I looked again at the photograph of Mallory’s face staring out from the past. Thom Pollard and Andy Politz had come back for a second look armed with a metal detector to see what artefacts they had missed. They set to digging him out of the grave of stones that had been placed over his body, disregarding the prayers that had already been uttered in reverential farewell. A scan with the metal detector revealed a broken wrist watch in his trouser pocket. They then pulled free a loose section of the weathered rope tied around his waist, snapping it with ease. They promptly removed the hob-nailed boot from Mallory’s broken right leg, thus adding three more artefacts from the body that they could claim would be of significant research value. No doubt these will be a great help in solving the mystery of whether the two men actually reached the summit.
They now wanted to see his face. They managed to overcome whatever restraint the initial searchers experienced and started chipping away at the ice locking Mallory’s head into the stones of the mountain. Eventually they prised his face free from the hard grasp of the ice and they could turn him over and look directly at it. It was ‘in perfect condition … His eyes were closed. I could still see whiskers on his chin.’ They found a head wound sustained in his violent fall that may or may not have caused his death. At least it presented them with an excuse for so heartlessly prising him from the ice. They then buried him a second time so that he wouldn’t be disturbed and one of them read Psalm 103. I wonder whether that was for the benefit of Mallory’s soul or theirs?
Whether the immense potential financial value of these pathetic remains ever occurred to them I do not know. Maybe it was done purely in the interests of historic research. Otherwise they might as well have stripped him naked. The aim of the expedition was to find either Mallory or Irvine and solve the mystery of whether either or both of them had reached the summit or not. In my opinion they plundered a corpse.
When I interviewed Sir Edmund Hillary in front of a thousand-strong audience at the Hay Literary Festival in 1999 the question of Mallory inevitably arose. Somewhat wearily, since he must have been asked it countless times, Hillary explained his view of recent events surrounding the discovery of Mallory’s body. It had not solved anything, he said, and without photographic proof, it never would.
‘I may say,’ he added, ‘that I was absolutely disgusted when in all the media they had these photographs of Mallory lying there on the rocks. To me Mallory had been an heroic figure. He was the man who had inspired my interest in Mount Everest … and for this heroic figure to have all these terrible photographs of him there on the rock, bare back, broken-legged … I thought was appalling.’ The applause was thunderous, sustained and heartfelt.
Photographs, like paintings, of people from the past have an ethereal connective effect on the viewer. I looked again at the portrait of Mallory staring out from the back cover of the book. He was a handsome man in the prime of his life and his eyes seemed to fix on mine, leading me on through this window into his life.
In his biography of George Mallory David Robertson described him as an ‘ever-young and singularly lovable’ man. He is ‘Mallory of Everest’ now, but we should never forget that he was also a father, a husband, a loyal friend, a man of honour and elegance. I would far rather think of him as Wilfrid Noyce did on the successful 1953 Everest expedition. Looking up at where Mallory had been the first person to discover the Western Cwm route in July 1921, Noyce wrote that ‘… the Western Cwm conjured up for us the figure of Mallory, peering from the col between Lingtrem and Pumori’ – an heroic figure from the past looking down in ghostly approval of that then successful expedition.
His grief-stricken friends ‘… could hardly bring themselves to understand that George would not again be seen moving with ineffable grace on the mountains, or heard speaking in his unforgettable voice about beautiful things and right actions’. The great alpinist Geoffrey Winthrop Young described Mallory as ‘the magical and adventurous spirit of youth personified … Neither time nor his own disregard could age or alter the impression which the presence of his flame-like vitality produced. There are natures whose best expression is movement. Mallory could make no movement that was not in itself beautiful. Inevitably he was a mountaineer, since climbing is the supreme opportunity for perfect motion …’ Today some fellow climbers have no such considerations: to some he is simply a commodity.
The discovery of his body generated a frisson of excitement – and not only within the mountaineering world. The mystery of what happened to Mallory and Irvine has gripped the imagination of people all over the world. What we have learned from these recent findings has solved little of the mystery. Yet there is an ethical dilemma thrown up by how the discoverers have behaved.
The two climbers may have reached the summit 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing but unless a camera is found and photographs produced we will never know. Does it matter? They died. They failed. Most mountaineers would say that one cannot claim a successful ascent if one has died on the descent. Sir Edmund Hillary said as much, as have Mallory’s son and grandson. Clare Millikan, Mallory’s daughter, has said that she has changed her mind now that her father’s body has been discovered and believes he did reach the summit. She adds, however, ‘I don’t think it really counts unless you come back alive.’ From the outset there was never any real risk that Hillary’s and Tenzing’s success in 1953 was going to be usurped by revealed history.
We now know something of how Mallory and Irvine died. They were not separated. The theory that Mallory, the more experienced climber, may have gone on alone on a solo summit bid has been disabused. They probably fell whilst descending. Possibly the rope snapped and Irvine fell further down the mountain. It would appear that after a long fall Mallory survived, although with a double fracture of his leg. It seems from his body position that he may have attempted to crawl to a place of shelter and died in the process. It is enough for us to imagine what happened, and for a mountaineer the image is all too grim.
