Last Hours on Everest: The gripping story of Mallory and Irvine’s fatal ascent. Graham Hoyland

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      By Mallory and Somervell’s time the new breed of alpinist was thinking about even higher mountains than those in the Alps and the Caucasus, and were organising the first Himalayan expeditions. However, because both Nepal and Tibet were closed to foreigners Mount Everest seemed an impossible dream. This opinion changed subtly after the geographical poles were reached, and particularly after the tragedy of Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1912.

      Scott’s endeavour was an example of serious exploration in the old style; that is, exploration with a strong scientific purpose. When his last camp was found it was only 11 miles from the next food dump that might have saved his party. And yet they had man-hauled 30lb of rock samples behind them all the way from the Pole.

      There was another example of this serious scientific interest. The palaeobotanist Marie Stopes had applied to join Scott’s second expedition. She had been turned down on the grounds of her sex, but following her advice Scott had looked for a specimen of a coal-forming, fossilised fern named Glossopteris. The discovery of this specimen in the dead explorer’s collection established that Antarctica had once formed part of the first super-continent of Gondwanaland.

      In his diary entry for 8 February relating to this discovery near the Beardmore Glacier, Scott writes that they spent ‘the rest of the day geologising … under cliffs of Beacon sandstone, weathering rapidly and carrying veritable coal seams. From the last, Wilson, with his sharp eyes, has picked several plant impressions, the last a piece of coal with beautifully traced leaves in layers, also some excellently preserved impressions of thick stems, showing cellular structure.’

      Scott’s last words, written as he lay dying in his own lonely tent, made a powerful impression on me as a schoolboy:

      For my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of providence, determined still to do our best to the last … Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.

      There seems to be something in the English psyche that celebrates the concept of heroic failure. One doesn’t see it in Scottish culture, nor do the Americans have any truck with losers. It is hard to disentangle, but both Scott and Mallory are examples of this phenomenon. Franklin of the North-West Passage is another. I’d suggest it might have to do with the English public schools’ paradoxical injunction to try your very hardest, but not to boast of any success. Bragging is considered one of the cardinal sins. The top winning strategy in this contradictory game is therefore to die heroically trying to reach some impossible goal. I believe heroic failure may have played a small part in Mallory’s psychology, as well as in the minds of his predecessors.

      Scott and his party had been beaten by the Norwegian polar explorer Amundsen, who pipped them to the post by employing more effective dog-teams, keeping his attempt secret and treating his expedition as a race. Scott thought it was unsporting to use dogs and insisted on man-hauling the sledges, rather as later explorers thought it would be unsporting to use supplementary oxygen to climb Mount Everest. British moral indignation rose in step with Scott’s elevation to heroic status. ‘Amundsen even ate his dogs!’ they cried. Edward Whymper had referred to Everest as the Third Pole, and this term now gained currency. British pride had to be assuaged, and the ascent of Everest would do as well as anything else.