Fallen Giants: Alpine Club in 1865, seven years after A History of Himalayan its foundation, he used the occasion to from the Age denounce its members as Philistines: of Empire to the Age of Extremes Getting High by Maurice Isserman and You have despised nature [and] Stewart Weaver, with maps and on the all the deep and sacred sensations sketches by Dee Molenaar. of natural scenery. . . . The French Yale University Press, 579 pp., $39.95 Al Alvarez revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France; you have Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weav- Fondazione Sella, Biella, Italy made racecourses of the cathe- er’s authoritative history of Himalayan drals of the earth. . . . The mountaineering, Fallen Giants, starts themselves, which your own poets right at the beginning, 45 million years used to love so reverently, you look ago, with the collision of tectonic plates upon as soaped poles in bear gar- that threw up what the authors call dens, which you set yourselves to “the greatest geophysical feature of and slide down again, with earth.” The Andes are the longest of “shrieks of delight.” the planet’s mountain chains, but the Himalaya and its adjacent ranges, the Isserman and Weaver, being finely Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, are tuned to social distinctions and crush- far higher. They contain all fourteen of ing British snobbery, interpret Ruskin’s the world’s peaks over eight thousand diatribe as a matter of class warfare. meters, or 26,247 feet; their northern “His remark dripped with class conde- rampart averages 19,685 feet—some scension,” they say. I wonder. Ruskin five thousand feet higher than the had a talent for vituperation, but his Andes—and they are still growing: “To venom on this occasion had nothing this day India plows into Tibet at the to do with “class condescension” for breakneck speed of five centimeters a the simple reason that, socially, there year and lifts the Himalaya by as much was no difference between him and his as a centimeter.” audience. The members of the Alpine That little detail is characteristic of Club were professional men—scien- the book. Both authors are enthusias- tists, doctors, clergymen, lawyers, sol- tic mountaineers who climb regularly diers, even a few writers—gentlemen in the United States and have gone who could afford to travel to the Alps trekking in the Himalaya, but they and stay there for as long they pleased, climb for pleasure, not for a living. just like Ruskin himself. Away from the hills, they are histori- There were differences between ans—Isserman has written extensively them, of course, but temperament about American communism and the aside, they were differences of nurture, New Left; Weaver’s field is British not nature. Ruskin had been privately imperial history and English liberal- educated at home by tutors, whereas ism—and they bring their professional most of the founding members of the skills and discipline to the subject in Alpine Club had suffered the rigors the form of meticulous research and a of a boarding school education de- painstaking attention to detail. Fallen signed to train the right kind of men Giants is a big book in every sense— to administer the British Empire. A nearly 460 pages of text, eighty-five ‘The grandest of the early Himalayan expeditions, and also the least eccentric’: taste for strenuous exercise, adventure, pages of notes, and a twenty-five-page the camp of Luigi Amadeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, and his team below the west face of , and deprivation had been beaten into bibliography—and the authors’ politi- 1909; photograph by Vittorio Sella, ‘one of the greatest of all mountain photographers,’ them along with Greek and Latin, and cal take on the subject makes it unlike from Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver’s Fallen Giants mountaineering was a perfect way of most other mountain histories. satisfying it. “The authentic English- Political historians do not usually axes and arcane gear such as camming were of interest only to those unfor- man,” Leslie Stephen wrote cheerfully, bother with a subject as apolitical and devices and offset nuts. tunate enough to live in them. In the “is one whose delight is to wander all seemingly frivolous as climbing, al- The Victorians were responsible Himalaya, they were holy places, a day among rocks and snow; and to though mountaineering books are now for turning the Alps into what Leslie perpetual reminder of the gods—the come as near breaking his neck as his accumulating as relentlessly as the Hi- Stephens called “the playground of Tibetan name for Everest is Cho- conscience will allow.” For Ruskin, malaya itself. A mere half-century ago, Europe,” but it was an exclusive play- molungma, “Goddess Mother of the art critic and lover of mountain land- mountain climbing was still a minor- ground for a limited few. One hundred World”—and their summits were for- scapes, such frivolity was barbaric. ity pastime for an eccentric few who and fifty years later, the Himalaya is bidden to mere mortals. In Europe, Snobbery, of course, figured large took pleasure in doing things the hard in danger of becoming the playground superstitious Alpine peasants believed in “the intensely status-conscious eyes way, in steep places and bad weather, of the developed world. As of Au- mountaintops were the abodes of of the Raj,” far larger, in fact, than the and were willing to risk injuring them- gust 1, 2008, 2,090 people have stood witches, devils, and dragons. Lowland- mountains themselves, especially in selves in the process. Since risk and the on the top of Everest. Both the South ers and people of sense chose to ignore the first half of the nineteenth century, adrenalin high that went with it were Col route that took John Hunt’s 1953 the peaks, dismissing them as mere when no sensible person dreamed of an essential part of its appeal, climbing expedition six weeks to pioneer and inconveniences—“considerable protu- climbing them for pleasure. For Vic- was regarded as a questionable, slightly the route on which George berances,” Dr. Johnson called them— torian empire builders, the Himalaya antisocial activity. As a result, climb- Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine died put there to make life difficult for the was important as a natural frontier, ers wrote about where they had been in 1924 have been climbed from base civilized traveler. and mapping and measuring it was a and what they had done, but they wrote camp to summit, solo and without oxy- According to Isserman and Weaver, handy way of laying claim to the ter- mostly for other climbers and a rela- gen, in less than seventeen hours. The the general change in European atti- ritory. Hence the Great Trigonometri- tively limited audience of armchair ad- mountain has also been climbed by a tudes toward mountains began around cal Survey, George Everest’s 750-mile venturers who preferred to be thrilled, blind man, a teenager, and a sixty-four- the middle of the eighteenth century “grid-iron” of triangulated calculations or to suffer, by proxy. year-old; it has been descended by ski- with the Gothic revival, the cult of the of the heights and positions of all the Not anymore. In the years since ers and snowboarders, floated down by picturesque, and Edmund Burke’s peaks. Like every other Himalayan 1953, when and Tenz- paragliders, and flown over by balloon- enterprise, taking the measurements ing Norgay first reached the summit of ists. The problem with Everest is no aesthetic distinction between the was a bone-wearying business, involv- Everest, mountaineering, rock climb- longer how to get up it but how to dis- Beautiful—the regular, the propor- ing hardship, brute labor, cold, hunger, ing, and mountain tourism—aka trek- pose of the junk—the hundreds of used tioned, the visually predictable— and exhaustion, as well as technical king—have been transformed into a oxygen cylinders and tons of human ex- and the Sublime—the dramatic, skill in using heavy equipment such as mainstream leisure activity, indulged crement and waste food—that litters its the unexpected, the awe inspir- sight poles, which they lugged to the in by millions. Books about it figure flanks. In his official history of Everest, ing—[which] thus provided . . . a 15,000-to-20,000-foot summits. in the best-seller lists and its needs are George Band, who was the youngest ready vocabulary for the novel ex- The survey was a triumph of dogged- serviced by a thriving industry with member of the 1953 expedition, calls it perience of mountain wonder. ness over adversity and also a major an annual global turnover reckoned “the world’s highest garbage dump.” step in establishing the boundaries of in billions: travel agents, commercial For aesthetes, appreciating the beauty the Raj. While the work was in prog- guiding outfits, and specialist manu- of the Alps was altogether differ- ress, the cartographers either numbered facturers of everything from outdoor Before the Victorians reinvented ent from climbing them. When John the peaks or used the local names. clothing, rucksacks, and tents to ice them as a form of recreation, mountains Ruskin was invited to lecture to the When all the measurements had been

