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Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine

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This is a beautifully and lavishly illustrated, textually rich book. Its pages demand the reader's undivided attention and are sure to enthrall all mystery lovers, Everest aficionados, nostalgia junkies, history buffs, and climbing enthusiasts. This book is sure to provide the reader with many hours of enjoyment.

The book chronicles the search for George Mallory and Andrew Irvine by the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition. It juxtaposes the dramatic turn of events during their expedition with those of the 1924 British Everest Expedition which saw Mallory and Irvine attempt a summit climb, only to disappear into the mists of Everest, never to be seen again. It makes for a spell binding narrative, as past events are woven through present day ones.

The 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition was a meticulously well prepared and well organized venture. With its discovery of George Leigh Mallory's body, it enjoyed much success. The research and analysis that went into its ultimate, well thought out conclusions were comprehensive and fascinating, with its strong reliance upon forensics and deductive reasoning. Their reconstruction of Mallory's and Irvine's last climb is riveting. Unfortunately, the ultimate question still remains unanswered. Did they or did they not reach the summit of Mount Everest back in 1924?

The beautiful photographs of the personal effects found upon Mallory's person underscore a certain poignancy about the discovery of Mallory's well preserved body. The photographs which memorialize this discovery are amazingly lovely and tasteful, considering its subject matter, and hauntingly illustrate the finality with which Everest may deal with mountaineers, no matter how accomplished.

The photographs also highlight how ill equipped for the harsh climatic conditions were the early Everest expeditions. It is amazing, and a credit to those early expeditioners' courage and fortitude, in braving such an inhospitable and harsh terrain with the inadequate clothing and equipment available to them at the time. Mallory and Irvine were certainly intrepid explorers!

This book is a fitting tribute to two men who sought to make a historic summit and, in their attempt, would forever be a part of Everest.

This is a wonderfully written and well-illustrated, textually rich book. Its pages demand the reader's undivided attention and are sure to enthrall all mystery lovers, Everest aficionados, nostalgia junkies, history buffs, and climbing enthusiasts. This book is sure to provide the reader with many hours of enjoyment.

The book chronicles the search for George Mallory and Andrew Irvine by the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition. It juxtaposes the dramatic turn of events during their expedition with those of the 1924 British Everest Expedition which saw Mallory and Irvine attempt a summit climb, only to disappear into the mists of Everest, never to be seen again. It makes for a spell binding narrative, as past events are woven through present day ones.

The 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition was a meticulously well-prepared and well-organized venture. With its discovery of George Leigh Mallory's body, it enjoyed much success. The research and analysis that went into its ultimate, well thought out conclusions were comprehensive and fascinating, with its strong reliance upon forensics and deductive reasoning. Their reconstruction of Mallory's and Irvine's last climb is riveting. Unfortunately, the ultimate question still remains unanswered. Did they or did they not reach the summit of Mount Everest back in 1924?

The photographs of the personal effects found upon Mallory's person underscore a certain poignancy about the discovery of Mallory's well preserved body. The photographs, which memorialize this discovery, are amazingly lovely and tasteful, considering its subject matter, and hauntingly illustrate the finality with which Everest may deal with mountaineers, no matter how accomplished.

The photographs also highlight how ill equipped for the harsh climatic conditions were the early Everest expeditions. It is amazing, and a credit to those early expeditioners' courage and fortitude, in braving such an inhospitable and harsh terrain with the inadequate clothing and equipment available to them at the time. Mallory and Irvine were certainly intrepid explorers!

This book is a fitting tribute to two men who sought to make a historic summit and, in their attempt, would forever be a part of Everest.

I had never heard of Mallory or Irvine until the day the news mentioned Mallory was found. All these years later I decided to read this book to answer the curiosity I had over them.

I am intrigued with the question of did they reach the summit before they died back in 1924. Many have argued they failed and the authors decided to see if they could answer the debate.

This is a good read as the authors gave accounts of both the climbs of Mallory and Irvine and the Simonson group that went to find them. The book has great details and good photographs throughout. I actually looked at the photos of Mallory several times. Kind of awed for some reason.

The authors are most assuredly in awe of both Mallory and Irvine and it shows in the book. Especially when they found Mallory.

You get the feeling they really want them to have made the summit and they offer some convincing arguments. Such as some of Mallory's notes suggest they took more oxygen bottles then thought. The location of an Oxygen bottle showed they were further along then thought and the possibility that Odell who commented on seeing them at the second step might have actually seen them on the third.

