author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
The headline ‘Mallory’s body discovered on Everest in 1936’ appeared widely on social media sites last week. Had new revelations emerged about whether Mallory reached the summit of Everest? No, the real subject of the story wasn’t George Mallory at all, but arguably a much more interesting character.
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In 1924 the mountaineering legend George Mallory vanished into mist on Everest’s Northeast Ridge, never to be seen again. In 2009 and the bestselling novelist Jeffery Archer wrote a novel about it called Paths of Glory, but was it historically accurate? Let’s have a look.
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If I had one word to describe The Epic of Everest, John Noel’s historic record of the 1924 expedition, which has recently been restored, then it would be atmospheric. If I had a second one then it would be weird, but then I’m not that familiar with 1920s silent movies and I expect they were all like this back then.
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There has been a flurry of books about Everest published this year to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the first ascent. This one stands out because it challenges many widely held beliefs and provides a very different perspective of the 1953 expedition than most other accounts.
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One advantage of failing to climb a mountain like Denali is that you have an excuse to go back there. Mountains have many facets, and by choosing an alternative route you can feel like you’re climbing a different mountain. There are some great options on Denali, depending on your talent and fortitude. Here are four of them.
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When Belmore Browne and Herschel Parker had to turn around just 50m short of the summit of Denali during a storm in 1912, it would have been hard for them to imagine there could be any consolation in such bad luck. But sometimes the mountain is trying to tell you something, and when that happens it’s always worth listening.
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If everything goes to plan then by the time you read this I’ll be freezing my nuts off on a glacier in Alaska. In January my friend Dan and I decided we would book to climb Denali, the highest mountain in North America, also known as Mount McKinley.
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Although I’ve lived here for 17 years, I’ve never been a big one for taking advantage of London’s art galleries and exhibitions. Last weekend was an exception because it had a mountaineering theme. I spent the afternoon at two exhibitions celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest.
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There’s nothing like a negative Everest story to trigger a flurry of publishing absurdity. For example, some people say Everest has now become so crowded with commercial expeditions there is no longer any room for real climbers, an argument that can be easily refuted with a single photograph.
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While George Mallory, Edmund Hillary, Reinhold Messner and Eric Shipton all deserve their place in the Everest pantheon, if there’s to be an award for the greatest of all Everest climbers, then IMHO it should go to Tenzing Norgay, because he had to work so much harder to achieve his ambition than any of the other climbers.
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