July 2, 2009 27 calculated and the maps had been wickedest man in the world” by pulling indisputable sovereign of the region,” War mentality; in laying siege to drawn, Peak XV was established as a gun on a fellow climber.* according to the expedition’s chroni- Everest in this way, the 1922 expe- the highest of them all. In honor of the The grandest of the early Himalayan cler, “gigantic and solitary, . . . jealously dition established a military model Great Trigonometrical Survey and its expeditions, and also the least eccen- defended by a vast throng of vassal for Himalayan mountaineering recently retired supervisor, they named tric, was that of Luigi Amadeo, Duke peaks, protected from invasion by miles that lasted half a century. And this it Everest. of the Abruzzi, in 1909. Amadeo was and miles of glacier.” K2 is now reck- despite its patent failure in 1922. an explorer, sportsman, accomplished oned to be the most difficult of all the climber, and grandson of the king of eight-thousand-meter peaks, and by far Isserman and Weaver have no time For Westerners, the Himalaya and Italy. He brought with him a team of the most dangerous; to date, only 305 for mindless obedience or stiff upper the once closed kingdoms that contain four guides, three porters, a cartogra- climbers have reached its summit and at lips, nor for the cult of heroic failure it—Tibet, —have always seemed pher, and a doctor, all of them Italian. least seventy-six have died trying. The and “the high rhetoric of empire and enticingly strange: not only a romanti- He also brought with him duke’s attempt failed, but in other ways war [that] took over” in 1924, when the cally distant land with mountains twice it was a triumph: his scientists gathered deaths of George Leigh Mallory and as high as the highest Alps, but also a 13,000 pounds of stores and equip- their data as planned, and Amadeo Andrew Irvine were made public and great blank sheet on which to project ment: everything from clothing and himself proved that survival at great al- the two young climbers became “the whatever fantasy one possesses. In the climbing gear to food and medicine, titude was possible by climbing higher glorious dead” and Everest “the finest early days, merely getting there was a cameras, photogrammetric survey and staying up there longer than anyone cenotaph in the world.” major undertaking: a five-week sea supplies, meteorological instru- before him. He also left the Abruzzi By the time he died, Mallory was on voyage to Calcutta, an eighteen-hour ments, and more, all in seemingly name on a major ridge, thereby estab- his third attempt at the mountain and train journey to Darjeeling; then there limitless profusion. lishing Italy’s claim to K2, which was knew how much hardship was involved. were guides and interpreters to be duly honored, though not until 1954. He was also in love with the place. For hired, people to cook and clean and set It was a vast load that required three a climber accustomed to the Alps, the up camp, columns of porters to carry hundred Ladakhi and Balti porters and sheer scale of the great Himalayan the gear, and a six-week trek into the sixty transport ponies to carry. The Italian expedition was a model of peaks was irresistible: Everest is not hills. For those not employed by the More importantly, his team included style and efficiency but the duke had just higher than , it is almost Raj, the Himalaya was the preserve of Vittorio Sella, one of the greatest of gone to the Himalaya in the same spirit double the height—higher by two and a the very rich—or rather, of an exclusive all mountain photographers, who im- as he had gone climbing in Alaska and half miles—12,000 vertical feet from subdivision of adventurers so rich that mortalized the expedition in a series the Ruwenzori—for the fun of it, for ad- Base Camp to summit, with approach hardship itself was an adventure. of brilliant, atmospheric pictures. The venture, and without ulterior political marches reckoned in weeks, not hours, They came in many forms and with duke’s purpose was to climb K2; “the motives. Not so the British, for whom and routes measured in miles instead varying degrees of eccentricity. At the Everest was a matter of national pride, a of feet. For a climber like Mallory, who turn of the century, for example, Fanny *Three years later, in 1905, Crowley continuation of the Raj by other means. had the stamina of a marathon run- Bullock Workman, a formidable New led a disastrous expedition of his own They had created an empire on which ner, it was heaven. It was