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Title: Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine by Jochen Hemmleb, Larry A. Johnson, Eric R. Simonson, William E. Nothdurft ISBN: 0-89886-699-5 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.59 (51 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It is a superbly written and illustrated book.
Comment: I thought it had all been said about this expedition and Everest in general until I read this book. The accounts published by the authors in magazines such as National Geographic, and Outside are good but pale in comparison to the quality of the presentation of this book. The photos of the primitive equipment Mallory, Irvine and their colleagues used almost 100 years ago tell a compelling story. I cannot imagine achieving the heights they achieved with the hobnail boots. I had never seen a pair up close. The photos of the mountain from each expedition are remarkable and unique. This book is more than just a climbing tale. The author does a superb job of portraying the people on the 1924 and 1999 expeditions, and the cultures in which they immersed themselves. Mountaineers Books also did an outstanding job of producing the best quality Everest book I have seen to date. It is beautifully designed and executed. It is one of those rare books that I hated to finish and will no doubt refer to and savor again. You will want a quality hardback copy for your library or coffee table.
Rating: 5
Summary: The romance of high adventure
Comment: With their splendid book "Ghosts of Everest" ("Ghosts"), the authors have taken up the gauntlet of attempting to determine whether or not Mallory & Irvine reached the summit of Mt. Everest on June 8th, 1924, before perishing on the descent. The authors provide a fascinating and hugely-detailed description of the fatal climb, and of the Simonson expedition which discovered Mallory. The layout, photography, graphical and sheer physical qualities of the book are to the absolute highest standards.
The front half of the book describes the 1999 expedition, a tale that begins like many of this genre. The difference in "Ghosts" becomes quickly apparent. This is not your bunch of good old boys undertaking a simple task of conquest. Instead, they are only the second expedition since WW-II launched expressly to find the body and camera of the two British climbers, with the intent of finding out how far they got.
Unlike most other Everest expeditions which conjure up the names of Mallory & Irvine to raise financing, the Simonson team actually made the search for the two men and their camera(s) their number one priority. The search effort was planned by Mallory & Irvine researcher Jochen Hemmleb-the catalyst with Larry Johnson-for this expedition. Hemmleb has amassed practical research on the 1924 expedition that pinpointed the probably location of Irvine's body as evidenced by the 1933 discover of his ice ax lying on the route. Yes, they had great luck with the weather-the mountain being unusually clear of snow--but Lady Luck often smiles on the well-prepared, and none were better prepared to undertake this arduous search than the team of this expedition.
The shock of actually finding their needle in the haystack-and then discovering that the body was that of George Mallory rather than Andrew Irvine--sent climbers and researchers reeling back to their notes to try to make sense of this first new ground truth since the discovery of an "English dead" by a Chinese Climber in 1975. The stunned reaction of these hardened climbers to their momentous discovery adds a new element to this tale of historical research conducted under enormous physical adversity; and the photographs of the 1924 artifacts act like an eerie time portal glancing back to an age when climbing the world's highest peak was undertaken with equipment which would today be considered inadequate to climb Mt. Hood. While the consensus forming is that the route was too long and the Second Step cliff too difficult for those pre-WW II climbers to have reached the top, enough ambiguity still exists to give heart to the true believers for whom success might still have been possible. Only the still-sought Kodak camera, with film preserved by the Everest's icy grip, may someday give the final answer. Until that day, "Ghosts" has moved itself to the center of gravity of this still fascinating legend.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Lesson on How Money is Replacing Adventure
Comment: This book allowed me to analyse why I have not read too many books on Mtn Climbing in the past few years. I am a climber and the genre was important to me for a big part of my life. Reading through this book made me realise how much climbing has not only changed from the days of Mallory, but even from the old siege operations in the 70s. Today the emphasis on gaining money and the machinations and business tactics that go into getting the dosh to go, take up not only the majority of the time making the ascent, but also the majority of the time (and lines of writing) in most mountain literature published these days.
Gone is the old style adventure: 1) adventure-for-the-sheer-fun-of-it, Joe Brown, Don Whillans; 2) adventure-of-the-tortured-soul, Eric Shipton, Joe Simpson; 3) adventure for Imperial gain, Capt Noel, Sven Hedin, or the early British Expeditions to Everest, (though to be fair, it is hard to ressurect this particular genre) and; even the 4) adventure-to-be-the-first-to-do-something, Bonnington and Hertzog, is relegated to second place -- now adventure takes second place to how much money and designer deals for broadcast rights and publisher exclusives can be done before, during and after the point when all the adventure takes place.
As such this book is very symptomatic of this new genre. There is all sorts of vignettes of the evil BBC and it reps and the business concerns of all the others who made crucial decisions tying their business fates to this expedition --- too much of this and too little detail both of the original British Expeditions the search expedition this books puports to write about. There is also precious little route description, how the route was put up and the actual "thrill" of the hunt to find Mallory. Fully one-third of the book deals with these machinations.
Even the people that the authors palpably do not like get off lightly. All of the people they like are usually gifted with some god-like aspect of physical prowess --- eg. barrel-chested, large arms etc. For those who have read Chris Bonnington's books on any of his expeditions, the slow burning personality problems that manifest themselves on so many of these expeditions are conspicuous by their absence in this book.
In sum I liked the book. The good parts are two, and only two in my estimation: 1) the find of Mallory's body and 2) the ascent of the last ridge by the search party members. It is no coincidence that these two subjects are raw adventure and have nothing to do with gaining money or searching to personally skewer someone's personality.
I am glad I read it. But as an inspiration for further reading in the contemporary mountaineering genre, this book is symptomatic of how far the adventure genre has fallen, particularly in the past 10 yrs or so. Maybe you will like it. Maybe you will not. I am the kind of person who trekked the subsidiary valleys around Mt. Everest, but I would not go to Everest base camp --too many people, too much garbage and too many people following the populistic mantra of what passes for adventure writing these days... like the valleys around Everest these days, this genre has been tamed, beaten into submission, and transformed into a pablum for mass consumption. Better to settle down and re-read the Hertzog or Bonnington Classics.
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Title: Detectives on Everest: The 2001 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition by Jochen Hemmleb, Eric Simonson, Dave Hahn ISBN: 0898868718 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Last Climb: The Legendary Everest Expeditions of George Mallory by David F. Breashears, Audrey Salkeld ISBN: 0792275381 Publisher: National Geographic Society Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mt. Everest by Conrad Anker, David Roberts ISBN: 0684871521 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Mystery of Mallory & Irvine by Tom Holzel, Audrey Salkeld, Tom Hozel ISBN: 0898867266 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest by Beck Weathers ISBN: 0440237084 Publisher: Dell Publishing Company Pub. Date: 06 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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