This is all we have learned. Finding Irvine’s body may or may not resolve the summit issue but no more.
Why did the expedition members feel that they had to publish photographs of the frozen flesh of Mallory’s corpse. We do not need to see the photographs to accept that Mallory has been found. We can take their word on the matter and the proof can remain in archives in case it is ever questioned.
In his book The Lost Explorer Conrad Anker gave a graphically tasteless description of how Mallory’s body ‘… had been hollowed out’, by the goraks, ‘almost like a pumpkin’. I wondered how this description furthered our knowledge of Mallory and Irvine’s attempt on the summit. He went on to describe how he cut a one and a half inch square of skin from Mallory’s right forearm. Apparently it was not easy. Using the serrated blade of a utility knife he described cutting into Malory’s flesh as ‘like cutting saddle leather, cured and hard’. Did we really need that?
Why on earth did they still feel it necessary to take a flesh sample from his forearm for DNA testing? If you find a corpse dressed in hob-nail boots and tweeds high on the slopes of Everest with G. Mallory tags stitched into his shirt collars and a letter from his wife in his breast pocket, who on earth do you think you might have found?
Some of the relatives may have approved DNA samples being taken but surely only in the event of the remains being unidentifiable? Both his son and grandson have said that they are appalled at the publication of the photographs. Julia Irvine, Andrew Irvine’s niece, has said that she hopes her Uncle ‘Sandy’ is never found for fear that he will, like Mallory, suffer the same fate. She was quoted in the Sunday Times saying, ‘Surely these two incredibly brave men deserve to be remembered for achieving so much with so little rather than as exhibits in a freak show?’
How long must you be dead before your body becomes no more than an archaeological relic? Some would say forever. Does the degree of fame attributed to you decide how much respect and dignity is shown to your remains?
If so, and if it were p
racticable, would it be acceptable, today, to go and find the frozen bodies of Captain Scott, Wilson and Bowers? Would the interest generated be excuse enough to photograph their remains, take as many artefacts thought suitable for a display, film the bodies freely for a full-blown documentary about their re-discovery, do whatever it takes to make it a sellable event? Of course not, but if this were done, despite the furore, everyone would look at the photographs and gawp at the film. We are helplessly curious. Responsibility for feeding that curiosity lies primarily with the photographers and secondly with the press and media.
On Everest there is already a grisly record of the many dead left unburied on the slopes of the mountain. As recently as 1996 climbers were routinely walking past the frozen and tattered remains of one of their own in the Western Cwm. Sadly. photographs in Anatoli Boukreev’s book The Climb show the remains to be no more than twenty yards from where hundreds of climbers trudged up the Cwm towards Camp III at the foot of the Lhotse face. For reasons I find quite inexplicable no one thought it might be common human decency to go over and bury the unfortunate souls in a nearby crevasse. The truth is they simply did not care enough. They had paid a lot of money to be guided up Everest and this wasn’t part of what they had paid for.
In 1996 during their summit bid two Japanese climbers passed three Indian climbers in varying stages of collapse high on the mountain. They made no effort to offer them succour, food, water, oxygen or simply a consoling hand. They avoided eye contact and went on to their eventual triumph on the summit. They passed the still-living Indians on their way down to the high camp. There was nothing that they could have done to rescue the Indians but they could have displayed a shred of compassion. On reaching base camp Eisuke Shiqekawa announced ‘… above 8000 metres is not a place where people can afford morality.’ If that were true, no-one should go there.
If climbers on Everest really ‘cannot afford morality’, and ethical behaviour becomes too expensive, then has the sport been prostituted? When did the means ever justify the end in mountaineering? We know beyond doubt that Shipton, Tilman or Whymper would never have behaved in this manner towards their fellow mountaineers.
I think that most climbers believe that style, ethics and morality are fundamental to the future of our sport. I wonder what non-climbers make of us when they hear of these incidents occurring on Everest and believe that this is what mountaineering is really about.
One simple fact remains true whatever other debates may have been stimulated by this sort of behaviour. Climbers would not like their own corpses, or those of their father, son, wife, brother or lover, to be treated in such a manner, so they have absolutely no right to treat George Mallory in this way. To me, it amounted to little more than modern-day grave robbing.
The feelings this behaviour evoked in me – a mixture of revulsion and sadness – seemed to compound my already uncertain emotions about climbing. Tat’s death in Greece five months later was the final straw. Ray and I would climb the few routes on our private tick list and be done with it.
I looked again at the handsome photograph of Mallory and thought of him moving with ineffable grace, thought of his flame-like vitality making no movements that were not in themselves beautiful. That was how I would remember him.
8 The stretched dream
I was idly flicking through a dictionary of quotations looking for inspiration when my eyes were drawn to the section on youth and old age.
‘Youth is not a time of life … it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and supple knees … it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigour of the emotions … it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.’ Unknown.
‘Oh really?’ I thought, as I examined a furry tongue and the glazed eyes of a post-fortieth birthday morning. My cheeks, far from being ripe, seemed unduly fevered and as for supple knees, mine creak. Forty. Today I am forty. God’s teeth! Who would ever have thought it? Time for the bag over the head and the slow slide into decrepitude.
