EARLY EVEREST PIONEERS
The Everest historian Walt Unsworth wrote: “Had Mt. Everest been climbed at the first attempt, the achievement would have been hailed as notable and then quickly forgotten. It was, ironically, repeated failures which the mountain real stature.”
British army officers began discussing the possibility of climbing Mt. Everest in the 1890s. The Royal Geographic Society and Alpine Club carried out the first expedition in 1921. The first attempts to climb Everest were mounted from the northern Tibetan side. Mt. Everest was easier to approach from this side. It lies on the edge of the Tibetan plateau and could be reached more easily by vehicle and with pack animals. The climb itself is more technically demanding than the south side because there is generally less snow and more rock.
Climber only began trying to climb Mt. Everest from the southern Nepalese side after World War II when Tibet was closed to foreigners. Nepal opened to outsiders in 1950. Reaching Mt. Everest from the Nepalese side required ascending and descending many high ridges and this was time consuming and required a lot of porters to carry equipment.The most difficult parts of the climb are the first sections across the Khumbu ice fall and the final stretch to the summit.
The first photograph of Everest was taken in 1904 from a Tibetan village 151 kilometers (94 miles away). A British Army captain, traveling in disguise, came within 64 kilometers (40 miles) of Everest 1913. At that time Tibet was not part of China and was closed to outsiders. In 1920 the 13th Dalai Lama opened Tibet to foreigners. That year a British party explored a route to Everest from the north. The first attempt to climb Everest — by a British team in 1921, ended in failure. The first people died trying to climb Everest in 1922. That year seven Sherpas died in an avalanche. [Source: Robin Pagnamenta, The Times, June 2, 2012]
Early British Everest Expeditions
The first six attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, between 1921 to 1938, were all British expeditions. Each was organized by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London and produced one or more deaths. No oxygen was used on the first try. It was used on Everest in 1922 even though the British considered it "unsporting."
The British had considered it their duty to be the first on the summit of Mt. Everest. As early as 1905, Lord George Cuzon, the imperial viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, said it was “a reproach” that the British had not tried to climb the world’s highest peak.
The first British expedition in 1921 was led by Charles Howard-Bury and was more of a scouting mission than a serious attempt to reach the top. The team reached 22,500-foot-high Lhakpa La. The group plotted a route to the top from the North Col, a saddle on the north ridge that lead towards the summit.
Six more unsuccessful British attempts up the northern route followed. World War II brought a halt to the attempts. When China took over Tibet in 1950, the northern routes were closed. The British received permission from Nepal to explore the southern route in 1951.
In 1934 a religious zealot by the name of Maurice Wilson tried to reach the summit. He is regarded as the first man to attempt to climb Everest solo. With no experience as a mountain climber he believed that God would guide him safely to the top. After plunges and snowstorms forced him to return to camp after his four day attempt he tried again as soon as he recovered...His body was found a year later on the North Col. The last words in his diary read: "Off again, gorgeous day." [Source: "I Climbed Everest Alone...At My Limit." by Reinhold Messner, National Geographic, October 1981]
George Mallory, the First Man to Give Everest a Serious Go
English climber George Leigh Mallory (1886-1924) was the first to man to seriously try to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. A Cambridge-educated radical who became a teacher and then a professional mountaineer, he was the consummate gentleman adventurer and was adored by British aristocrats and the intellectual Bloomsbury set. Lytton Strachey the famously gay Bloombury founder and friend of Virginia Wolff — described Mallory's living body as "vast, pink unreliable — a thing to melt into and die." Of the man himself he said: "Mon dieu!—George Mallory! … He's six-foot high, with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles, and a face—oh incredible—the mystery of Botticelli, the refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print, the youth and piquancy of an unimaginable English boy."
Mallory's efforts to climb Mt. Everest made him an international celebrity. He is the source of the famous "Because it's there" statement, which made when he asked why climbs mountains during a lecture in Philadelphia the year before died. Mallory also once said, "This is a thrilling business altogether. I can't tell you how it possesses ne, and what a prospect it is. And the beauty of it all!"
