Because It's There

It seems that the mountain will always have stories to tell--or at least that there will always be people looking to solve its mysteries. A group of explorers this week announced that they may have discovered the body of climber George Mallory high atop Mount Everest. Mallory died in 1924 in a blizzard on the mountain, and there remains the hotly-debated question of whether he was killed on his way to the summit or on the way down after successfully reaching the top. Mallory and his fellow climber Andrew Irvine might turn out to have been the first to summit Everest, long before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did so in 1953. The PBS show "Nova" is documenting the current expedition, which is searching not just for Mallory's remains but also for any shreds of proof that he made it to the top.

High on their wish list is Mallory's Kodak Vest Pocket camera which might have undeveloped shots from the summit. The "Nova" production will be the most recent in a string of Everest-related media events, including the highly-acclaimed "Everest" Omnimax film and Jon Krakauer's best-selling account of a 1996 disaster on the mountain, Into Thin Air. Few of us can get enough of the myth and stories of the often painful reality surrounding the world's tallest mountain. The hype has even extended to the Web, where the site everest.mountainzone.com is sponsoring the expedition and selling "Mallory/Irvine" commemorative t-shirts. It's all a little surreal.

But amidst the flurry of excitement over the possible discovery of the body and the race to find out the truth of whether the explorer actually reached the top, Mallory's son John is quietly trying to defuse the importance of the debate, saying that his father cannot be considered the first to summit Everest. "To me the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is half done, isn't it, if you don't get down again," he said in an interview on BBC radio. He continued by pointing out that he hoped the body would not be disturbed: "I think it is much happier to leave it where it is" (as it turned out, the explorers said a service over the body and then covered the body with protective stones).

I agree with the younger Mallory in his reluctance to have the hunt for the "true" first summit become so central a component of Everest lore. It's understandable that modern climbers are curious about the men who tried to reach the top of the tallest mountain in nothing but tweeds and spiked shoes with only the most basic oxygen containers to help them, but to emphasize the success or failure of Mallory's expedition is to deflect the focus from what he has been most remembered for over the last several decades.

When asked why he wanted to climb Everest, Mallory replied with the simple answer, "Because it's there." Though Hillary will always have the distinction of being the first to make it up and down the mountain alive (Hillary and Norgay never said which of the two of them actually got there first), Mallory should be remembered for the importance of his philosophy.

He viewed Everest as a challenge worth taking for challenge's sake alone. In that brief answer, Mallory focused his energy on the job itself--the desire actually to climb, not to have climbed or to have returned victorious, but to climb and so conquer the mountain step by step. The pleasure and the motivation was in the action, not in the outcome--or expected outcome. Perhaps that is what John Mallory meant by requesting that the body remain undisturbed--his father died in the process of taking the challenge he had chosen. Whether he had completed it or failed in the attempt is not as important as his having tried it.

I wonder whether the hype surrounding Everest has been ultimately detrimental to the original purpose of taking the climbing challenge as articulated so eloquently by Mallory. The mountainzone Web site makes for great reading as the current climbers dispatch their latest findings, but there is a commercial quality to it which is disturbing. Those of us interested in the stories of those who have attempted (successfully or unsuccessfully) to climb Everest are fascinated by the idea of the physical and mental strength required to attempt the summit.

Before the recent rise of so-called adventure expeditions, where you or I could pay thousands of dollars to be led to the top by an experienced climber, it was a fight of sheer willpower and a certain degree of obsession which brought climbers to the mountain. For many now, though, the goal is not the experience but the outcome--to be able to say, "I stood at the top of Everest." The danger remains, however. It's true that the process has been streamlined and improved, but the climb remains a kind of fatal tourist attraction without the purity of Mallory's attitude.

With a bit more exploration, the mountainzone/"NOVA" climbers may find the camera that will tell us whether Mallory and Irvine actually made it to the top. The documentary of the search will make great TV, and the Web site will probably be overloaded with requests for t-shirts and Everest fleeces. I just hope that Mallory's three famous words are not lost in the hype. We should all remember the importance of taking some challenges "because they're there" and not just in the hope of imagined glory in the outcome.

Susannah B. Tobin '00 is a classics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column will resume in September.