George Mallory and Mount Everest

Mount Everest

Today I finished reading Wade Davis's masterful monograph Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. This magnificent work (I apologize for the alliteration...it apparently is an "M" day!) provides perhaps the most detailed look at the 1922-1924 expeditions of the regal Mount Everest. We all know how it ends: Mallory meets his demise there in June 1924, but this book reveals the insipid, cavalier and ethnocentric attitude of the patrician Everest Committee which overshadowed the military accomplishments and pedigree of most of the expeditions' participants. Davis reveals the pettiness and classless behavior of several of the committee's members while directing an exacting focus on the expeditions, each with their own personality conflicts and problems. Juxtapose with the politics involved in trying to get to Mount Everest, the treatment of local Sherpas, some disdain to Tibetan culture on the part of some of the expedition, and you have the workings of a very compelling novel....only this is not fiction!

I had only a very basic knowledge of the expeditions to Mount Everest and this book really opened my eyes to the politics involved and what those men suffered through to come close to, but not reaching the summit of this most formidable of foes. I am still in awe at what Mallory and his team were able to accomplish given the fact that they did not have the equipment or technology so readily available today.

Check out the National Geographic interview with Wade Davis available here.

Author Wade Davis

I doubt that Mount Everest will ever lose its fascination. Recently China and Nepal resuscitated the debate about the true height of the mountain (measurement of rock vs. measurement of snow. Check out "Mount Everest to be Re-measured."