Mallory was born in Cheshire. He was introduced to rock climbing and mountaineering as a student at Winchester College. After graduating from Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was an oarsmen, he taught at Charterhouse School whilst honing his skills as a climber in the Alps and the English Lake District. He served in the British Army during the First World War and fought at the Somme. After the war, Mallory returned to Charterhouse before resigning to take part in the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition. [Source: Wikipedia]
In 1922, Mallory took part in the second expedition to make the first ascent of Everest. His team achieved a record altitude of 8,225 meters (26,980 feet) without supplemental oxygen. During the 1924 expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, disappeared on the northeast ridge of Everest. The pair was last seen when they were about verticle 245 meters (800 feet) short of the summit. What happened to Mallory was unknown for 75 years, until his body was discovered in 1999. There are some that believe that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit and died on the way down.
Mallory's Early Everest Expeditions
Mallory made three attempts to climb Mt. Everest in four years. He scouted a route up in 1921, writing: “The success brings our reconnaissance to an end. We have found the way and we’re planning the attack.” He made it to 8,225 meters (almost 27,000 feet) on his first attempt to reach the summit a year later. That year he was photographed naked with a backpack on his shoulders as he prepared to ford a river. Mallory loathed oxygen. Teammates who used it made it 100 meters (328 feet) higher than him. The next year seven porters died in another failed attempt.
On his Mt. Everest expeditions, Mallory wore leather boots, with metal studs rather than crampons, tweed pants and jacket, cotton shells. His group had no fixed rope, anchors or ladders. Of Mt. Everest, Mallory once wrote his wife, "Suffice it to say that it has the most steep ridges and appalling precipices that I have ever see." On his chances to reach the summit, he wrote, "I look upon myself as the strongest for the lot, the most likely to get to the top."
On his second Everest attempt, Mallory and Howard Somervell and Edward Norton, almost reached the crest of the North-East Ridge. Despite being slowed by the thin air, his is when they reached 8,225 meters. Weather conditions and dwindling daylight forced them to turn around. retreat. A second party led by George Finch — who used bottled oxygen while climbing and when sleeping. reached an elevation around 8,321 meters (27,300 feet). This group climbed at record speeds and Mallory emulated their techniques. Mallory organized the third unsuccessful attempt on the summit, for which he accused of using poor judgement. He departed as the monsoon season was beginning. While leading a group of porters down the lower slopes of the North Col of Everest in fresh, waist-deep snow, an avalanche swept over the group, killing seven Sherpas. The attempt was immediately abandoned after that. [Source: Wikipedia]
Mallory's Last Everest Expeditions
In June 1924, Mallory began his final ascent of Everest with his companion, Andre Irvine. Mallory was 38. Irvine was a 22-year-old Oxford engineering student. He had been selected because of his fitness and his experience with oxygen bottles. Capt. Hohn Noel paid 8,000 British pounds (about $600,000 in today's money) for exclusive photographic rights to Mallory's expedition.
On June 8, 1924, Mallory and Irvine set out from a camp at 8,230 meters (27,000 feet). They were last seen at 12: 50pm near Everest's summit by a member of the ream further below. Mallory and Irvine were on ridge ascending into the clouds at a rock face at either the First Step or the Second Step, a 90-foot-high rock wall at 28,300 feet. When the weather cleared they were nowhere to be seen.
What happened to Mallory after he was last sighted is a mystery. Some people think he may have made it to the top of Mt. Everest and died on his way down. Most mountaineers don't believe he made it. It is believed that Mallory made it past the First Step, and may have made it past the Second Step, and died on the way back. There is a joke that the first thing Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did when they reached the summit was throw Mallory's ice axe over the edge.
Irvine's ice ax was found in 1933, slightly below the First Step. In 1975, a Chinese climber described seeing the bleached body of an "English." Three years later, a day after telling a Japanese climber that he saw the body, the Chinese climber was killed by an avalanche and with him went the was location of the body.
