Everest: Mallory to Hillary and Tenzing

Everest, 1921–1953

In 1921 no Western climber had been near the highest mountain on Earth. Thirty-two years later two men stood on top of it. In between came a dozen expeditions, a flight over the summit, a world war and a change of countries: the British went seven times through Tibet before the door to the north shut and Nepal’s opened. More than a dozen men died, half of them porters killed in a single avalanche, and George Mallory and Sandy Irvine vanished into a question that is still open.

How it is built

• Two approaches: the 1920s march from Darjeeling through Sikkim and Tibet to the Rongbuk Glacier and the North Col, and the 1950s march from Kathmandu through Solu-Khumbu to the Icefall, the Western Cwm, the Lhotse Face and the South Col, each drawn as a route on the map.

• Expeditions as bands, so the high points, the deaths and the gaps between them read against each other.

• One day hour by hour: zoom into 29 May 1953 to follow Hillary and Tenzing from their tent at 8,500 metres to the top and back. The climbers kept Indian time; the times here are converted to GMT, five and a half hours earlier.

• A prologue and an epilogue: the survey that found Peak XV in the 1850s, and the finds of 1999 and 2024 on the north side.

Filter by tibet or nepal for the two sides, mallory for Mallory and Irvine, sherpas for the men who carried the loads and, in the end, led, oxygen for the long argument over bottled air, records for the high points and losses for the deaths.

The last note

“To here on 90 atmospheres for the two days—so we’ll probably go on two cylinders—but it’s a bloody load for climbing. Perfect weather for the job!”

George Mallory to Noel Odell, sent down from Camp VI on 7 June 1924, from The Fight for Everest (1925). All dates are Gregorian.