With the Mallory exhibit now in the National Mountaineering Exhibitition, Colin Wells explores this now legendary man.

Born in 1886 into a well-to-do Cheshire church family Mallory attended a boarding school at Winchester where he was introduced to Alpine climbing by one of his masters. He displayed an aptitude for climbing, his natural athleticism compensating for a sometimes cavalier approach and a chronic absent-mindedness. His carelessness was legendary - climbing the Finsteraarhorn (4,274m) in Switzerland in 1909 he forgot to tie onto the climbing rope and only became aware of the fact when he was in a very exposed position with a thousand-foot fall threatening.

Always cool under pressure he re-attached himself and carried on. Mallory went up to Cambridge in 1905 where he moved in exalted circles. He joined the Fabian Society and the committee of the University Women’s Suffrage Movement and developed influential mountaineering contacts that would lead to his automatic selection for the early Everest trips.

Among his acquaintances were intellectual Bohemians including the literary critic and lascivious homosexual Lytton Strachey, who, instantly smitten by Mallory’s handsome physique, wrote “Mon Dieu! - George Mallory! When that’s been written, what more need be said?” One of his key contacts was Geoffrey Winthrop Young whose ‘Peny- Pass’ parties in Snowdonia were a networking forum for climbers. Here Mallory honed his exceptional climbing skills and became well known amongst key players from the Alpine Club. His combination of climbing panache and carelessness made him a difficult character to forget.

After Cambridge George considered following his father into the church but instead started teaching history at Charterhouse. He married in 1914 and his wife Ruth gave birth to their first child the following year. He joined up in 1916 and served in France as an artillery officer but an old ankle injury kept him away from the action for extended periods during the remainder of the war.

When plans to climb Everest were revived after the Great War, Mallory – one of a rare band of experienced mountaineers to survive without serious injury – was an automatic choice as a lead climber. Now with three children George felt pangs of guilt at going off on the adventure, but he was reassured by Geoffrey Winthrop Young. Young also helped to persuade Ruth Mallory that their future could be more secure if George achieved the celebrity status that would automatically fall to the first person to climb the world’s highest peak. During the expedition Mallory proved he was a potential winner. With fellow lead climber Guy Bullock he reached an altitude of over 6,700m and discovered a feasible route to the summit.

The following year, he was back with the much larger follow-up expedition but they struggled against poor weather and illness. A near disaster was averted by Mallory’s prompt iceaxe belay on snow slopes at 7,925m when three climbers slipped. That same luck did not hold two weeks later when a snow slope avalanched, killing seven porters. The loss of so many lives was a bitter blow, and many blamed Mallory directly for picking a route up clearly avalanche-prone slopes. There were mutterings about lack of mountaineering judgment and his continuing carelessness.

Expedition member Tom Longstaff remarked that, “Mallory is a good, stouthearted baby, but quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything, including himself”. Mallory himself was mortified by the accident and blamed himself, saying “If I had known more about snow conditions here, the accident would not have happened, and so one may say it was due to ignorance.”

In between expeditions, Mallory gave lectures in Britain and North America and it was during the US tour in 1923 that in response to the question “Why climb Everest?” he is alleged to have made his famous reply “Because it is there.” However, it seems likely that Mallory never actually uttered the phrase; instead there is strong circumstantial evidence that it was a form of pithy journalistic shorthand invented by the reporter or copy editor from the New York Times.

Spending time away from his family was upsetting for Mallory, and when the inevitable invitation to join the fateful 1924 expedition arrived, he prevaricated before accepting. Eventually, aware that his financial security might rest on making his reputation as the conqueror of Everest, he succumbed to the powerful pull of the summit. Unfortunately, the mountain showed no respect for ambition. After expedition leader Edward Norton’s valiant but unsuccessful ‘oxygen- less’ summit bid, most thought the expedition was finished.

Mallory, however, perhaps driven by the knowledge that it might be his last chance to achieve mountaineering immortality, decided to have one last-ditch attempt to climb the summit with Sandy Irvine. The pair famously disappeared into the clouds, never to return.

Norton wrote that the expedition accepted the loss of the two climbers “in that rational spirit which all of our generation had learnt in the Great War... but the tragedy was very near; our friends’ tents and vacant places at table were a constant reminder to us.” Although he had penned it fifteen years earlier, the sentiments of an elegiac poem written by Geoffrey Winthrop Young seemed to reflect their sense of loss perfectly:

” Brothers till death, and a wind-swept grave,
Joy of the journey’s ending:
Ye who have climbed to the great white veil,
Hear ye the chant? Saw ye the Grail?"

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