ANKER: I don’t think this mystery will ever be solved conclusively. There are a lot of pieces and a lot of puzzles. But judging from what I saw up there, and having been climbing for as long as I have, and having firsthand knowledge of where George’s final resting place is, I now find it improbable that they made it to the summit and came that far back.
We split up and I was looking from a different perspective. Instead of asking, “Where did George fall?” I was asking, “Where would George have been carried by an avalanche? If George fell, how was he moved by snow and natural forces?” Before I found George, I had seen two other bodies, new ones, in the catchment basin. We had names for all of them because we used them as trail markers. “The Greeter” was at the entrance, and “The Patriot” was wearing red, white and blue. It was obvious they had fallen from a great distance. They had tumbled and it looked like they had been pummeled extensively. I sat down on a rock and had a cough drop and some water and listened to everyone chatter on the radio, and said, well, OK, we’re going to search three hours so I might as well get some exercise. So I started walking around, and about five minutes later I came across George.
Rocks can take weird paths but generally bodies fall in a straight line. I think their accident probably happened somewhere in the Yellow Band [28,000 feet]. George was lying with his arms up and it looked like he slid down and came to a stop; he didn’t really go flying down from a huge height. His legs were crossed, which shows he was still able to move a little bit. It must have dawned on him what situation he was in, how really far he was from anything. He’d lost consciousness, lying in that state. When I came up to him I wasn’t scared of him. You see other corpses and you don’t want to get close to them. They’re very ghoulish and macabre. A lot of them have cartwheeled, falling off cliffs. He was more peaceful, resting there.
You could look up at the summit and things are foreshortened at that altitude, because the air is so thin and clear there is no distortion. I looked up and I thought, “They really could have done it.” Of course, we really want to project our own dreams into any story and it would be great, yeah, if these guys had done it 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. That would be fantastic, given the amount of equipment they had and the amount of work they needed to do to get there.
George was probably the first of many professional climbers. He paved the way for the rest of us to make a living climbing mountains. He did a lot of rock climbing in his native southeast England, at a time when the technique was a lot different than it is now. But he died climbing. That’s not a good thing. You want to be an old climber. Everyone asks, “What’s your goal in life?” [It’s] “to be an old man.”
I think if they were really strong they got to the base of the Second Step [28,300 feet], and they probably realized, it’s 4 in the afternoon, we’ve only got three hours of light left, this isn’t the best place to be. We need to turn around.
The Second Step is about 55 meters in length. The first part is blocky, the second part is overhanging loose rock, about 20 feet tall, and slitting the top part of this is a crack about five inches wide. This is where the Chinese climbed it in 1960 and again in 1975, and subsequently attached a metal ladder. That’s what people have used to climb it. Part of our goal [was] to make a fresh assessment, just free-climb it with no preconceived notion of the difficulties.
If George Mallory was as bold and dashing a climber as history makes him out to be, there’s a good chance he could have climbed it the same way that I did, which seems to be the line of weakness. You always look for the line of weakness when you go up a climb. That’s how you ascend a given piece of rock. That seemed like the line of weakness he would have chosen.
I’d like to say, “Gosh, they made it,” but I think they were right at dusk when they fell, because when you don’t have a head-lamp, and it’s dark, you can’t move. They had forgotten their flashlights at High Camp. They were later recovered in 1933, still operable nine years later. I think the times set out by historians about Mallory and Irvine are unrealistic. I think they’re too fast. They estimate Mallory and Irvine were moving at 204 feet per hour, and Dave [teammate Dave Hahn] and myself were doing 133 feet per hour. Also, the last 600 meters are the most arduous, very physically demanding. I think it is improbable that they made it to the summit.
After the Third Step, a cloud enveloped us on the Summit Pyramid. The snow was mid-thigh deep; I had to wallow through it. We went into the clouds at about 12:30 [p.m.], so there was a similar buildup of clouds to the one that obscured Mallory and Irvine at quarter to 1 [on June 8, 1924]. On the summit, I thought I would see this great expansive wonderful view of Makalu, Nepal and Tibet, everything you see on those posters they sell. But it was blue sky above us and clouds below us. It was very still, the wind wasn’t blowing. It wasn’t one of those priceless moments, with some great music storming through your head. You had to be heads-up, assessing the situation every second, with your mind on full drive.
There’s nothing in the mountains worth dying for, or even freezing your fingers or losing anything. If you’re not alive, then you’re dead. You’ve got to look at it like that.
Mallory’s probable route up Everest: Yellow Band First Step (27,899-28,000 ft.)
Possible continuation of Mallory’s route: Second Step (28,140-28,300 ft.): Location ladder was placed in 1975; Third Step (28,510-28,610 ft.); Summit Pyramid (28,540-28,870 ft.) Summit: EVEREST 29,028 FT.
