Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes PDF
Preview Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes
Fallen Giants Fallen Giants A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver With Maps and Peak Sketches by Dee Molenaar Yale Univ ersit y Pr ess New Haven and London Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Copyright © by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver. All rights reserved. Th is book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Adobe Garamond and Linotype Egyptian by Duke & Company, Devon, Pennsylvania. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Isserman, Maurice. Fallen giants : a history of Himalayan mountaineering from the age of empire to the age of extremes / Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver ; with maps and peak sketches by Dee Molenaar. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ---- (cloth : alk. paper) . Mountaineering—Himalaya Mountains—History. . Himalaya Mountains—Description and travel. I. Weaver, Stewart Angas. II. Molenaar, Dee. III. Title. GV..HI . A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Th e paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Frontispiece: Th e program cover for John Noel’s fi lm of the British Mount Everest expedition. Reprinted by permission of the Royal Geographical Society. For Ruth, David, Cea, and Henry “Onward and Upward” If an account of the climbing of E verest is ever written, I take leave to doubt whether it will be as widely r ead as have been the stories of successive failures. For, say what one may, when the summit is reached some of the mystery and grandeur surrounding a peak hitherto untrodden by man is lost; and a book recounting the fall of one of the giants will be bought—or by mountaineers more likely borrowed—with misgiving and read with loathing. H. W. Tilman, Th e Ascent of Nanda Devi () Contents Preface: A Fallen Giant ix one. When Men and Mountains Meet two. Th e Age of Empire, – thr ee. “ Because It Is Th er e”: George Mallory and the Fight for Everest, – four . “A Random Harvest of Delight,” – five. “Himalayan Hey-Day,” – six. Th e Golden Age Postponed, – seven. “Don’t Be a Chicken-Hearted Fellow”: Everest, – eight . Th e Golden Age of Himalayan Climbing, – nine. New Frontiers, New Faces, – ten. Th e Age of Extremes, – Notes Bibliography Index This page intentionally left blank Preface A Fallen Giant S hortly before noon on May , , the American climber Conrad Anker stood amid the downward-sloping shale slabs of the North Face of Mount Everest at an altitude of , feet. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of something white—not snow white but marble white—about feet away. Walking over to investigate, he found himself staring at the frozen remains of a man, obvi- ously long dead, lying facedown on the mountain. Th e man’s right leg looked broken, as did his right elbow. His hands were gloveless and extended before him, as if in the act of reaching out to arrest a fall. Circling his waist and tangled around one shoulder was an old cotton rope. One foot lay bare, and the other wore a hobnailed boot. Most of the man’s clothing had been ripped from the back of his body by the wind, but what remained—wool, cotton, and silk—was of a fashion not seen on the mountain for many decades. Th e collars of the shirts and jackets he’d worn on the day of his fall remained around his neck. And stitched inside one of the collars was a nametag that erad “G. Mallory.” Nearly seventy-fi ve years after the June day in when George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had disappeared en route to the summit of Mount Everest, Mallory had been found. As a group, mountaineers display a deep reverence for the history of their endeavor, and it was both reverence and historical curiosity that prompted the search expedi- tion that led to the discovery of Mallory’s body. Th ough they would be criticized by some for photographing his remains and for removing relics from his pockets, Anker and his comrades gave Mallory a decent burial to the best of their ability. Th ey covered his body with rocks and recited over him Psalm : “As for man, his days are as grass. . . .” Mountaineering history is enshrined in a rich literature, including Anker and David Roberts’s account of the discovery of Mallory’s body, Th e Lost Explorer. Many mountaineers date their decision to take up the sport from an encounter with a good book on the subject. A striking feature of this literature is that for the most part it has been written by the climbers themselves. Mountain climbing is a sport without spectators and, particularly in the Himalaya, the climbers are almost always the only ones on the scene to
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