Customer Reviews

Lost on Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

More an engaging history of early Everest exploration than a record of the expedition to find Mallory & Irvine, this book still will be of interest to climbers and arm-chair mountaineers. A few proofing errors in the later chapters detract from the quality and several of the photos could use arrows and annotations. It seemed as if the author and publisher rushed this book through to get it on the shelves before Christmas.

All that said, the plates are the best collection of early Everest illustrations that I've seen. I found the account readable and enjoyable. When the text finally got the search team on the mountain, it was captivating.

Of course, their findings raise more questions: where is Irvine and the missing camera, what happened to Mallory's watch? I'd like to know how close they were to the original camp when Mallory fell. And after they found Mallory, why didn't they spend more time looking for Irvine?

I'll probably read the other titles about the search for Mallory & Irvine just because of my mountaineering background. I'll be curious to see how they compare.

Peter Firstbrook, the author of this book thinks that it's possible. Ironically however, if they did make it, it might have helped cause their deaths. By the time they would have got there it would have been early evening at the earliest. Then tiredness, exhaustion, dehydration combined might have caused Mallory's fall to his death. The irony being that they were at that point quite close, less than 200 ft, from Camp VI, from where they set off that morning. This book is divided into two parts. Part one is a biography of George Mallory, and a brief history of Himalayan mountanerring expeditions up till the 1920s, the second is an account of the expedition that found Mallory's body earlier this year. Worth reading, if only to look at the possible scenearios and evidence

Peter Firstbrook presents, essentially, a two-part text. The initial (and, overwhelming) content of the book deals factually and thoroughly with the history of the various climbing expeditions with the emphasis appropriately placed on Mallory's involvement in the whole process. The detail and insight offered by Mr. Firstbrook seems to have been genuinely and thoughtfully researched, although, I found it strange that more wasn't mentioned about Mallory's apparent disregard for his young family. Romantic letters aside, Mallory's actions clearly placed his wife and children a distant third behind his own ambition and the "chaps" with whom he fraternized. Evidence of this inconsistency in the book is liberally found whenever Mr. Firstbrook describes, in great detail, the trists that developed among Mallory and his fellow alpinist cognoscente. I suspect the omission of detail regarding Mallory's relationship with his family was a choice of the author rather than a lack of available material on the subject...

The book takes a turn towards the superficial, however, when Mr. Firstbrook suddenly transitions the reader along with the expedition which found Mallory's body in 1999. Given the level of detail he was able to provide about the early expeditions, I was amazed at how little was provided about the 1999 expedition, its team members, the discovery of the body and actual clues provided by Mallory's remains. How did the team members go about the excavation of the body, for example. And, certainly, some of the dialogue among the climbers back at base camp was worth publishing, wasn't it?

Similarly, the paucity of the (only) black and white photos of the 1999 expedition left me wondering why Mr. Firstbrook bothered to include them at. I suppose one can speculate that he either didn't have rights to the photos, or, omitted them out of respect for the families, or, that he was (somehow) bound by contract to Eric Simonson? Again, no explanation was offered.

It appears, unfortunately, that Mr. Firstbrook was under presure to complete the work before the next guy(s) did; that may account for the (somewhat) flimsy detail and discussion provided in the last couple of chapters of the book. Doesn't the title of this book suggest an emphasis on what the search team was able to ascertain in 1999? Hell, I learned almost as much about this subject matter by watching the damn NOVA presentation!

This is a brilliant account of the history of attempts on Everest and the mystery of Mallory both as a mountaineer and as a man. Firstbrook writes in a clear no nonsense style that had me gripped from beginning to end. This is the only account where I felt that I was able to gain some understanding of the psychological motivation behind this great British mountaineer. Firstbrook is a story teller - and what a story! This is the book to read if you are interested in Mallory the man as well as Everest.

One of at least six books that have been published since Mallory's body was found. The book is poorly produced with disappointing photos (largely extracted from archive footage and film stills - one deduces an unedifying row between climbing and camera teams) all with the feel of a token volume to accompany the BBC programme. The author spends 162 pages out of 203 retelling the history of the early Everest expeditions - all good stuff, but his text shows more than a passing resemblance to other, better, secondary sources (in particular David Robertson's 'George Mallory', Walt Unwsorth's 'Everest', and Peter Hopkirk's 'Trespassers on the Roof of the World'). Rows between camera crews and climbers are not new; they have beset expeditions since John Noel underwrote the 1924 expedition with speculative funds based on what he thought the footage might make. But it justifies a raw, cynical view about the BBC for trying to muffle the climbing team from telling their own stories (and thereby losing their first choice of high altitude cameraman and prejudicing a much better book and film) and the American for cashing in once they had found a film crew prepared to back them.

