I feel partly a sense of exhaustion, and partly a sense of loss. Everest has been such a big part of my life for so long that it will leave a huge hole. If I do not move on, though, it will become a destructive source of longing and regret.
So, goodbye to Everest. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Chronology
1802
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge records the first rock climb in literature.
1846–52
Surveyors working for the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India calculate that one large Himalayan peak (which they knew at first simply as ‘B’, and later as ‘Peak 15’) rose to at least 28,000ft, making it probably the highest in the world.
1854
The height of Mount Everest is calculated as 29,002ft.
1854
Sir Alfred Wills initiates the Golden Age of Alpinism with his ascent of the Wetterhorn.
1857
The Alpine Club is founded in London.
1865
Pandit 001, Nain Singh, travels incognito to Tibet, secretly mapping as he goes. Efforts to find a universally accepted local name for ‘Peak 15’ are unsuccessful and the mountain is renamed Mount Everest in honour of Sir George Everest, who had superintended much of the work of the Great Trigonometrical Survey.
1886
George Mallory is born.
1890
Howard Somervell is born.
1903–04
‘Diplomatic Mission’ to Lhasa is led by Sir Francis Younghusband.
1912
Captain Scott dies on his return from the South Pole.
1914
Outbreak of the First World War.
1915
Somervell joins up as an army surgeon, Mallory as an artillery officer.
1921
Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition explores Everest’s lower northern and eastern approaches and gains the North Col.
1922
Mount Everest expedition. Mallory, Somervell, Norton and Morshead make the first serious attempt to climb the mountain. George Ingle Finch and Geoffrey Bruce, the first to use supplementary oxygen, later achieve an altitude record of c. 27,300ft (8,320m). The first casualties on the mountain are suffered when seven Sherpas die in an avalanche on the slopes of the North Col.
1924
Mount Everest expedition. 4 June: Norton reaches 28,126ft (8,570m) on Everest without supplementary oxygen. This altitude record stands for 55 years.
1924, 8 June
Mallory and his young companion Sandy Irvine disappear into the clouds on their last attempt to climb Mount Everest.
1933
An ice axe belonging to Mallory or Irvine is found. The first flights over Everest provide good aerial photographs of the summit.
1934
Frank Smythe discovers John Hoyland’s body on Mont Blanc.
1953
Everest is climbed by a British expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt. Climbers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit via the South Col and South-East Ridge on 29 May.
1960
A Chinese expedition reaches the summit by climbing the Second Step.
1975
A Chinese climber, Wang Hong Bao, finds the body of an Englishman during a Chinese expedition.
1979
The first ascent without supplementary oxygen is achieved by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
1980
Messner makes the first solo climb of Everest, again without oxygen equipment. He uses the route pioneered by Norton and Somervell.
1990
The International Peace Climb. BBC film, Galahad of Everest.
1993, 6 October
The author reaches the summit, becoming the 15th Briton to climb Mount Everest.
1998
The author initiates a Mallory search expedition.
1999
George Mallory’s body is found.
2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2011
Searches for Somervell’s camera.
2007
BBC Horizon film of Caldwell Everest expedition.
2009
The yacht Curlew sets sail on the Seven Seas, Seven Summits expedition around the world.
Notes
chapter 1: Start of an Obsession
1. Letter from Jack Longland to J. S. Hoyland, September 1934.
2. Everest Archives, Royal Geographical Society, Box 18.
3. Foreword in T. H. Somervell, After Everest, Hodder & Stoughton, 1936.
4. Letter from George Mallory to his sister Avie, August 1917.
chapter 2: Getting the Measure of the Mountain
1. Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Sara Hutchinson, 5 August 1802.
2. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 502.
3. John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses, Faber and Faber, 1992.
chapter 3: Renaissance Men
1. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Robert Bridges, The Spirit of Man, Longmans, Green & Co., 1916.
6. Wilfred Owen, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, 1920.
7. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
chapter 4: Galahad of Everest
1. R. L. G. Irving, ‘George Herbert Leigh Mallory, 1886–1924’, Alpine Journal, November 1924, vol. 36, no. 229, pp. 381–5.
2. George Mallory in a letter to his mother, 22 August 1905.
3. Letter from Lytton Strachey to Clive and Vanessa Bell, 21 May 1909.
4. Geoffrey Winthrop Young, On High Hills, Methuen, 1927.
5. George Mallory, ‘The mountaineer as artist’, Climbers’ Club Journal, March 1914.
6. E. F. Norton, The Fight for Everest 1924, Edward Arnold, 1925, p. 145.
chapter 5: The Reconnaissance of 1921
1. Royal Geographical Society, 1920 presidential address.
2. J. B. Noel, Through Tibet to Everest, Edward Arnold, 1927.
3. Simon Schama, op. cit.
4. Everest Archives, Royal Geographical Society, Box 3.
5. C. K. Howard-Bury, The Reconnaissance of Mount Everest, 1921, Longmans, Green & Co., 1922.
6. Ibid.
7. Ruth Mallory, quoted in Wade Davis, Into the Silence, Bodley Head, 2011.
chapter 6: The Expedition of 1922
1. Exhibition catalogue, year unknown (possibly 1935).
2. C. G. Bruce, The Assault on Everest: 1922, Edward Arnold, 1923.
3. George Mallory, ‘Everest Unvanquished’, Asia, no. 9, 1923.
4. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
5. Everest, Journey to the Third Pole, BBC Radio 4, presenter Stephen Venables, producer GH.
6. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
7. Everest, Journey to the Third Pole, BBC Radio 4.
8. E. F. Norton, op. cit.
9. Walt Unsworth, Everest, Baton Wicks, 1981.
10. David Robertson, George Mallory, Faber and Faber, 1999.
11. Email from Audrey Salkeld to GH.
12. Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, Jonathan Cape, 1929.
13. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
14. Ibid.
chapter 7: 1922, and the First Attempt to Climb Mount Everest
1. T. H. Somervell, op. cit., p. 57.
2. Everest, Journey to the Third Pole, BBC Radio 4.
3. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
4. Letter from Longstaff to Wollaston, 19 August 1922.
5. Email from Audrey Salkeld to GH.
6. Wade Davis, op. cit.
7. Report from Bruce to Hinks, 4 July 1922.
8. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
9. T. H. Somervell, op. cit., p. 77.
chapter 8: ‘No trace can be found, given up hope …’
1. Doug Scott, ‘Ego Trips’, Summit magazine, BMC, autumn 2011 (adapted from an article in the Alpine Journal).
2. Letter from George Mallory to General Bruce, British Library, BL 63119.
3. Cable, Somer
vell RGS Everest Archive, Box 34.
4. Julie Summers, Fearless on Everest, Phoenix, 2000.
5. E. F. Norton, op. cit.
6. T. H. Somervell, op. cit., p. 125.
7. T. H. Somervell, op. cit.
8. BBC interview used in Everest, Journey to the Third Pole, BBC Radio 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. T. H. Somervell, op. cit., p. 132.
12. BBC interview used in Everest: Journey to the Third Pole, BBC Radio 4.
chapter 9: A Pilgrim’s Progress
1. H. Ruttledge, Everest 1933, Hodder & Stoughton, 1934.
2. Sir Percy Wyn-Harris, Sunday Times, 17 October 1971.
3. N. E. Odell, ‘Mr. Odell’s Story’, Alpine Journal, November 1924, vol. 36, no. 229, pp. 221–5.
4. N. E. Odell, ‘The Last Climb’, Alpine Journal, November 1924, vol. 36, no. 229, pp. 265–72.
5. E. F. Norton, op. cit., p. 130.
6. The Times, 21 February 1980.
chapter 10: John Hoyland and a New Clue
1. Letter from J. S. Hoyland, Chamonix, 20 September 1934.
2. F. S. Smythe, Climbs and Ski Runs, Blackwood, 1931.
3. Journal of the Friends Historical Society, 1989, vol. 55, no. 7, p. 220.
4. Letter from J. D. Hoyland to G. W. Young, Sheffield, April 1934.
5. W. H. Auden, Selected Poems of W. H. Auden, Faber and Faber, 2010.
6. Letter from J. Longland to G. W. Young, Durham, 2 October 1934.
7. Alpine Journal, 1934, vol. 46, pp. 415–19.
8. Letter from J. Longland to J. S. Hoyland, September 1934.
9. The Badger (Downs School magazine), autumn 1934.
10. Letter from F. S. Smythe to E. F. Norton, Joshimath, 4 September 1937.
chapter 11: I First Set Eyes on Mount Everest
1. George Mallory, ‘The Eastern Approach, 1921’, in C. K. Howard-Bury, op. cit.
2. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. E. Fitzgerald, stanza 17.
3. Hilaire Belloc, ‘The Yak’, in The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, Duckworth, 1918.
4. P. Scheid and H. Shams, ‘Birds over Mount Everest: extreme hypoxia tolerance’, Journal of Physiology, 1997, vol. 499 (P).
chapter 12: High Mountains, Cold Seas
1. E. F. Norton, op. cit., pp. 324–5.
chapter 13: The Finding of Mallory’s Body
1. Letter from John Mallory to GH, 10 August 1998.
2. Letter from George Mallory to GH, 29 September 1998.
3. Letter from Lord Hunt to GH, 17 February 1998.
4. Jochen Hemmleb, Eric Simonson and Larry Johnson, Ghosts of Everest, Macmillan, 1999.
5. Ibid.
6. Graham Hoyland, High magazine, August 1999, no. 201, pp. 20–3.
7. Ed Douglas, ‘Everest row over photo profits from body of pioneer Mallory’, Observer, 9 May 1999.
8. Wade Davis, op. cit., p. 569.
9. Email from George Rodway to GH.
10. Sunday Times, 27 April 2003.
11. Transcript of a filmed interview by GH, April 2004.
12. Ed Douglas, ‘Rivals race to solve Everest’s final secret’, Observer, 16 May 2004.
chapter 14: When Did Everest Get So Easy?
