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How Mount Everest killed George Mallory


Having quarreled with his adept former fellow climber, George Mallory attempted Mount Everest in 1924 seriously ill-equipped

George Mallory bookended the twentieth century history of Everest with his pioneering attempts in the 1920s to climb the mountain — and with the spectacular discovery, in 1999, of his body high up on the North Face, preserved by the ice for seventy-five years after he had failed to do so. Did Mallory reach the summit before dying — along with the moral question it prompts: should he have even tried, with imperfect oxygen equipment, given that he was putting not only his own life at risk but that of his much younger companion, Sandy Irvine, only twenty-two and fresh out of Oxford? On the previous Everest expedition of 1922, Mallory’s fellow climber, George Finch, who was Australian, annoyed him with his sharp elbows and perceived chippy antipodean attitude.

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