY AND IRVINE; By Peter Firstbrook; 1999; Contemporary Books; 224 pages; $24.95Was Mount Everest, the world's highest point, first climbed in 1953 or 1924?
Traditionally, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay get the credit for their May 29, 1953, climb. But 29 years earlier, British climbers George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine vanished during the first-ever attempt to scale the 29,000-foot summit, referred to as the world's "Third Pole" during that era.
A British expedition, sponsored by the BBC in the spring of 1999, went in search of Mallory and Irvine's bodies, as well as their camera and clues about what happened to the Everest pioneers. The expedition found Mallory's body, and Peter Firstbrook, a film producer on the expedition, wrote this extensive look at what probably happened to the two explorers. (Firstbrook's BBC program on Everest will be broadcast sometime in January on PBS.)
Although the book focuses on Mallory and Irvine's ill-fated trek, it also contains numerous facts and tidbits about this forbidding mountain, where history has shown that one in six climbers who attempt the summit is killed.
Not being a snow climber (and being no more comfortable scaling mountain peak snow than a cow would be walking on a cattle guard), I usually shy away from such looks at lofty snow-laden summits. However, this book is a compelling tale of man vs. nature, and I finished it in a day.
There are several other new books also out on Mallory and Irvine, but this one should be the best since it is from the crew that found Mallory's body intact after 75 years. This book has all the elements of a first-person, suspenseful account of life in the "death zone" of Everest.
A highlight of the book occurs when the BBC expedition finds Mallory's body at 26,800 feet. (The group also found the bodies of two other climbers.)
Firstbrook believes Mallory fell coming down the mountain, probably in the dark. His leg and shoulder were broken, but his other leg was carefully crossed over the injured limb. His eyes were also peacefully shut, and his rope, still tied around his waist, had broken. The author feels Mallory couldn't have fallen very far, and that, coupled with another climber seeing Mallory and Irvine moving about some 1,400 feet higher, plus their oxygen bottles being found in another location, likely means they were coming down from the summit when they perished.
A Chinese climber in 1975 may have found Irvine's body at a slightly lower elevation than where Mallory was found. The BBC group thought they'd found Irvine at first, but the identification papers proved it was Mallory.
The Chinese climber, Wang Hong-bao, was also killed soon after his discovery in an avalanche, but he described the climber as being British, lying on his side, as if he fell unconscious and froze to death instead of falling off the mountain.
Firstbrook masterfully describes his emotions at finding Mallory's body, the silence and the feeling that it had become a part of the mountain that the legendary climber was so obsessed with conquering. He believes Irvine had the camera, and so if there's a photo to prove they made it to the top, that's where the proof will be -- though if they made the summit at nightfall (and Firstbrook now believes that's pretty likely), there is no possible proof.
"The mystery of Mallory and Irvine lives on. . . . Whether they reached the summit or not, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine set the world and example . . . they are in every sense, the men of Everest," Firstbrook concluded.