By no means can I be considered an expert on matters concerning Everest, so I can't comment authoritatively on some of the factual issues here. Nevertheless, I can say that this is an excellent primer for the layman who is interested in learning about the mystery of Mallory and Irvine and their 1924 attempt to be the first to reach the summit of the world's tallest mountain.

For background, the book provides biographical details about Mallory and a history of Western exploration of Everest. (Apparently, Mallory was a great natural climber, but extraordinarily forgetful about critical details and sometimes suffering from poor judgement.) It also details the events of the 1921, 1922, and 1924 British expeditions, the first organized attempts by Europeans to explore the mountain. Excellent maps are included, along with two sections of black and white photos, primarily from the original expeditions, with some supplements from the 1999 search for Mallory and Irvine's bodies. (For those of a more morbid mindset, note that the photos from 1999 feature only one discreet shot of Mallory's frozen body, and otherwise mostly are concerned with the artifacts found upon him.)

The last two brief chapters relate the efforts of a 1999 British/American expedition (funded in part by German interests) to find the missing climbers and hopefully to salvage preserved film from the camera they were known to have been carrying. Should the camera be found, it's possible that photos might still be developed from it and that the question of whether or not Mallory and Irvine reached the summit could be conclusively answered at last. To date, neither the camera nor the body of Irvine have been found (apparently a subsequent 2001 expedition by some of the team members from 1999 uncovered only questionable further evidence from the 1924 climbers), so the mystery endures. However, this book speculates that it's possible, however unlikely, that Mallory and Irvine might indeed have reached the top, albeit at so late and dangerous an hour and with such primitive protection and gear that their doom would have been assured in any case.

The last few chapters are mildly repetitious in certain parts, but other than that minor flaw, this is a very readable and fascinating account of one of the greatest tragedies and enigmas of mountaineering.

This book gives an excellent history of Everest, from it's discovery and early mapping, right through the first expeditions to climb it. I bought it because I had followed the 1999 Expedition on the web, and wanted to learn more about the search and discovery of Mallory. I kept waiting for the author to describe the expedition, but it didn't come until the very end. While I may not have gotten as much detail on the modern expedition as I wanted, I wasn't disappointed by the wealth of history and information. Now I can read one of the other accounts that concentrates more on the search than the history.

P. L. Firstbrook, in his ambitious book, depicts man's many attempts to climb Mr. Everest, as well as the tragic deaths of so many climbers. "Lost on Everest" leaves me with a gnawing question. Were the climbers who scaled this forbidding mountain back in the twenties brave or foolhardy or both? Even with the more advanced equipment and clothing that is available nowadays, many people who are experienced climbers still die while trying to reach the summit. The weather on Everest is so changeable and fierce, and the footing is so treacherous, that there is a huge element of danger in making this frightening climb. Firstbrook brings this story to life by focusing on George Mallory, a young man who died on Everest in 1924 after a number of unsuccessful attempts to conquer the mountain. Mallory was experienced, skilled and fearless, but he also had a tendency to be reckless, careless and absentminded. Did Mallory reach the summit before his death? Did Mallory make a fatal mistake that cost him his life and that of his companion, Andrew Irvine? We will never be sure of the answers to these questions. In 1999, an expedition was sent to find Mallory's body, and sure enough, his body was found on the mountain after having lain there for seventy-five years. I found the story of Mallory's adventures and those of his fellow climbers riveting, but I was also saddened by the loss of life brought on by man's obsession with conquering the highest mountain on earth.

I approached this book as something that seemed interesting. I am not a climber, not particularly interested in Everest, and not even that much of a history buff. Yet, within I found an amazingly fascinating tale of the desire to achieve and the motivations of the men (sorry, mostly men) involved. This book also strikes me as terrific for teens that want to better understand how people create high goals and then achieve them.

Includes photographs from the expeditions of the 1920s and excerpts from letters, interviews, and journals of the members of those expeditions. All but the last 2 chapters focus on those expeditions. The final 2 chapters are about the expedition to find the bodies (they found Mallory's, but not Irving's) and their suppositions about whether Mallory and Irving summited or not. The final question remains a question, although we have enough evidence right now that a good argument could be made saying that they did.