also beautiful England heiress, climbed a number of to that resulted in four the sun never set, but their explorers and for Mallory, as for his Bloomsbury challenging peaks with her elderly hus- deaths. Crowley, who had heard their had failed to reach the North Pole and friends, beauty mattered: band—she clad in “woolen skirts and “frantic cries” when they fell, chose had been beaten by the Norwegians in hobnailed boots”—and set an altitude to stay in his tent: “A mountain ‘acci- the race to the South Pole. That left We caught the gleam of snow be- dent’ of this sort is one of the things for record for women climbers that lasted Everest, “the Third Pole”: “Amund- hind the grey mists. A whole group which I have no sympathy whatever,” thirty years. Around the same time, the he wrote. The next day he further rein- sen’s undisputed conquest of the South of mountains began to appear in gi- dottiest of all mountaineers, the infa- forced his reputation for wickedness by Pole,” say the authors, “and, even more, gantic fragments. Mountain shapes mous Aleister Crowley, aka “the Great climbing straight down past the scene the poignant defeat and death in retreat are often fantastic seen through a Beast 666,” joined an attempt on K2 of the accident without pausing to see of Robert Scott . . . seized the public mist; these were like the wildest and lived up to his reputation as “the if anyone had survived. imagination.” Everest had a great deal creation of a dream. A preposter- in common with the two poles: it was ous triangular lump rose out of the lethally cold and in its thin air every depths; its edge came leaping up at upward step required a physical effort an angle of about 70° and ended no less relentless and exhausting than nowhere. To the left a black ser- manhauling a heavy sledge across the rated crest was hanging in the sky polar ice. That made it an ideal testing incredibly. Gradually, very gradu- ground for virtues the British valued ally, we saw the great mountain most: fortitude, perseverance, and the sides and glaciers and arêtes, now kind of docile courage with which early one fragment and now another explorers uncomplainingly suffered un- through the floating rifts, until far speakable hardships. higher in the sky than imagination All those qualities were tested to had dared to suggest, the white the breaking point during World War summit of Everest appeared. And I, then tested again at high altitude in in this series of partial glimpses we the Himalaya. Everest offered “a few had seen a whole; we were able to lucky survivors one more chance to die piece together the fragments, to in- gracefully for their country,” and they terpret the dream. did so in the same dogged way in which they had fought the war: Were Everest “1,000 feet lower it [Their plan in 1922] called for ad- would have been climbed in 1924. Were vance by stages, laying and stocking it 1,000 feet higher it would have been through repeated marches a series an engineering problem,” said Peter of six ascending camps or depots Lloyd, a member of another unsuc- roughly five miles apart on the gla- cessful Everest expedition, in 1938. At cier and 2,000 vertical feet apart on 29,000 feet, Everest is already nudging the mountain. . . . The true inspira- the jet stream; if winter comes early the tion for this cumbersome business jet stream drops from 30,000 feet to seems to have been the British Ar- 26,000, the temperature drops with it, my’s incremental experience of the and the wind blows so fiercely that it is western front. “In this Polar method hard to move at all, let alone to climb. of advance,” wrote John Noel [the That compounds the debilitating effect expedition photographer], “there is of high altitude that reduces the stron- an essential psychological principle gest to slow motion and makes even to be maintained. Each advance, easy rock problems seem extreme. The each depot built, must be con- ability to climb technically difficult sidered as ground won from the rock at great altitude is a very rare gift, mountain. It must be consolidated even among experienced Himalayans and held, and no man must ever for whom the simple business of mov- abandon an inch of ground won, ing upward, one exhausted step after or turn his back to the mountain another, is already a great test of cour- once he has started the attack. A age, obstinacy, and true grit. retreat has a disastrous moral ef- All the early expeditions had those fect. . . .” One could hardly ask for qualities in abundance but the British a clearer articulation of the Great wanted to climb Everest in the same

