My Left Boot

October 11, 2024 1:54 PM

On 8th June 1924 British mountaineers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were seen ‘going strong for the top’ of Mt Everest. They were never seen alive again and it's been a hot button in climbing circles whether they died before or after reaching the summit: 29 years before Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary definitely stood on top of the world. Mallory's body was discovered in 1999. Sandy Irvine's foot has just been found melting out of a glacier.

Identity can be established because Sandy's sister Evelyn married Dick Summers, a school-friend of Irvine's. And their grand-daughter Julie Summers is a) the author of Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (£20 2000) and b) available for DNA testing.

But forget DNA, we know it's Irvine's sock because it carries a Cash's name tape with A.C. IRVINE in red letters. All my clothes were similarly labelled while I was acquiring a very expensive education in 1960s England. At about the same time (as Charles Windsor was playing The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance at Gordonstoun) in 1966, Cash's won the right to claim 'Manufacturers of Woven Name Tapes to Her Majesty the Queen.'

posted by BobTheScientist (29 comments total)

I saw this on Michael Tracy’s yt channel this am.

He says forget about the camera, look for rocks (the team that rifled thru Mallory’s frozen corpse in 99 failed to do that)

It matters not a whit if they made it to the top or not … they were there for the challenge of the thing, solving the physical puzzle of the summit if you will
posted by torokunai at 2:12 PM on October 11

I can't help thinking that a mountain littered with human corpses (and human feces) is trying to, y'know. Tell us something.

(Everest actually is what rich people pretend to think San Francisco is.)
posted by rdc at 2:16 PM on October 11 [24 favorites]

That's a pretty good ad for Cash's: "still legible after a century on Sagarmāthā"
posted by scruss at 2:39 PM on October 11 [31 favorites]

George Mallory has been said to be the inspiration for the unseen and unheard and yet pervading character Percival in what I think of as Virginia Woolf's greatest novel The Waves (my link accords that honor to her brother Thoby, but I think Mallory is more likely).

According to the linked page

Marguerite Yourcenar translated The Waves into French over a period of ten months in 1937. She met Virginia Woolf during this period and wrote: "I do not believe I am committing an error ... when I put Virginia Woolf among the four or five great virtuosos of the English language and among the rare contemporary novelists whose work stands some chance of lasting more than ten years".

Now that’s a translation I'd love to have in a facing page edition!
posted by jamjam at 3:18 PM on October 11 [7 favorites]

Kudos for the post title.
posted by vverse23 at 3:21 PM on October 11 [5 favorites]

I can't help thinking that a mountain littered with human corpses (and human feces) is trying to, y'know. Tell us something.

I wonder if the plastics that dead climbers wear will far outlive their remains. Future civilizations will find North Face etc. logos woven into technical fabrics and wonder what our corporate symbols meant.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:34 PM on October 11 [6 favorites]

This is very exciting. From everything I’ve read I seriously doubt they made it. I probably think about them about as often as I think about the Roman Empire regardless.
posted by badbobbycase at 5:23 PM on October 11 [6 favorites]

Everything I learned about Mallory and Irvine I learned from Dan Simmon's excellent novel The Abominable.
posted by kbanas at 5:30 PM on October 11 [5 favorites]

It was rather clever of him to leave abbreviated attire.
posted by clavdivs at 6:19 PM on October 11

>But for Irvine's great-niece Julie Summers it was simply "extraordinary".
>"I just froze....

Now THERE's an unfortunate choice of phrase.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:27 PM on October 11 [3 favorites]

Leave no trace silly climbers.
posted by whatevernot at 6:50 PM on October 11 [2 favorites]

do you have to be accountable when your body and clothes is what you leave?

Can't imagine trying to climb Everest. Kind of cool if you make it I guess...

I get altitude sickness at about 11.000 feet, so no way in the world I would ever attempt this. Seeing all the pictures of the crowds lining up to summit? Just, no.

But seemingly many people will aspire to this. And many will die trying. 29K feet, are you kidding me? Just no.

I have said just no, many times now...

Would it be cool to say you have done this, fuck yes. Am I willing to try to do it? No...