Does the book prove they made it? Not really. There is no serious proof. The fabled camera might answer it but it is thought to be with Irvine who was never found. There is also the claim of leaving a photograph of Mallory's wife on the summit and it was not found on Mallory's body. One thing the authors mention however, is that they didn't find proof to suggest the failed in their attempt so the question remains.

Overall you might find yourself hoping they did made it as it's a classic tale of man against the elements.

I found myself hoping they did.

I was only vaguely familiar with the story of Mallory and Irvine before reading this. Hemmelb does a nice job of interweaving the story of Mallory's 1924 attempt at Everest with that of the 1999 expedition that went in search of his body. For anyone interested in Everest and the history of attempts to climb it, I can recommend this book highly.

If you have ever wondered what happened to the best climber ever to set foot on this earth, and the brave wonderful man who disappeared with him, this is your book! A group of courageous men set out to solve this question in 1999, 75 years after the mysterious disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. And what they find will chill you to your very bones! I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Mt. Everest and all brave but foolhardy ventures.

This has to be one of my favorite books. I have read it several times and each time it still captivates my interest!

What a story!

And talk about memories . . . No, I've never been on Mt. Everest - Popocatepetl, 17,887 ft is the highest I've been (on foot) - but I did spend untold hours back in the stacks of the Main Library at the University of Texas in Austin, in the early 1950s, poring over accounts of the English expeditions to Everest (and elsewhere in the Himalaya and Karakoram) in the 1920s and 1930's. Those old thick books with their thick knife-cut pages and stilted or candid photographs made you want to go to Tibet, and something about their musty smell made you want to take a bathroom break. And then get back to what Younghusband and Smythe and Odell and Noel and Norton and Somervell - those subsidiary phantoms within the Everest saga - had to tell.

Those books, and accounts of other climbs (in Europe or Africa or closer to home in the Americas) forced me onto steep rock. I climbed semi-seriously from 1952 until 1958 and desultorily for about fifteen years thereafter. But nothing along the lines of the climbers in Ghosts of Everest: Anker, Hahn, Norton, Politz, Richards. Among others.

The three co-authors - Hemmleb, Johnson, and Simonson - made a wise decision to enhance their story's narrative thrust and coherence by choosing William Nothdurft to put it all together. He did a wonderful job; he's a hell of a writer. The maps and photographs are illuminating, though some of the photos are too strongly backlighted.

A human-interest side-story in the book concerns BBC producer Peter Firstbrook and associate producer Graham Hoyland. Hoyland had championed BBC's support of the Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition of 1999 for more than a year. Hoyland was a former Everest climber and grandnephew of T.H. Somervell of the 1924 Everest expedition. Not until October 1998 (the main party of the expedition ended up arriving in Kathmandu on 18 March 1999) did Hoyland's boss Firstbrook get into the mix with his various bureaucratic ploys and games. Things went along, largely downhill, in fits and starts. In the end the expedition was mounted, but Hoyland was sent home by Firstbrook on a flimsy medical excuse. Firstbrook's insincerity was made manifest when he, Firstbrook, came down with a much more serious medical condition but refused, in spite of the expedition doctor's advice, to go back down to lower altitude. There's also the story of the midstream much-changed legal contract Firstbrook tried to get expedition leader Simonson to sign.

Aargh! But then again, anyone who has tried to negotiate a contract between a private party and an institution, bureaucracy, government, or politician probably knows how downright duplicitous any of the latter can be. Their saving grace is that they are usually pretty dumb. I Googled `Peter Firstbrook' today and see, with some satisfaction and a somewhat patched image of the BBC, that Peter is no longer with them. He evidently shuffled off (or was shuffled off) to another film production outfit, Mosaic, in 2002.

Hey, there are lots of ambitious guys out there. I well remember one day (actually it was 29 July 1957) that Yvon Chouinard grabbed me with "I think I've rediscovered Baxter's Lost Pinnacle! Let's go climb it before someone else does!" And we did, alternating leads. (By luck, since Yvon was a much better climber, he got to lead the final overhang pitch.) For years I had in my collection of climbing hardware a horizontal piton marked `URE' for `Ulf Ram-Erickson,' Baxter's climbing partner - they were often described as "two solo climbers, roped together" - we took off that Pinnacle that day. Sure, Yvon was ambitious, but he wouldn't scheme to crawl up over someone's back.

Typically, in the mountains, it's a world of clear air, hard dark rock, white snow, tiny flowers in moss, and wonderful straightforward people. People like Mallory and Irvine. And like the members of the 1999 Expedition who went up to Everest to find and commemorate them. Ghosts of Everest is their very well told story.