28 The New York Review style that they climbed in the Alps: element in mountaineering; he also generated. By 1996, Everest had be- Once upon a time, the psychopathol- ­casually and sportingly, in the spirit had no taste for what he called “the come a media circus, with eleven expe- ogy of expedition life was a problem of adventure, and strictly as amateurs, grim and joyless business” of Everest. ditions set up in Base Camp below the climbers kept to themselves. But man- with inadequate clothing—tweed and So the leadership went to John Hunt, : ners change and these days, when travel wool and Burberry—and primitive who turned out to be the perfect man is cheap and climbers go to the Hima- equipment; Mallory used oxygen but for the job: a natural leader, sympa- Five of the expeditions had their laya with as little fanfare as they go to would have preferred not to because thetic, good-humored, charming, and own Web sites. The Fischer expe- the Alps or the Rockies, bad blood and he thought it was cheating. Like other with a knack for putting people at their dition Web site was cosponsored outrageous behavior are the new fash- members of the Alpine Club, he also ease; he was also a professional soldier by NBC broadcasting and was ion. They make good copy and help sell disdained newfangled Continental gear who knew to how to organize men and maintained on Everest by expe- what Isserman and Weaver call “climb like pitons and carabiners, “those con- supplies and understood the intricate dition member and New York and tell” books in which “bruised feel- joined miracles of simple technology,” planning and strategy needed to make City socialite Sandy Pittman. She ings and simmering resentments were Isserman and Weaver call them, “that the complicated machine of a large ex- helped provide Internet users with beginning to replace frostbite and hy- made possible the placing of points of pedition run smoothly, culminating in virtually up-to-the-minute reports poxia as the signature ailments of high- belay on an otherwise sheer face.” With the account of Hillary and Tenzing. on the progress the expedition was altitude mountaineering.” Here is an equipment like that, steeper, more dar- The conquest of Annapurna by the making toward the summit, plus example of the new style spirit of the ing routes were possible, but it wasn’t French, followed three years later by interviews with the climbers and hills during the disastrous 1996 season trench warfare and it wasn’t sporting, British success (at last) on Everest by photographs. on Everest in which eight people died: so they left the newfangled to Conti- Hillary and Tenzing, were like Chuck nental climbers. Yeager’s breaking of the sound bar- Mountaineering has traditionally Three Indian climbers were trapped The Germans had already climbed rier in 1947 and Roger Bannister’s been a pastime for misfits. Yet para- high on the Northeast Ridge on outrageously hard north faces in the four-minute mile in 1954: they broke a doxically, one of the pleasures of climb- May 10, and early the next morning Alps and now, in the wake of military psychological barrier about how much ing is companionship, which old-timers a Japanese party intent on the sum- defeat and the vengeful Versailles the human body could withstand and at used to call “the spirit of the hills” and mit walked past them, though they Treaty, they wanted to restore their na- what altitude it would cease to function. the French called une affaire de cordée: were still alive. By the time the Jap- tional pride by climbing a major Hima- Before 1950, none of the eight-thousand- that is, two climbers roped together, anese descended, one of the climb- layan. Their 1929 team was led by Paul meter peaks had been climbed; five each relying on the other, sometimes ers was dead, another missing, and Bauer, one of Hitler’s early converts, years later, twelve of the fourteen gi- in dicey situations. It’s also expected a third barely alive and tangled in the mountain he chose was Kangchen- ants had fallen, though only to costly to be fun, though no one ever went his rope. They removed the rope junga, and the route was brutal— military-style expeditions in the old to climb in the Himalaya with that in from the survivor but made no ef- harder and steeper than anything that tradition, with teams of climbers and mind. The mountains are too big, too fort to help him down the moun- had been attempted before. His team long trains of heavily laden porters. high, too remote. Unlike the Alps, they tain. He too would die. “Above performed wonders, tunneling under It took another quarter-century, plus have