George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s \u2014 until the mountain claimed his life. <\/p>\n
Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory\u2019s hopes and fears about ascending Everest, leading up to the last days before he disappeared while heading for its peak. <\/p>\n
On June 8, 1924, Mallory and fellow climber Andrew Irvine departed from their expedition team in a push for the summit; they were never seen alive again. <\/p>\n
Mallory\u2019s words, however, are now available to read online in their entirety for the first time. Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Mallory studied as an undergraduate from 1905 to 1908, recently digitized hundreds of pages of correspondence and other documents written and received by him. <\/p>\n
Over the past 18 months, archivists scanned the documents in preparation for the centennial of Mallory\u2019s disappearance. The college will display a selection of Mallory\u2019s letters and possessions in the exhibit \u201cGeorge Mallory: Magdalene to the Mountain,\u201d opening June 20. <\/p>\n
The Everest letters outline Mallory\u2019s meticulous preparations and equipment tests, and his optimism about their prospects. But the letters also show the darker side of mountaineering: bad weather, health issues, setbacks and doubts. <\/p>\n
Days before his disappearance, Mallory wrote that the odds were \u201c50 to 1 against us\u201d in the last letter to his wife, Ruth, dated May 27, 1924. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been a bad time altogether,\u201d Mallory wrote. \u201cI look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door and onto a world of snow & vanishing hopes.\u201d <\/p>\n
He went on to describe a harrowing brush with death during a recent climb, when the ground beneath his feet collapsed, leaving him suspended \u201chalf-blind & breathless,\u201d his weight supported only by his ice axe wedged across a crevasse as he dangled over \u201ca very unpleasant black hole.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other letters Mallory exchanged with Ruth were written at the time of their courtship, while he was serving in Britain\u2019s artillery regiment during World War I. Throughout his travels, correspondence from Ruth provided him with much-needed stability during the most challenging times, said project lead Katy Green, a college archivist at Magdalene College. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was the \u2018rock\u2019 at home, he says himself in his letters,\u201d Green said. The archivist recounted one note in which Mallory told Ruth: \u201cI\u2019m so glad that you never wobble, because I would wobble without you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yet while Mallory was clearly devoted to his wife, he nonetheless repeatedly returned to the Himalayas despite her mounting fears for his safety. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something in him that drove him,\u201d Green said. \u201cIt might have been his wartime experience, or it might have just been the sort of person that he was.\u201d <\/p>\n
Together, the letters offer readers a rare glimpse of the man behind the legend, said Jochen Hemmleb, an author and alpinist who was part of the Everest expedition that found Mallory\u2019s body in 1999. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are really personal. They are documents of his character. They provide unique insights into his life, and especially into the 1924 expedition \u2014 his state of mind, his accurate planning, his ambitions,\u201d said Hemmleb, who was not involved in the scanning project. \u201cIt\u2019s such a treasure that these are now digitized and available for everyone to read.\u201d <\/p>\n
Three of the digitized letters \u2014 written to Mallory by his brother, his sister and a family friend \u2014 were recovered from Mallory\u2019s body by the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition, which ascended Everest seeking the remains of Mallory and Irvine. <\/p>\n
On May 1, 1999, expedition member and mountaineer Conrad Anker found a frozen corpse at an altitude of around 26,700 feet (8,138 meters) and identified it as Mallory\u2019s from a name tag that was sewn into his clothes. <\/p>\n
Mallory\u2019s body was interred where it lay at the family\u2019s request, said Anker, who was not involved in the letter digitizing project. <\/p>\n
Mount Everest, the highest peak in the Himalayan mountain range, is also the tallest mountain on Earth, rising 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) above sea level on the border between Nepal and Tibet \u2014 an autonomous region in China. Its Tibetan name is Chomolungma, meaning \u201cGoddess Mother of the World,\u201d and its Nepali name is Sagarmatha, meaning \u201cGoddess of the Sky.\u201d <\/p>\n
However, these names were unknown to 19th century British surveyors who mapped the region, and in 1865 the Royal Geographical Society named the peak Mount Everest after British surveyor Sir George Everest, a former surveyor general of India. <\/p>\n
Mallory participated in all three of Britain\u2019s first forays onto Everest\u2019s slopes: in 1921, 1922 and 1924. When he vanished in 1924, he was less than two weeks shy of his 38th birthday. <\/p>\n
Many have speculated about whether Mallory and Irvine managed to reach Everest\u2019s summit. The climbers were last seen in the early afternoon of June 8 by expedition member and geologist Noel Odell, who was following behind and glimpsed them from a distance. Odell later found some of their equipment at a campsite, but there was no trace of Mallory and Irvine. <\/p>\n