Discovery of George Mallory's Body
In 1999, Mallory's body was found on the slopes below the Northeast Ridge on the Tibetan side of Mt. Everest. Conrad Anker, the man who found Mallory's body, wrote in National Geographic, "After an hour or so of searching I had found two bodies...Both were grotesquely twisted and folded, suggesting they had suffered long, violent falls...They weren't the climbers I was seeking." [Source: Conrad Anker, National Geographic, October 1999]
"I took off my crampons to start back up a steep incline of loose rock and smooth slabs...A patch of white, different from the snow and as bright as marble, caught my eye. I realized it was a body. Bleached white skin...I realized then at last that I had found one of the two people for whom we had seen searching." The clearest evidence that the man was Mallory was the name "G. Mallory" stitched in his shirt, a handkerchief with the monogram G.L.M. and letters from Mallory's family (an unidentified woman) in his pocket.
Following the advice of Mallory's family, Mallory was buried by the team that found him on the mountain after a short ceremony. The team however was criticized for selling pictures of his leached body to the international press.
Clues from George Mallory's Body About His Fate
Mallory probably died from a fall before the First Step. Anker wrote: "He was facing uphill on his front, both arms outstretched, as if grasping to arrest his slide. His left leg was broken above the ankle."
"To me Mallory's missing gloves are a crucial clue. Having turned back above the First Step, Mallory may have taken off his gloves to grip the steep rock as he descended. I think he probably slipped and pulled Irvine of a ledge. His frayed rope still tied to Mallory's waist may have been cut by an edge of rock, sending him tumbling to the snow terrace,"
The 1999 team found oxygen bottles at 28,000 feet evidence that Mallory made it at least that far. Mallory's goggles were found inside his jackets. The goggles are normally worn in the daylight. The fact they were in his pocket implies he died late in the day or at night. The camera that he is said to have carried with him was not there. Some had hoped to find photographs proving he had reached the summit.
Anker thinks that Mallory did not make it to the summit of Mt. Everest for the following reasons: 1) the route was too tough. They would have had a particularly hard time free climbing the difficult Second Step. 2) Their gear was inadequate. They didn't have many thing that many modern climber find indispensable — crampons, fixed ropes — plus their oxygen canisters they carried were extremely heavy and prone to malfunctions. 3) They moved slowly and it was too late in the day for them to reach the summit when they were last spotted. Mountaineers have continued the search for Mallory's camera. It is believed that low temperatures, a low humidity of Mt. Everest may have preserved the film for the decades since his death years and settle the dispute once and for all as to whether he made it the top of Everest or he didn’t.
Other Early Expeditions on Mt. Everest
After Mallory, other climbers tried to climb Everest from the Tibetan side but nobody attempted an assault it from the Nepalese side because the country was closed until 1950. In 1933, a British expedition led Hugh Ruttledgehad had the summit of Everest clearly in sight. The group reached an altitude of 8,580 meters (28,150 feet)
Eric Shipton (1907-1977) was a great British explorer who is best known for his adventures in the Himalayan region. In 1933, he came within 300 meters (a thousand feet) of the Everest summit and helped pioneer the route used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. He extensively explored Western China and the Karakoram range and had a great number of female admirers. He also took a famous photograph of the Abominable Snowman footprints.
Shipton was famous for traveling light and having an uncanny ability to find his way in the most difficult, unmapped terrain. He once bragged he could "organize a Himalayan expedition in half an hour on the back of an envelope." This philosophy cost Shipton a leadership role in the 1953 expedition to Everest in which Hillary and Norgay reached the summit. Eric Shipton was the man originally chosen to lead the 1953 expedition. After he was forced out in September 1952. John Hunt, a relatively unknown military man, was given the job. His first task was quelling a potential mutiny by Shipton supporters.
Francis Younghusnad is another famous explorer associated with Mt. Everest expeditions, which he compared with pilgrimages “towards utter holiness, towards the most complete truth,”
A Swiss team was the first to mount an expedition from the Nepalese side. They came very close to making it, stopping just short of the summit. Tenzing Norgay was on this climb. He made it to 28,210 feet. higher than anyone before, convincing him that summit would be reached soon.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022