no strategically placed refuge eight thousand meters,” one of the ice towers they couldn’t climb, dig- a vast improvement in gear, training, huts, no cable cars to shorten the up- Japanese climbers offered by way ging ice caves when they couldn’t pitch and technique, before Shipton and Til- hill slog, and no comforts at all to al- of self-justification, “is not a place tents, and they seemed poised for the man’s casual, low-key approach to high-­ leviate the squalor, drudgery, and sheer where people can afford morality.” summit until the always unpredictable altitude climbing became the model for exhaustion of life at high altitude and Himalayan weather suddenly changed: ambitious climbers. Twenty-five years in intense cold in a place where there is Aleister Crowley would doubtless have after Hillary and Tenzing reached the only rock and snow and ice, and noth- been proud of them and Jerry Springer A violent blizzard struck the ridge, summit of Everest, the great Tyrolean ing ever grows. In such harsh environ- might have used them on his show, but pinned them down for three days, mountaineers Reinhold Messner and ments minor tics become intolerable their antics make a depressing end to a and finally forced them into a mem- Peter Habeler repeated the climb with- intrusions, and even the best of friends fine book by two mountain lovers with orable death-defying retreat . . . but out oxygen or fixed ropes, and in record may end up enemies. a strong sense of right and wrong. not before [Bauer] had infinitely time. Messner went on to climb all four- raised the technical standard of teen eight-thousand-meter peaks, many Himalayan mountaineering and of them solo, including a solo ascent of restored to his own satisfaction the the north face of Everest in strict Alpine tarnished honor of his countrymen. style, carrying everything he needed— lightweight tent, sleeping bag, stove, and Bauer’s example encouraged other basic rations—on his back. climbers who had no taste for over­ Messner was just one of many moun- equipped, military-style expeditions. taineering supermen who arrived dur- Foremost among them were Bill Til- ing what Isserman and Weaver call man and Eric Shipton, two free spirits “The Age of Extremes” when techni- who traveled light, climbed for plea- cally difficult new routes were climbed sure rather than national glory, and in increasingly fierce conditions. Polish were the first British climbers to treat climbers set new standards for tough- their Sherpas, in Shipton’s words, as ness and bravery by making ascents of “fellow mountaineers rather than ser- Everest and other eight-thousanders in vants.” Tilman was a shy, taciturn man, winter, when temperatures sometimes famous for his spartan habits and aus- went to fifty degrees below zero. But tere principles, such as “anything be- that was during the cold war when, as yond what is needed for efficiency and one of them said, “Our life [in Poland] safety is worse than useless”; and “any is so hard that for us Himalayan climb- expedition that cannot be planned on ing is by comparison luxurious.” the back of a used envelope is over-­ That style of irony and self-­ organized.” Both of them had the Brit- deprecation were never qualities Mess- ish gift for understatement: they went ner aspired to. On the contrary, he was on “trips,” not “expeditions,” though his own most enthusiastic fan: on one trip they took, in 1935, after an- other unsuccessful Everest reconnais- It is true what my critics say: my sance, they climbed twenty-six peaks market value increases with every over 20,000 feet. new supreme achievement, with every new record and with every razor edged situation that I sur- It was an extraordinary achievement vive. . . . I allow my person to be by two brilliant mountaineers and it used for advertising, I give lectures made Shipton the natural choice to and I make films—all for an ap- lead the 1953 British Everest expedi- propriate fee. My death is the only tion. But the circumstances were not to thing that cannot be made to sell— his liking. The French had climbed An- at least not by me. napurna in 1950; the Swiss had failed just short of the summit of Everest in 1952 and were due to try again in 1955; Such vanity set the tone for a new pe- the French were lined up for 1954; so riod of Himalayan mountaineering 1953 looked like England’s last chance. when the achievements of the climb- But Shipton was a private man who ab- ers and difficulty of the routes began horred publicity and the competitive to matter less than the publicity they

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