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...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...
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...
...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...
...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...