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It's
Tough at the Top
Mount
Everest has long been a great attraction to millions of people
throughout the world. Many people have risked and lost their
lives in the course of expedition. Modern explorers, however,
are becoming more fascinated by the ultimate fate of earlier
doomed explorers.
"Because it's there," George Mallory reportedly
replied when asked why he wanted to climb . The only man to take part in all three
of the British pioneering expeditions in the 1920s, Mallory
was driven by a fascination to reach the summit of the mountain
with which he had formed a strong personal bond with. "It's
an hell-like mountain, cold and treacherous," he once wrote
in a letter home from Everest Base Camp. "The risks of
getting caught are too great; the margin of strength when
men are at great heights is too small. Perhaps it is mere
folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt?"
In 1920 when Francis Younghusband, the President of the Royal
Geographical Society (RGS), first put forward the idea of
supporting an expedition to Everest, the mountain was still
a mystery. At 8,848 meters Everest was almost 1,500 meters
higher than anyone had previously climbed. There was even
doubt as to whether it was possible to breathe at such altitude.
At the time no one had been within 65 kilometers of the mountain,
which could only be approached through the unknown kingdoms
of Nepal or China's Tibet.
With the North and South Poles already discovered, Younghusband
had his sights set on the "third pole", setting up the joint RGS/Alpine Club, Mount Everest Committee.
"The accomplishment
of such a feat will elevate the human spirit and will give
man, especially us geographers, a feeling that we are acquiring
a true mastery of our surroundings. This is the incalculable
good which the ascent of Mount Everest will confer," he said.
High Hopes
George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had set out from Camp VI on
8 June 1924, attempting to become the first men to set foot
on the summit. They never returned. Today, with more than 550
mountaineers from 20 countries having reached the summit, the
mystery has shifted away from Everest the mountain, towards
Mallory the man. In March 1999, 75 years after Mallory's death
on the mountain, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition
set out for Everest, not because it was there, but because he
was. Leader of the 1999 expedition Eric Simonson and his team
were hoping to discover whether or not the two men achieved
their goal before they died.
They had only a few clues to go on. In 1933 an ice axe, thought
to be Irvine's, had been found on the route, and in 1975,
the body of a climber was discovered nearby by a Chinese climber
who described it as being an "old English dead" on account
of the vintage clothes the body still wore. However, the identity
of the dead climber has never been confirmed. Simonson's team
expected to relocate the body during their high level search.
They anticipated it to be Irvine, the inexperienced Oxford
graduate who had possibly fallen, dropping his ice axe on
the icy slabs of Everest's North Face. Mallory's fate was
unknown.
Searching
amongst the snow gullies and scouring ledges at 8 320 meters,
Simonson's team discovered a body, the skin bleached porcelain
white by the sun. It was lying face down, head and arms frozen
into the earth. Only the collars of the tattered clothes were
intact and on one was uncovered a manufacturer's label, still
legible despite years of vicious assaults by ice and wind.
Beneath this was another label, which they could all easily
read. In
simple carefully stitched letters was written: G Mallory.
Mallory,'s name on the clothes so surprised the search party
their first thought was to wonder why Irvine had been
wearing his climbing partner's shirt. The discovery of
Mallory's body prompted admiration of expedition search
member, Jake Norton. "As
a climber, to know what Mallory did was phenomenal.
He was a powerful tough guy, who fought till the end," he
told reporters.
During the early decades of the twentieth
century, it was this strength, tenacity and love of adventure
which had established Mallory as a leading figure in the close-knit
climbing world. He was an obvious choice for the Mount Everest
Committee as part of the first reconnaissance
expedition in 1921. For Mallory this was the opportunity
of a lifetime. It was a challenge, but that only increased
its appeal, for as he once said: " To refuse the adventure
is to run the risk of drying up like a pea in its shell."
By 1924, after two exhausting
and unsuccessful attempts to the mountain on expeditions in
1921 and 1922, his
early enthusiasm began to wane. He was now 38 years
old. A family man with three children, he had just begun a
teaching job at Cambridge. Yet, he couldn't resist one final
attempt to complete a task he had started. Meeting Irvine,
recommended by Noel Odell, the expedition's geologist,
buoyed him up for the challenge. Although Irvine was young
with no track record as a climber, he was strong, resourceful
and good-natured. The expedition "superman", they called him.
Mallory had warmed to him immediately, describing him as "a
fine fellow", who should, "prove a splendid companion on the
mountain."
Before departing for the
1924 expedition Mallory had confided in a friend that it would
be, "more of war than an adventure", and that he was prepared
for a siege on the summit. Two attempts were to be made, one
with oxygen and one without but Everest repelled both attempts.
Mallory's climbing teams were defeated through lack of oxygen
and exhaustion. He refused to give up and was determined to
risk one last try. Only Odell and Irvine were in a fit state
to partner him. For Mallory it was a simple choice. He
threw his lot in with Irvine and the pair set off on their
fatal summit bid.
