George Mallory
A FASCINATION:
Time passing, time spent ... my interests, my fascinations, change on a daily basis. Or maybe not 'change' but get put to the back of my head as other wonders capture the wanderings of my mind. But never far from the front of my head these days is my fascination with George Mallory. The British Mount Everest Expedition of 1924 which he was part of has long since passed into the folklore of British heroism, up there with the iconic expeditions of Scott's Terra Nova Expedition & Shackleton' Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Maybe he was the first to reach the summit of Everest in 1924 with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine; maybe he wasn't - we will probaly never know unless the fabled borrowed camera is ever found. But the last film of him and his colleague is from a distance, two ghostly figures slowly disappearing from view high on the mountain, enveloped by the ethereal mists of the heavenly peak, disappearing from time and stepping from the present and into history.
Into nothing. Nothingness.
He had a photograph of his beloved wife which he was to leave on the summit. A sepia photograph of a beautiful woman forever young.
75 years later his body was found, preserved in a frozen wasteland. They found his letters on his person, snow goggles but no photograph.
But then they never found it on the summit.
A mystical figure who leaves more questions than answers. I like that.
THE QUOTE:
It is up there with the great quotes of all time. Who cares as to whether he actually uttered these lines or not. They have become just another part of the legend that is the man. To me these are his words whether he said them or not.
1999:
It was the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition who found him 1999. The film they shot (and sold for alot of money) of that find is fascinating to watch but at the same time it is unarguably intrusive. I read that relatives of both Mallory and Irvine were unhappy about this, indeed angry, and understandably so. 'What they did with Mallory was disgusting,' no less than Sir Chris Bonnington said. You do feel uncomfortable viewing what is after all really a private affair for the family but at the same time you wouldn't miss it for the world. Such is life.
For my part, I would have probaly done the same.
They buried him where he fell.
I'm a layman in climbing. I know little other than you have to climb upwards and it looks difficult. It you don't have a head for heights then it is probaly not for you. But I've heard what I perceive as utter nonsence spoken in whether he did or didn't that in anyone's language is plain stupid. I mean, I've read the quote from the 'first' man to climb Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary that he and Tenzing Norgay were the first to climb and come down from the mountain. Others have said this as well, as though they were implying that these are the parameters in claiming to be the first. Excuse me? I don't understand. So if Neil Armstrong hadn't of returned from the moon that would mean he wasn't the first man on the moon? Perhaps this is something peculiar to mountaineering in that you have to come back alive to say you were the first. Doesn't stack up for me.
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