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_____Letters from Everest

Everest
My brother found George Mallory, and I found my brother.

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By Carolyn Hahn

May 15, 1999 | On May 2, the electrifying news went out to the world that a team of climbers had found the body of legendary Everest climber George Mallory at 27,000 feet, 75 years after he and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine had disappeared 900 feet below the summit. In one widely quoted dispatch about the discovery, climber David Hahn, who was leading the team of five, talked about the danger of trying to find anything at 27,000 feet, with little more than some loose rocks to keep you from tumbling a straight 8,000 feet down the North Face. "Take one step away," he wrote, "and you're not thinking of George Mallory's life, you're worried about your own life."

Later, David, who is my brother, wrote a more detailed dispatch commenting on how Mallory must have spent his final moments after apparently breaking his leg and falling: "crossing his injured leg over the other to give himself some relief" and "composing himself to die." He described finding a letter from Mallory's wife "on his chest, close to his heart." Reading this at home on the Internet, I almost burst into tears.

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Like many readers around the world, I have spent the ensuing weeks compulsively logging on and waiting to see what would happen next. One day, it was the discovery of Mallory. A few days later it was David remembering what it was like to descend the terrifying Second Step alone, in the dark, without oxygen (he'd run out) on his 1994 descent from the summit. A few days later, when I thought he was supposed to be resting, I logged on to see that he was off rescuing frostbitten Ukrainians at 3 a.m. As I write this, he's poised for a summit bid, his fourth, on a mountain where one climber dies for every five who make it.

"One of the best pieces of reportage of our time, " the Manchester Guardian has called his dispatches, and many would agree -- but they don't have to log on to a Web site to see if their brother is living or dead. Every new dispatch confirms that he's still alive -- but if six hours go by without a new post, I'm not thinking about George Mallory's life, I'm thinking about David Hahn's.

Next page | As children, left alone in a high glacial valley

Photograph by Eric Simonson/MountainZone.com


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