1. Albert F. Mummery, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, Basil Blackwell, 1936.
2. K. Fukui, Y. Fujii, Y. Ageta and K. Asahi, ‘Changes in the lower limit of mountain permafrost between 1973 and 2004 in the Khumbu Himal, the Nepal Himalayas’, Global and Planetary Change, 2007, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 251–56.
3. G. W. K. Moore and J. L. Semple, ‘The impact of global warming on Mount Everest’, High Altitude Medicine & Biology, 2009, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 383–5.
4. Woodward quoted in Peter Gillman’s article, Sunday Times, 24 September 2006.
5. Tom McKinlay, ‘Wrong to let climber die, says Sir Edmund’, New Zealand Herald, 24 May 2006.
6. Michael Elmes and David Barry, ‘Deliverance, denial, and the death zone: a study of narcissism and regression in the May 1996 Everest climbing disaster’, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, June 1999, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 163–87.
chapter 15: Why Do You Climb?
1. George Mallory, ‘The mountaineer as artist’, op. cit.
2. J. D. Hoyland, ‘Partly concerning a leaky tent’, extract from the Bootham School magazine, July 1933.
3. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, John Murray, 1859, p. 449.
4. Daniel J. Kruger and Randolph M. Nesse, ‘Sexual selection and the male:female mortality ratio’, Evolutionary Psychology, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 66–85.
5. Andreas Wilke et al., ‘Is risk taking used as a cue in mate choice?’, Evolutionary Psychology, 2006, vol. 4, pp. 367–93.
6. G. William Farthing, ‘Neither daredevils nor wimps: attitudes toward physical risk takers as mates’, Evolutionary Psychology, 2007, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 754–77.
7. Professor Steve Jones, ‘Aping evolution’, BBC Radio 4, 9 November 2009.
8. J. D. Hoyland, ‘Partly concerning a leaky tent’, op. cit.
chapter 16: What Does Mount Everest Mean?
1. Simon Schama, op. cit.
2. E. F. Norton, op. cit., p. 139.
3. Audrey Salkeld, ‘The many faces of evil’, Guardian, 28 November 2008.
4. Terry Eagleton, On Evil, Yale University Press, 2011, p. 100.
5. Quoted in Hugh Ruttledge, Everest 1933, Hodder & Stoughton, 1934.
6. Jeremy S. Windsor, ‘Voices in the air’, British Medical Journal, 2008, vol. 337, p. 1433.
7. T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’, The Criterion, 1922, lines 359–65.
8. Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition (1914–1917), Pimlico, 1999.
9. Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s Boat Journey, Wakefield Press, 2007.
10. Shahar Arzy et al., ‘Induction of an illusory shadow person’, Nature, 2006, vol. 443, 21 September.
11. Jochen Hemmleb, ‘Everest – of obsessions and confessions’.
12. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lines 215–18.
13. T. H. Somervell, op. cit., p. 264.
chapter 17: The Theorists and Their Theories
1. Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld, The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine, Pimlico, 1996.
2. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia, Oxford University Press, 1999.
3. www.velocitypress.com/mallory_irvine.html.
4. Conrad Anker and David Roberts, The Lost Explorer, Simon and Schuster, 2000.
5. Email from Professor Mike Searle to GH, 18 July 2010.
chapter 18: Wearing Some Old Clothes
1. Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld, op. cit., p. 291.
2. Mike Parsons and Mary Rose, Mallory Myths and Mysteries: The Mallory Clothing Replica Project, Mountain Heritage Trust, 2006.
3. ‘Unravelling the mystery of Mallory’, at www.lboro.ac.uk/service/publicity/publications/view/springsummer08/mallory.html.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. www.velocitypress.com/mallory_irvine.html.
chapter 19: Perfect Weather for the Job
1. P. G. Firth et al., ‘Mortality on Mount Everest, 1921–2006: descriptive study’, British Medical Journal, 2008, 337, December.
2. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, Anchor Books, 1999.
3. G. W. K. Moore, J. L. Semple and G. F. Hoyland, ‘Global warming, El Niño and high-impact storms at extreme altitude: historical trends and consequences for mountaineers’, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 2011, vol. 50, pp. 2197–2209.
4. N. E. Odell, ‘The last climb of Mallory and Irvine’, The Geographical Journal, 1924, vol. 64, no. 6, pp. 455–61.
5. T. H. Somervell, ‘The meteorological results of the Mount Everest Expedition’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 1926, vol. 52, no. 218, pp. 131–44.
6. J. B. West, ‘Climbing Mt Everest without oxygen: an analysis of ma
ximal exercise during extreme hypoxia’, Respiration Physiology, 1983, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 265–79.
7. Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld, op. cit., p. 1.
chapter 20: Utterly Impregnable
1. F. S. Smythe, Camp Six, Hodder & Stoughton, 1941, chapter XV.
chapter 21: What Was in His Mind?
1. Letter from George Mallory to Gilbert Murray, quoted in Alpine Journal, 2000, p. 161.
chapter 22: Weighing the Evidence
1. M. P. Gerrie, M. Garry and E. F. Loftus, ‘False memories’, Psychology and Law: An Empirical Perspective, N. Brewer and K. Williams (eds), Guilford Press, 2005, pp. 222–53.
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