Discovery Reopens Everest Question -- Did Mallory Beat Hillary To Summit?

Englishman George Mallory and New Zealander Edmund Hillary are forever linked to Mount Everest and to two of the most famous quotations in mountaineering.

Mallory's body was apparently found this month on Everest, 75 years after he and Andrew Irvine were last seen inching toward the summit. He - not Hillary, to whom the quote is often attributed - wanted to climb the world's highest mountain "because it's there."

What Hillary said, after he and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed as reaching the summit in May 1953, was: "Well, we knocked the bastard off."

An American team says it has solid evidence that the body found at 27,000 feet May 1 was Mallory's. It was dramatic news in the climbing community.

In the coming weeks, the team will search for his missing companion, Irvine; Irvine's camera and film; and more details on how they died. It also will seek evidence of the most important point of their quest: Did Mallory or Irvine, or both, reach the summit 29 years ahead of Hillary and Tenzing and then die coming down? Or did they die going up, by fall or exhaustion and hypothermia?

Their disappearance in 1924 led to scores of articles and books, such as "The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine" by Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld (1986).

Mallory was a handsome, romantic figure obsessed with Everest and known to friends as "Sir Galahad" - and not as a put-down.

The Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition led by Eric Simonson is the latest of many that dreamed of finding the men, a kind of Holy Grail in mountaineering. Others have reported seeing bodies in dated clothing but could not reach them.

The Simonson team said it examined Mallory's body, preserved in the dry cold, then held a funeral service and buried him. It appears that Mallory and Irvine had been tied but became separated. Mallory had a broken leg and a shoulder injury, evidently suffered in a fall. No evidence yet found proves or disproves whether he reached the summit.

Most climbing histories have considered the question unanswerable. It still may be. Even if the explorers find Irvine's body and his Kodak camera, which may have preserved negatives, they may never learn what happened after they were last seen on June 8, 1924. Mallory was 37, Irvine 22.

If it is found that one or both reached the top, the history books may get a rewrite, or perhaps an asterisk. Mallory's son John, 78, who was 3 years old when his father died, told the British Broadcasting Corp. last week: "To me, the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is half done, isn't it, if you don't get down again."

Given that reasoning, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who died in 1986, are secure in their achievement.

Hillary, now 79, stands virtually alone among his peers for what he has done off the mountain. Climbing can be a rewarding sport but also a selfish one. Climbers experience a beautiful world unknown below, but the death and injury rates are among the highest in any recreation. High-altitude expeditions take climbers away from family and home for many months. There is little social interaction with others.

Hillary, however, returned to Nepal and helped to develop hospitals, air strips, clinics, bridges, schools and water systems in rural villages. The air strips brought aid but also more tourists and mountaineers, a mixed blessing. He worked through various foundations and persuaded the government of New Zealand to support the creation of a national park in Nepal. He also promoted environmental protection.

Myths began enveloping Mallory even before his third and fatal attempt on Everest. (The others were in 1921 and 1922.)

He came to be considered a golden boy among climbers, although his "actual total of new climbs in Britain and the Alps was small and none of great importance," according to historian Walt Unsworth in his "Encyclopedia of Mountaineering" (1975). "His striking features, character and intellectual brilliance as well as his undoubted (climbing) ability made him the center of the popular Pen y Pass gatherings," a hub of British climbing in Wales.

Mallory studied at Cambridge, wrote poetry and prose, founded a drama society and was a member of the Fabian Society promoting social welfare. Although his leanings were pacifist, he insisted on serving in World War I. As an innovative junior master at Charterhouse School, he inspired many students, such as the future author Robert Graves.

Sir Galahad could be unconventional (posing in the nude for a photographer-artist friend), highly competitive, absent-minded, impulsive, excitable and thoughtful, but also sure-footed, a graceful vertical mover, fearful when necessary and a good leader, according to several accounts. He was also known for another famous statement about climbing mountains: "Have we conquered an enemy? None but ourselves."

In all, 12 men died on Mallory's three Everest expeditions. (The Everest death toll is now more than 150.) On his first ascent, seven porters were killed in an avalanche after Mallory decided to make one last try.

The 1924 leader, Edward Norton, had reached 28,126 feet when Mallory and his much less experienced friend, Irvine, were chosen to go higher. When they failed to return, England mourned, but Mallory's old tutor and friend, A.C. Benson, decried the waste.

"It is so utterly tragic," he said. "I think people have the right to risk their lives, but this is his third expedition and he had a wife and (three) children - and after all, it is only a feat."

Mallory's attitude was typical of that of most mountaineers. He called Everest "a single gesture of magnificence . . . vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy." He also said, "It's an infernal mountain, cold and treacherous. . . . Perhaps it's mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt?"