The day after Mallory and
Irvine departed for the summit, Odell saw them for the last
time from a crag at 7 925 meters. A sudden clearing above
him unveiled the whole summit ridge. On a snow slope, clinging
to the steep North Face, he noticed, first Mallory, then Irvine
approach a broad rock step. As he stood, his eyes tracking
them against the mosaic of rock and snow, the weather closed
in again, clouding their fate for the next 75 years.
Frozen to the Core
In finding Mallory's
body, Simonson's team had helped to come to a theory of how
he had died. Prior to the recent expedition it was thought
that Mallory and Irvine had been climbing at 8 535 meters,
and could have either fallen or simply laid down exhausted
in the snow to die. But after seeing the body, Norton is
sure they were climbing tied together when Mallory fell.
"There was a rope wrapped round his waist. You could see
black and blues on him, he probably had internal bleeding.
He slid down the North Face digging into the snow or gravel,
crossed his legs in pain and died a few moments later."
Other more significant
questions remain. Despite the initial find of the body, Everest
was reluctant to give away too many more clues. The team failed
to find the camera, lent to Mallory by his climbing partner
Howard Somervell, the existence of which may prove whether
or not the pair made it to the top. However, searching for
needles in a hostile, windscorched haystack of rock and ice
is a perilous business. Between 8 230 meters and the summit,
Simonson's team counted 17 other bodies, besides Mallory's.
In the face of such danger the expedition's fascination with
the man, must be almost as great as the man's own fascination
with the mountain.
Macabre though Simonson's
quest is, it is not unique. In the autumn of 1984 the face
of John Torrington appeared in national newspapers. What was
unusual about this was that Torrington had been dead for 138
years, buried under 1.8 meters of Arctic permafrost. Torrington
had been chief Stoker aboard the Erebus which along with the
Terror sailed with Sir John Franklin during his expedition
to chart the Northwest Passage. The expedition had set sail
from the Thames River on 19 May 1845, carrying with it the
hope of the nation for the discovery of a navigable route
through the Arctic into the Pacific Ocean.
Neither ship was ever seen
again and 129 men lost their lives in a polar enigma which
mesmerized Victorian Britain. The conclusion of the 25 major
search expeditions, which set out to solve the puzzle was
that Franklin's men had succumbed to scurry, starvation, stress
and .
In 1981 American
Owen Beattie, set out to apply modern scientific and forensic
technique to any remaining evidence of Franklin's expedition.
Over the following five years Beattie scoured Franklin's expedition
sites for clues. His most grisly task was the exhumation and
autopsies of three expedition members, one of whom was John
Torrington.
For men buried in the year that the Corn Laws
were repealed, they were in a remarkable state of preservation.
Being kept in the frozen earth since 1846 had prevented major
outward appearances of decay. Torrington looked very much
as he has done in life; skin was still on his face, he had
kept his teeth, eyes and most of his hair. Samples of his
body tissue looked almost recent in origin and certain bacterial
stains collected had even survived the big freeze.
The autopsy
showed Torrington was an ill man when he died. His lungs were
blackened with atmospheric pollutants and he showed evidence
of tuberculosis. There were also signs that the ultimate cause
of death had been pneumonia. However, what struck Beattie
most were abnormally high levels of lead found in samples
of hair, indicating acute lead poisoning. Lead poisoning can
lead to weakness, fatigue, stupor, neurosis and erratic behavior,
far from ideal conditions for surviving long exposure to the
harsh Arctic environment. Beattie confirmed the elevated lead
levels in John Hartnell and William Braine, the two other
exhumed bodies. In 1845, tinned preserved food was a modern
invention, tin cans having been only patented in England in
1811. They were made from a wrought-iron sheet bent into a
cylinder and joined along the seam with solder containing
more than 90 percent lead. Franklin's expedition carried nearly
8 000 lead-soldered tins containing meat, soup, vegetables
and pemmican─a pressed cake of shredded dry meat. Beattie's
examination of tins collected near the site of the graves
confirmed the high levels of lead in the solder and also that
the side seams of some tins were incomplete, increasing the
risk of contamination.
Beattie's gruesome raising
of Franklin's dead, had answered the age-old question of what
happened to the ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition. Weakened
by the physical and neurological side effects of lead poisoning,
the men would have not been physically able to fight off the
diseases that were the eventual cause of death.
The Missing Link
Simonson's expedition returned from Everest
at the start of June 1999. He has similar hopes of answering
the questions surrounding the last hours of Mallory and Irvine.
Although Mallory's camera was not recovered, various other
artifacts were unearthed, including an oxygen bottle, Mallory's
watch, an altimeter, glacier goggles, a pocketknife and several
letters from family members. An American documentary team,
who traveled with the expedition, is already planning to run
a series of forensic examination on the artifacts, similar
to those of Beattie. They hope to piece together the many
possible scenarios of Mallory and Irvine's last day. Beattie's
solution to the Franklin mystery took four expeditions and
Simonson is not expecting miracles. Already he is looking
ahead to the next year and planning a second expedition. Next
time he wants to look for Irvine's body and the elusive camera,
which he still believes is on the mountain. But for the present,
the mystery of both the man and the mountain live on.
(1 973 words)
(From Geographical, September 1999
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