Conrad Anker
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By: Simon & Schuster
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Subjects -> History -> World -> Expeditions & Discoveries
Subjects -> Sports -> Mountaineering -> Mountain Climbing
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Concise and fascinating 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.
This is an interesting, concise account of the 1999 discovery of George Mallory, possibly the first to climb Mt. Everest.
In 1924 Everest veteran Mallory and his promising junior partner Andrew Irvine famously disappeared some 1000 feet below the summit. Did they reach it before they perished, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay? In 1999, Conrad Anker of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory. Yet the great question remains.
In this book Anker and fellow climber David Roberts discuss Mallory's life, the discovery, what Mallory and Irvine mean to them. Anker recounts his attempt to replicate a key part of Mallory's climb. Roberts' biography of Mallory alternates with Anker's account of the events of 1999.
After finding Mallory, Anker's team removed key items he was carrying, which were both clues and historic artifacts. They also published photographs of part of the body. Some called this desecration. Anker responds.
Interestingly, Anker and his collegues all initially thought they had found Irvine.
Mallory's camera was absent, much to everyone's disappointment. A few days later, Anker and his partners assisted in a rescue. Afterwards, fresh snow obscured the search region, scrapping a planned search for Irvine and the camera.
Roberts discusses Mallory's somewhat bohemian youth, his attitudes about bottled oxygen, his prior climbing achievements, and his famous quote: "Because it's there". A full chapter is devoted to the 1924 expedition, discussing why Mallory chose to climb with Irvine, Teddy Norton and David Somervell's record climb just before Mallory's attempt, and Noel Odell's tantalizing last sight of the lost pair.
The book concludes with Anker's account of his own summit climb, his near-disastrous descent, and his best speculation about George Mallory and Andrew Irvine's fate. His reluctant conclusion: the key obstacle called the Second Step was most likely unclimbable under 1924 conditions, the two turned back there if not earlier, and they fell to their deaths descending as fresh snow fell.
This fascinating book is dedicated to Mallory and Irvine, who both authors greatly admire regardless of the exact events of June 8, 1924.
Editorial Review:
On June 8, 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared somewhere near the summit of Mount Everest, leaving open the tantalizing question of whether they had reached the summit of Everest twenty-nine years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. In 1999, climber Conrad Anker discovered Mallory's body on Everest and helped solve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of adventure and exploration. In The Lost Explorer, Anker and historian David Roberts craft a dramatic account of the expeditions of 1924 and 1999, and ultimately capture the passion and spirit of two men driven to test themselves against nature at its most brutal.
