Race To The Top

A new challenge to the theory that George Mallory did not make it to the summit of Mt. Everest in 1924 before he died, and therefor that Sir Edmund Hillary was the first to the top in 1953:

After eight expeditions to Everest and decades of research, Mr Hoyland believes he knows what happened and is ready to expose the accepted theory - that Sir Edmund Hillary was the first to conquer Everest, in 1953 - as untrue. He will present his findings to the Royal Geographical Society in a lecture today.

Mr Hoyland, who has climbed Everest, said most experts and historians presume that Mallory died after attempting to climb a 28,280ft vertical cliff on the mountain's north ridge, known as the Second Step. They believe it was there that the mountaineer Noel Odell, widely accepted as the last person to see Mallory and Irvine alive, saw them climbing towards the summit.

But he said no one else had previously tried that route, and so it was unlikely Mallory had.

"Mallory had Irvine with him, who isn't really a climber, and he looks up and sees this enormous prow of a Second Step. I don't think he would have contemplated it when he got up close."

Mr Hoyland's theory is that they took a lower route to the top called the Third Step and that is where Odell saw them, not on the Second Step as he maintained in his account. Mr Hoyland said they could not have climbed the steep cliff as quickly as Odell described, adding: "No one can surmount the Second Step in five minutes."

If Mallory and Irvine were on the Third Step, a much smaller challenge closer to the summit, then most historians agree that they would have made it to the summit.

"If they were there, there is no question in my mind that one or both of them would have reached the summit," Mr Hoyland said.

Over the summer, I read this:

The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine by Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkend, a forensic exploration of Mallory and Irvine's ill-fated attempt. The book was last updated some time around 2000, I believe, and came to the seemingly rueful conclusion that no, they probably did not make it to the summit. On the other hand, as I recall, the book assumed the Second Step route, which is what is being challenged here.

I also point out again that Robert Graves, the great English poet and author of historickal fiction, was a pupil and friend of Mallory's, as well as a fellow climbing enthusiast. He states, in Goodbye To All That, his belief that Mallory did indeed make it to the top, but that his overly enthusiastic celebration of the feat left him with insufficient energy to get back down safely.

In my readings, I suppose I've become one of those romantics who hopes both that this was the case and that somehow it can eventually be proven.