Read Online The Lost Explorer by Conrad Anker, David Roberts - Free Book Online

approach trail, Mallory coaxed his little car up the Miner’s Track to the very foot of Lliwedd.
    But for Everest, Mallory might have settled down to a life of schoolteaching, dabbling as a writer, and climbing summers in the Alps. As early as 1919, however, rumors of a British reconnaissance of the approaches to the world’s highest mountain were floating about. No Westerner had stood within forty miles of its flanks.
    For a man of Mallory’s restless spirit, this siren call could not go unheeded. He was by now unquestionably the finest mountaineer in Britain. But he was also a father and a schoolteacher, and he hesitated when the invitation came. It was Young who, in twenty minutes during a visit, persuaded Mallory (in David Robertson’s words) “that Everest was an opportunity not to be missed: it would be an extraordinary adventure; and it would be something for George to be known by, in his future work as an educator or writer.”
    Thus, in a decision more pragmatic than spiritual, George Mallory walked open-eyed into the obsession that would make him famous, and that would cost him his life.

3 Dissonance

    CA
    A FTER A NIGHT of wretched “sleep,” the five of us started down from Camp V on the morning of May 2. Above the North Col on the exposed snow ridge, I ran into Vladislav Terzeul, who goes by the name Slava, the strongest climber on a Ukrainian team that was preparing for its summit attempt. The first thing he said was, “Oh, you find Mallory?” I was taken aback, but I mumbled, “No, we haven’t.” Slava’s question didn’t mean the word was out. Everybody on the mountain knew what we had come for, so his was a natural question to ask.
    At the North Col, I ran into Russell Brice. He’s a strong New Zealander who had climbed Everest before, and was guiding clients up the north side. A great guy. He asked, “Well, did you find him?” Once more I muttered a denial.
    The day before, as soon as I’d broadcast my coded messages about hobnails, Snickers and tea, and a mandatory group meeting, our teammates down at Advance Base and Base Camp knew that we were on to something. Simo had come on shortly afterward to warn us that our broadcasts were being monitored all over the mountain. Russell Brice had a very good radio setup, and he was one of the more meticulous monitors. Maybe he’d picked up something. But after Simo’s warning, we’d shut down, maintaining virtual radio silence ever since.
    We descended the icefall to ABC (Advance Base Camp) at 21,000 feet, to spend the night. There we met Simo and Thom Pollard, a videographer hired by
NOVA
. We came into camp hikingas a group so Thom could film our arrival. Dave Hahn and I always liked to joke about who walks in last, playing the humble role. Now the guys insisted that I walk in first. Simo had a huge grin on his face, and he was eager to hear the news, but we had to wait because there were all these folks from other expeditions milling around. Finally we hopped inside our dining tent, zipped it up, and that’s when Dave told Eric what we had found.
    He had expected that we’d reveal that we’d found Sandy Irvine. When we told him it was Mallory we’d discovered, all Simo could say was, “Wow, this is something else!”
    We celebrated with cookies and tea, then decided to share the news with Russell Brice. I’d been feeling bad about telling him we hadn’t found anything. Now Russell congratulated us warmly and agreed to keep the story under wraps.
    That evening, Simo got on the satellite phone to call his girlfriend, Erin Copland, in Ashford, Washington, who was acting as expedition publicist. To his dismay, the first thing Erin said was, “The story’s already out.
NOVA
broke the story yesterday in their dispatch.”
    At Base Camp, Liesl Clark, the producer of the
NOVA
film, had been sending reports almost daily to the PBS site on the Internet. MountainZone was also running dispatches. These were usually called in by satellite phone