Pushing on through the "Death Zone"? I'll pass.
I can google earth Everest, which looks cool as foretold,, but, just, no
posted by Windopaene at 8:03 PM on October 11 [1 favorite]

27 years ago I spent a month rock-climbing in southern Thailand, and among the many international climbers I met that winter was George Mallory's grandson. So I found the discovery of Mallory's body two years later really interesting -- and I was horrified when Outside magazine put the body on the cover of the magazine. Sent an angry letter to the editor, in fact.

I'll be thinking of Irvine's family.
posted by suelac at 8:47 PM on October 11 [5 favorites]

I enjoy the climbers like Jake Norton who just f around on the North face looking at all the stuff previous expeditions have left behind. That seems more fun than climbing the thing.

Given the way the continent has buckled and broken into the Everest Massif, the north face isn't uniformly steep, once you get 2/3 the way up it's kinda 45º or so on the macro level:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfWp9n2VMT0

The 1963 American Expedition, after their main team bagged the summit the way Hillary & Norgay climbed, sent a side party off onto the North Face over the West Ridge separating Nepal from Tibet. Technically this was illegally crossing into Chinese-claimed territory, but China didn't have any cops on their side of the mountain that day.

Everest lost its 'expedition' magic to become a tourist attraction in the mid-90s, with the commercialization of the climbing, leading up to the 1996 drama when the big storm blew in and killed 8 climbers.
posted by torokunai at 9:10 PM on October 11 [2 favorites]

I thought I remembered a story told by JM Barrie around the same time Mallory and Irvine were lost of a climber who fell into a crevasse and later emerged from a glacier, but I couldn’t recall the context.

It turned out to be only a few lines of a Rectorial Address delivered by Barrie to the students of Saint Andrews University in Canada on May 3, 1922 and titled 'Courage':

I seem to be taking all my examples from the calling I was lately pretending to despise. I should like to read you some passages of a letter from a man of another calling, which I think will hearten you. I have the little filmy sheets here. I thought you might like to see the actual letter; it has been a long journey; it has been to the South Pole. It is a letter to me from Captain Scott of the Antarctic, and was written in the tent you know of, where it was found long afterwards with his body and those of some other very gallant gentlemen, his comrades. The writing is in pencil, still quite clear, though toward the end some of the words trail away as into the great silence that was waiting for them. It begins:

'We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot. Hoping this letter may be found and sent to you, I write you a word of farewell. I want you to think well of me and my end.' (After aome private instructions too intimate to read, he goes on): 'Goodbye—I am not at all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a simple pleasure which I had planned for the future in our long marches. . . . We are in a desperate state—feet frozen, etc., no fuel, and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and our cheery conversation. . . . Later—(it is here that the words become difficult)—We are very near the end. . . . We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally without.'

I think it may uplift you all to stand for a moment by that tent and listen, as he says, to their songs and cheery conversation. When I think of Scott I remember the strange Alpine story of the youth who fell down a glacier and was lost, and of how a scientific companion, one of several who accompanied him, all young, computed that the body would again appear at a certain date and place many years afterwards. When that time came round some of the survivors returned to the glacier to see if the prediction would be fulfilled; all old men now; and the body reappeared as young as on the day he left them. So Scott and his comrades emerge out of the white immensities always young.

I include the long lead up to what was merely a bit of folklore almost casually related because I think it’s fascinating in its own right as well as very moving, and serves to illustrate just how strange Barrie truly was.
posted by jamjam at 11:00 PM on October 11 [17 favorites]

I wonder if the plastics that dead climbers wear will far outlive their remains. Future civilizations will find North Face etc. logos woven into technical fabrics and wonder what our corporate symbols meant.

My experience with the durability of fancy fabric jackets suggests that no, no they absolutely won't. Maybe there's a sweet spot era where they've developed the tech, but capitalism and the relentless drive for profits at any cost hasn't yet hollowed out the actual product, though.
posted by Dysk at 11:46 PM on October 11 [2 favorites]

I thought I remembered a story told by JM Barrie around the same time Mallory and Irvine were lost of a climber who fell into a crevasse and later emerged from a glacier, but I couldn’t recall the context.

sounds like "Touching the Void" - actually is, literally.

