I haven't read this one yet, it's on my list. If you're interested in learning a lot more about the background and context, I'd recommend:
- "Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest" by Wade Davis. I've read a lot of books on this period, and this one is the best at providing context to why they were there, how Mallory got picked, the team dynamics, and other key folks like Norton.
- "Everest - The First Ascent" by Harriet Tuckey. This one is very biased, and really about the 1952 expedition, but I like it because it really gets into what was different in the 50s vs the 20s (especially little things, like keeping healthy and properly hydrated, and cultural things like feeling like it's OK and not ungentlemanly to practice and train).
There's this idea that the '24 expedition went with the goal of getting Mallory up the mountain, but that's not really what happened at all. Mallory and Sandy Irvine (a distant relative of mine) ended up on their attempt as the result of a lot of game-time decisions made by them and the leaders of the expedition. The same decisions lead to Edward F. Norton holding the world altitude record for 30+ years, despite being far from the best mountaineer in the world, or on the expedition.
Wade Davis was a speaker at the 2012 American Alpine Club meeting at the Ford Assembly Plant in Richmond, CA. He had a line that stuck with me: death is the price we pay for living. Side note, Davis is mentioned in at least one episode of the X-Files, owing to his work on zombies in Haiti.
These aren't Everest specific recs, but if any of you are looking for mountaineering reading:
_The White Spider_ by Heinrich Harrer
_The Beckoning Silence_ and _Into the Void_ by Joe Simpson
_Eiger Obsession_ by John Harlin. Part of my enjoyment came from my familiarity with the geography of the book.
_Solo Faces_ by James Salter, fiction, loosely based on Gary Hemmings and Royal Robbins.
- The Shining Mountain by Pete Boardman (one of my favorite of all books, two pretty normal guys doing something absolutely epic)
- Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).
- Touching The Void by Joe Simpson (I avoided reading this for such a long time, because it's something of a cliche, but it's actually great).
- Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in).
- Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.
The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of exploration that makes the best of these books so fun to read.
Arlene Blum is another mountaineer author worth mentioning. She's written about her expeditions including Annapurna I, as well as her work as a chemist campaigning to ban toxic flame retardant from upholstery.
Annapurna A Woman’s Place and Breaking Trail. The first is about the namesake first American expedition to the top which she led, the second is her memoir. Both great reads, thankfully lacking much of the big headed bravado of other mountaineering books.
> Every time I imagine climbing the Eiger in hobnail books, my palms sweat.
My guess is that they were using Tricouni [1] nails in their boots, by all accounts they work well over a different range of conditions to a rubber sole and crampon combination.
- "Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest" by Wade Davis. I've read a lot of books on this period, and this one is the best at providing context to why they were there, how Mallory got picked, the team dynamics, and other key folks like Norton.
- "Everest - The First Ascent" by Harriet Tuckey. This one is very biased, and really about the 1952 expedition, but I like it because it really gets into what was different in the 50s vs the 20s (especially little things, like keeping healthy and properly hydrated, and cultural things like feeling like it's OK and not ungentlemanly to practice and train).
There's this idea that the '24 expedition went with the goal of getting Mallory up the mountain, but that's not really what happened at all. Mallory and Sandy Irvine (a distant relative of mine) ended up on their attempt as the result of a lot of game-time decisions made by them and the leaders of the expedition. The same decisions lead to Edward F. Norton holding the world altitude record for 30+ years, despite being far from the best mountaineer in the world, or on the expedition.