Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes

592 Pages·2008·4.03 MB·English

by  Maurice Isserman

Fallen Giants

Fallen Giants
A History of Himalayan Mountaineering
from the Age of Empire to the
Age of Extremes
Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver
With Maps and Peak Sketches by
Dee Molenaar
Yale Univ ersit y Pr ess New Haven and London
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Copyright ©  by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver.
All rights reserved.
Th is book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections  and  of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
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Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Isserman, Maurice.
Fallen giants : a history of Himalayan mountaineering from the age of empire to the age of extremes /
Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver ; with maps and peak sketches by Dee Molenaar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ---- (cloth : alk. paper)
. Mountaineering—Himalaya Mountains—History. . Himalaya Mountains—Description and travel.
I. Weaver, Stewart Angas. II. Molenaar, Dee. III. Title.
GV..HI 
. 
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Th e paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
         
Frontispiece: Th e program cover for John Noel’s fi lm of the  British Mount Everest expedition.
Reprinted by permission of the Royal Geographical Society.
For Ruth, David, Cea, and Henry
“Onward and Upward”
If an account of the climbing of E verest is ever written, I take leave
to doubt whether it will be as widely r ead as have been the stories of
successive failures. For, say what one may, when the summit is reached
some of the mystery and grandeur surrounding a peak hitherto untrodden
by man is lost; and a book recounting the fall of one of the giants will
be bought—or by mountaineers more likely borrowed—with misgiving
and read with loathing.
H. W. Tilman, Th e Ascent of Nanda Devi ()
Contents
Preface: A Fallen Giant ix
one. When Men and Mountains Meet 
two. Th e Age of Empire, – 
thr ee. “ Because It Is Th er e”:
George Mallory and the Fight for Everest, – 
four . “A Random Harvest of Delight,” – 
five. “Himalayan Hey-Day,” – 
six. Th e Golden Age Postponed, – 
seven. “Don’t Be a Chicken-Hearted Fellow”: Everest, – 
eight . Th e Golden Age of Himalayan Climbing, – 
nine. New Frontiers, New Faces, – 
ten. Th e Age of Extremes, – 
Notes  
Bibliography  
Index  
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Preface
A Fallen Giant
S
hortly before noon on May , , the American climber Conrad Anker stood
amid the downward-sloping shale slabs of the North Face of Mount Everest
at an altitude of , feet. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of something
white—not snow white but marble white—about  feet away. Walking over
to investigate, he found himself staring at the frozen remains of a man, obvi-
ously long dead, lying facedown on the mountain. Th e man’s right leg looked broken, as
did his right elbow. His hands were gloveless and extended before him, as if in the act of
reaching out to arrest a fall. Circling his waist and tangled around one shoulder was an old
cotton rope. One foot lay bare, and the other wore a hobnailed boot. Most of the man’s
clothing had been ripped from the back of his body by the wind, but what remained—wool,
cotton, and silk—was of a fashion not seen on the mountain for many decades. Th e collars
of the shirts and jackets he’d worn on the day of his fall remained around his neck. And
stitched inside one of the collars was a nametag that erad “G. Mallory.” Nearly seventy-fi ve
years after the June day in  when George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had disappeared
en route to the summit of Mount Everest, Mallory had been found.
As a group, mountaineers display a deep reverence for the history of their endeavor,
and it was both reverence and historical curiosity that prompted the  search expedi-
tion that led to the discovery of Mallory’s body. Th ough they would be criticized by some
for photographing his remains and for removing relics from his pockets, Anker and his
comrades gave Mallory a decent burial to the best of their ability. Th ey covered his body
with rocks and recited over him Psalm : “As for man, his days are as grass. . . .”
Mountaineering history is enshrined in a rich literature, including Anker and
David Roberts’s  account of the discovery of Mallory’s body, Th e Lost Explorer. Many
mountaineers date their decision to take up the sport from an encounter with a good book
on the subject. A striking feature of this literature is that for the most part it has been
written by the climbers themselves. Mountain climbing is a sport without spectators and,
particularly in the Himalaya, the climbers are almost always the only ones on the scene to