Lost on Everest....


I first read about this when i somehow pickedup the Geographic issue.I mean while i love mountains my love for montains is the Ruskin Bond kind....those prety hills walks ....fresh beautiful nature.But well challenge and defiance of the odds of nature like Everest is a different story.


As i read about the horrific difficulties faced by people in those days and yet time and again they returned to what they term as conquering Everest its amazing human nature.Well of all those stories one I was quite a bit curious abt some person found after nearly 75 years mumified on Everest.


The story of a Climber quite well known in his time called Mallory and Irvine who dissapeared in 1924 without a trace while very close to being the first to climb Everest.Its very debatable and controversial even to this day....and whenever there's controversy fascinating facts are dug out.Theres quite some stuff on the net about it too i guess.


But when i found this book in the Library "Lost on Everest-The Search for Mallory and Irvine" by Peter First Brook i sure picked it up.But what i liked was the book instead of just going on about the controversy gave a background of what may drive people to such endeavours.


It starts off with how Mallory being an exceptional Climber had his nemesis like most brilliant people he had a terrible habit of forgetting.The author slowly fleshes out the root cause of why there was a need within Mallory to prove himself...in an era when almost everyone was involved in the War he was prevented to be in it.Hence his only chance to prove himself was Everest and how it slowly grew upon him like an obsession though on side of it he had begun to develop a distaste for the conditions and the country he still pursued it .

There is also a brief description of the politics of the era and how it all affected the climbing of Everest.


It also shows the other side of a somewhat bright individual...inability to take decisions on life for himself as is put across in the book....most of his life's decisions were finally made by other people...he never being able to be conclusive or taking a stand on anything.


The books shows the human frailities of a someone who almost would see a cut above usual humans when you think he almost climbed Everest in a few tweed jackets....and none of todays modern equipments.


A letter from him to his friend shows it


"The mountain has taken its tol among us; but lord , how much worse it might have been! David its an infernal mountain, cold and treacherous...Perhaps its folly to go up again.But how can i be out of the hunt"


But if you read lengths of the book especially the last moments of their known life details all alone you would feel a strange helpless feeling .Imagine two people alone in a chilly place with hardly much clothing unlike todays standards and then they dissapear.

You just wonder about the oh so many possibilities
They could have theoretically at least reached the summit their life long desire and then been killed during descent.
They could have been killed all alone while ascent itself though none expected that.
One had dies before the other .....how much worse it would have felt for that other one who had been alive then.


Also Mallory's body was recovered miraculously in 1999 in a very preserved state almost 75 yrs later and Irvine's is still not found. Actually it was spotted much earlier by a Chinese climbers but the person who spotted it and had spoken of it dies on Everest the next day.It is such a mystery of nature that makes man feel so small and alone despite his boasts and conquests.


And then there is the description of how Mallory's wife found out about his death ....by a reporter at the door asking for her reaction about it as he was unaware that she did not know....How cruel the media was and is i guess.


One passage which really describes the chilling truth of the dangers there and life and it chances was this.


"I made one or two last attempts to breathe, but nothing happened.Fianlly i pressed my chest with both hands, gave one last almighty push- and the obstruction came up.What a releif.Coughing up a little blood i once more breathed really freely-- more freely than i had for some days...I was a new man."It was a lucky escape for Somervell , who was seconds away from suffocation; he had coughed up the frostbitten mucus lining of his larynx.



If all this is a simple human perspective of it....then there are people like this article in Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1612/16120970.htm) who show the whole political side of it...the color race discrimination, colonial rule and what not and how every human being while living his own personal life and desires is a political pawn in the end.


The book though was a good read but somehow whenever i read those last pages describing his last sighting you feel so eerie and lonely imagining two normal simple people stranded alone in that chilly snow and hazardous rock mountain....and the whole tragedy and mystery of it.It seems after the body was discovered the possibilities actually matched what was told by a psychic to John Noel the person who had seen them last .


As the author says there is so much to tantalize and so little to enlighten.