People chatter on about how life begins at forty and I mutter that only people over forty would ever utter such tosh. Of course life does not begin at forty – it just begins to show. At forty you are halfway towards the grave; some beginning! Life changes at forty. I’ll give you that.
What is it that is better after turning forty? For the life of me I cannot say: a belly heading inexorably towards my toes; hairy nostrils and tufty ears; aching injuries and grey hairs.
What about the thinking parts – the insidious slide towards totally reactionary thought without any apparent reason, shouting at news commentators and journalists’ scribbles in outrage when for the past four decades I never gave a damn. My passions were once fuelled by the irrational escapist stunts of carefree youth but now I am reduced to muttering incomprehensibly at the television, aroused and irate but too apathetic to do anything about it.
Why spend the first part of one’s life living on the edge of everything, having those brilliant ideas that spring to mind soon after eating the worm at the bottom of the Tequila bottle, rocking the Kasbah and trying to sink the boat and then spend the second half too stressed to change your toothpaste? Where did it all go?
As a callow youth all my illnesses were self-inflicted and worth it – to a degree, I suppose. A year and a half on crutches, nine operations, all those scars and stitches, pins, plates, wires and nails – no, they were not much fun or worth much at all. Nor the morphine and the sweet stench of anaesthetic gas as I wheezed into a conscious agony, or the sour smell of old plaster casts and the wire-taut pain of physiotherapy. But hell, think of the craic we had, the tales we told, laughing all the way to the operating table. It was grand – sure it was – and I miss it.
I miss the idiocy of it all. I dread the day I can’t drink five pints and not sleep through the night. How long will it be before bladder control is just a distant fantasy; before the tufts in my ears try to entwine with the hairs in my nostrils? Why don’t I look forward to the same things? Once doing things to excess was more than enough for me. My body was my target and my temple was the pub.
I never used to think twice about climbing up into the third-floor bathroom window, seven pints of Old Roger to the bad – or not that is until John fell legs astride a brick wall from forty feet, shattering his pelvis in five places and acquiring an impressive set of testicles the size of grapefruits.
We would gamble on anything: play three-card brag until dawn, going to the edge of fiscal sanity, playing blind and winning with a five high and not a fear in the world, laughing fit to bust on the adrenalin of it all.
Age is said to bring wisdom, prudence and the comfort of experience but if I could find it I’d trade it all in just to do something utterly daft without thinking, for the chance to make idiotic mistakes and not give a damn. How could I ever think that getting out of my head and tobogganing off a ski-jump could be anything other than fun?
I swallowed two aspirins and a glass of Alka Seltzer and hobbled down to the kitchen. As I waited for the kettle to boil I perused Mr Unknown’s ditty with a jaundiced eye.
Nobody grows old living a number of years, people grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, distrust, fear and despair … these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and star-like things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing child-like appetite for what is next, and the joy and game of life.
I was contemplating my own unfailing child-like appetite when the phone rang and John asked if I was going flying. I said no, I had work to do and replaced the receiver. Then I looked at the blue sky and the clouds and thought of wafting through them, rising effortlessly in their swirling cores, heart jumping at the sudden partial collapse of the canopy, and I looked at my computer screen and the book I was re
viewing and thought, ‘Sod it, I’ll get old some other day.’ I grabbed my paraglider and headed for the door.
When I returned there was a light blinking on my answer machine and I pressed the button to hear Ray Delaney tell me he had an idea and that I should ring him at once. I rang him in Holland and he answered first time and said he had a cunning plan. My heart sank.
‘Is that so?’ I said in a wary voice. ‘OK, what is it this time?’
‘Ah ha, you’ll love this. We need to talk,’ he said.
‘We are talking. Come on, spit it out.’
‘Right, well, you know your idea about having a tick list?’
‘Yes …’
‘Well, I was just thinking …’
‘Not always a good thing as I recall …’
‘We’ve done a classic ice route: Bridalveil. OK? We want to do something on El Cap or Lotus Flower Tower or both, so that’s a rock route …’ He paused. ‘But we haven’t really got a mountain route, have we?’
‘Well, I thought that was because we wanted to give up mountaineering,’ I said, patiently.
‘No, no, we’re going to do that after we’ve completed the tick list.’
‘We’re going to try that huge ice cascade in Nepal. What’s that if it’s not mountaineering?’
‘It’s an ice line. It starts twenty minutes’ walk from a bar and ends with a walk down to a village.’
‘Exactly. The perfect mountain route.’
‘It’s not a mountain. It’s just a bloody hillside. It’s an ice climb. Anyway, that’s not the point. I was looking at this video the other day and I thought that’s it, we’ll go and do the ’38 route on the North Face of the Eiger.’
‘What? Are you mad?’
‘No, listen. I’ll send you this video. It was filmed live over three days last September when two Swiss parties climbed the face. They had helmet cameras and some fixed camera positions and it looked brilliant. More than that, it didn’t look hard at all.’