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Mallory, preparing for his final summit bid.
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In Extremis
by Liesl Clark
May 7, 1999
The natural fiber clothing was the give-away, layers ripped
from the impact of Mallory's fall. "It came as quite a shock,"
confessed Dave Hahn today in an interview at Base Camp. "We
needed to go through the clothing and cut it off to be able to
fully examine him. Jake found this clothing label on the
neck," Hahn continued. "He pulls this 'G.L. Mallory' tag out,
and all of a sudden this was something that I knew was
bringing me a little closer to 20th-century history than I
ever thought I'd be. And it took me a few seconds to
understand that."
It is a climber's clothing that helps maintain the fragile
balance between body and mountain. What moves us the most is
the realization that two climbers in 1924, ill-equipped to
stay out overnight on the upper slopes of Everest, still set
out to try and be the first to climb to the top of the world.
Certainly it wasn't their clothing that caused their demise.
As Hahn explained: "He had fractures of his leg bones. He had
a broken arm on the right side, and trauma to his shoulder.
You could see this was a fall. You could see where the rope
had bit into him, but it wasn't excessive trauma. He was at
27,000 feet, he was
wearing nothing by our standards. He was going to die of
exposure with such trauma."
David Hahn
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We continue to try to piece together Mallory's last moments,
given what we know of his injuries and the terrain. When asked
his opinion of the evidence at hand—the rope around
Mallory's waist, his injuries, and his fight for
life—Hahn relied on his mountaineering intuition to give
us a possible scenario: "(The evidence) didn't suggest that he
had fallen off of the North East Ridge. That's what you like
to picture—that he's climbing on the normal route and he
takes the epic fall of all time. No, this was probably from
somewhere within the Yellow Band, within the cliff band. It
couldn't have been several hundred vertical feet. It was a
tumbling fall probably, but then he probably ended up on the
steep snow slope below the Yellow Band and continued his fall
and that probably was his fate. You could see he was caught in
the rope so he rolled and then eventually he slid. What I
thought was clear was that he stopped himself eventually and
it also seemed clear to me that he was alive at the end of
this tumble and slide. The rope had separated at some point.
It looked like he was alive, he had held himself on the snow
slope. He was in an anatomically natural position and I guess
we were all struck by that broken leg and the way he had
crossed his good leg over that. He was going for that last bit
of relief or comfort by that last action of crossing his leg.
He couldn't have been alive for very long there."
It is still Mallory's clothing that astonishes Hahn the most:
"I can't emphasize it enough. I wear street clothes that are
thicker than George Mallory's were up there at 27,000 feet on
the North Face of Everest, and to have the shock of injury
setting in, there wouldn't have been much time, the cold
would've taken his life away if the injuries hadn't." (Compare the inventory of clothing found on Mallory with the
clothing worn by his discoverer, Conrad Anker.)
In their next search, the climbers have one clue to hold onto
while searching for Andrew Irvine. Zippers had just been
invented in 1924 and Irvine was one of the first climbers to
wear them on his clothing. With this information in hand, the
climbers hope to find Irvine and the camera that we know
Mallory and Irvine had with them on their summit climb. "My
curiosity is stronger than ever," admits Hahn. "I need to go
back up there and find what I can."
Unanswered Questions (May 25, 1999)
Forty-Eight Yaks (May 21, 1999)
On Top of the World (May 17, 1999)
Summit Team Moves Higher (May 16, 1999)
Still at Camp V (May 15, 1999)
Snow Bound (May 14, 1999)
Outsmarting the Weather (May 13, 1999)
Last Trip Up (May 12, 1999)
Up to ABC/The Rescue (May 11, 1999)
The Image of Mallory (May 8, 1999)
In Extremis (May 7, 1999)
Pieces of the Puzzle (May 6, 1999)
Dearest George (May 5, 1999)
Mallory's Discoverers Return (May 4, 1999)
Mallory Reported Found (May 3, 1999)
Waiting in Silence (May 1, 1999)
Up to the Search Site (April 30, 1999)
To the North Col (April 29, 1999)
Waiting out the Wind (April 28, 1999)
Search About to Begin (April 25, 1999)
Pitching a 1933 Tent (April 23, 1999)
Early Camp Found at 21,750 Feet on Everest (April 20,
1999)
Up to Base Camp (April 23, 1999)
Photos: (1) Courtesy of the John Noel Photographic
Collection; (2) Liesl Clark.
Members of the press: click here for NOVA/PBS ONLINE "Lost
on Everest"
media relations contacts.
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