Letters from Everest

Sat, 15 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

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.

Salon.com > Carolyn Hahn

Letters from Everest