interesting notes & quotes
1922 – radical innovation was oxygen
Howard Somervell and George Finch would argue that the use of oxygen was no more artificial than the use of a good pair of boots.
On the mountain Mallory would famously complain to Noel that he had not come to Tibet to become a film star… But he would become one whether he realized it or not.
Finch and Crawford showed up making the trek in 10 days. Not once on the journey had Finch been bothered by cold. “Everybody now envies me my eiderdown coat… And it is no longer laughed at”
“We were prepared to leave it to braver men to climb mount Everest by night”. (MALLORY – once they had reached their turn around time and weren’t anywhere near summit)
Tejbir was short and squat, ferociously strong. Finch picked him because “the man who grins the most is usually the one who goes farthest in the mountains”
Noel would go no further than north col. – Noel had become “new convert to the true faith” which was O2 (said Finch)
NOEL ON NEED FOR THIRD ATTEMPT: Noel explained it “in a struggle between man and mountain, such as this, as in any other battle… The moral effect of turning away from the enemy, after having once challenged and opened the fight, is fatal”
MALLORY ON THIRD ATTEMPT: Mallory was outwardly sanguine but inside he was torn. “Perhaps its mere folly to go up again. But how can I be out of the hunt… It sounds more like war than sport – and perhaps it is.”
Mallory wrote to Geoffrey young – still blaming himself for the deaths of the 7 porters. Young wrote back “you made allowance for the safety of the party that your experience suggested… You took your full share, a leading share, in the risk. In the war we had to do worse: we had to order men into danger at times when we could not share it. And surely we learned then that to take on ourselves afterwards the responsibility for their deaths, to debate w ourselves the ‘might-have-beens’ was the road to madness.
Bruce back to Darjeeling met a holy man who said “I hear you have climbed the Himal by means of thread… No doubt the thread of life.”
Geoffrey Bruce’s last words to mountain as he was carried down from attempt – with feet too numb to walk. “Just you wait, old thing, you’ll be for it soon.”
As gen Bruce had written in 1922: “little aphorism… There is only one motto for the Himalaya: when in doubt, don’t”
Geoffrey young wrote mail to Mallory “the result is nothing compared to the rightness of the attempt. Keep it right then; and let no desire for result spoil the effort by overstretching the safe limits within which it must move… The summit may, in any particular case, lie outside the course… Good Fortune! And the ‘resolution to return’ ever against ambition!”
Mallory “we are going to sail to the top this time, and God with us, or stamp to the top w our teeth in the wind.”
Mallory writing to Hinks: “as flies to wanton dogs are we to the gods.”