Man, Jimmy Chin is writing one hell of a life story.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:41 AM on October 12 [2 favorites]

Oh my god I’m so pleased you had a whole bunch about the Cash’s name tapes, made me smile. I recognised it at once, but thank you for the reminder of who makes them. By the 80s/90s they were commonplace and I used to love associating the colours, styles and typefaces with each kid. Mine had dark blue serif text and small caps: the best of course.
posted by lokta at 1:43 AM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Everest Inc by Will Cockrel is a really good book on the history of the development of the guided Everest climb, for those interested. It provided me a more complex picture than the “anybody can climb Everest now, there are too many people on the mountain” picture I’ve gained from previous books and articles about the issue.
posted by Well I never at 3:43 AM on October 12 [2 favorites]

This reminded me of what I was told about a plane crash in the early 1950s on the Colony Glacier outside of Anchorage. A military plane, in bad weather, had crashed high on the mountain. Well, 60 years later, wreckage started emerging at the bottom of the glacier, 14 miles away. Glaciers flow - they have accumulation zones at the top, and ablation zones at the bottom, and the glacier itself flows from top to bottom. Albeit slowly. Over the course of 10 years of recovery operations, remains of most of the 52 people on that plane had been identified and recovered, which is pretty incredible.
posted by entropone at 5:16 AM on October 12 [4 favorites]

Surprising dangers on Everest. Like the French.

For the more serious minded, see Brian Blessed's 1996 documentary
posted by BWA at 5:17 AM on October 12

What with this and the 3D scans of Shackleton's ship, it's been quite the week for examples of thwarted British ambition.
posted by Hogshead at 7:47 AM on October 12

Everest lost its 'expedition' magic to become a tourist attraction in the mid-90s, with the commercialization of the climbing, leading up to the 1996 drama when the big storm blew in and killed 8 climbers.

340 climbers have died so far (Wikipedia list).

Nate Bargatze shares his take on Everest motivational speakers cashing in.
posted by Brian B. at 8:39 AM on October 12

do you have to be accountable when your body and clothes is what you leave?

Maybe they should be accountable. Let anyone climbing Everest put down a deposit. A significant amount of money. You a get the majority percent of your money back if you make it back, minus ten percent for clean-up of your crap that climbers wind up leaving to pollute the mountain. If you don't make it, then the money goes for the expense of the search operation of finding your body. If someone dies attempting a rescue or search, a certain amount of that is allocated to the survivors of the searcher. Make it enough to deter the amateurs and egotists that have no business climbing the mountain and deter those who do have the skill from taking that extra risk in bad weather or other circumstances from pushing on when bad conditions are against them.

Supposedly it's such an inspiration that man conquers the formidable mountain and how inspirational it is that the human race can 'rise up' to do these grandeurs things, but it's been done once, it doesn't need to be done again.
The mountain is majestic and inspirational the way it is. The reasons why people climb are not.

Can't we just leave it alone to be what it is? Isn't there one place on earth that can just be without human beings having to make it their own personal playground and literally crapping all over it?
posted by BlueHorse at 11:45 AM on October 12 [3 favorites]

a mountain littered with human corpses (and human feces) is trying to, y'know. Tell us something.

Littered with the corpses of people who weren't quitters.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 4:02 PM on October 12

Manufacturers of Woven Name Tapes to Her Majesty the Queen

Did she have wardrobes filled with clothing labeled "Her Maj"?
posted by HiroProtagonist at 4:03 PM on October 12

Leave no trace...

It occurs to me that there is a certain appeal to the 12 year old boy that is still a part of me. It sounds badass. I think I know how I'll sell me kid on it so he forms the habit.
posted by VTX at 4:20 PM on October 12

If you would like to experience a little of Mount Everest without leaving a huge carbon footprint or putting multiple people's lives at risk, I can highly recommend Jake Norton's virtual Everest tour. It's delightfully old-style internet content as well.

Michael Tracy has already been mentioned, and he's certainly put forward some geniune original ideas and had a fresh look at the primary sources...but he straddles the crank line a little bit. Enjoy the youtube rabbit hole with a bit of salt. I recommend Walt Unsworth's Everest if you want a comprehensive, more mainstream history book.
posted by other barry at 5:25 PM on October 12

I recommend Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer as an effective cure for any desire to climb Mount Everest.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:29 PM on October 12