The unending allure of high mountains
noemamag.com
noemamag.com
Speaking of insane courage, Henry Worsley, should be mentioned: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-dark.... His final photo on the plane to a Chilean hospital is haunting.
For the Mallories of the future there are so many options to continue the tradition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_mountains_in...
> The question of which mountaineers would comprise the climbing party was no easy one. As a consequence of World War I, there was a lack of a whole generation of strong young men. George Mallory was again part of the mission, along with Howard Somervell, Edward "Teddy" Norton and Geoffrey Bruce. George Ingle Finch, who had gained the record height in 1922, was proposed as a member but eventually was not included. The committee's reasons included that he was divorced and that he had accepted money for lectures. The influential Secretary of the committee, Arthur Hinks, made it clear that for an Australian to be first on Everest was not acceptable; the British wanted the climb to be an example of British spirit to lift morale. Mallory refused to climb again without Finch, but changed his mind after being personally persuaded by the British royal family at Hinks's request. [...] Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, an engineering student whom Odell knew from an expedition to Spitsbergen, was a so-called "experiment" for the team and a test for "young blood" on the slopes of Mount Everest.
So Irvine was very inexperienced, and Mallory's absent-mindedness also didn't bide well for their chances of coming back alive. However, the article also directly contradicts the Wikipedia page (Wikipedia states that Mallory initially refused to go without Finch, while the article writes that "he would not think of joining the new expedition if Finch was going" - so make of it what you will...
As a consequence of World War I, there was a lack of a whole generation of strong young men.
The British wanted the climb to be an example of British spirit to lift morale.
If you'd like this sentiment expressed in a less somber manner Shatner got you covered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ
The mountaineers knew the odds are long and did it anyway for a cause greater than themselves. That is what makes them heroic.
And a green valley opening up, deep below, half covered in clouds, has something of a treasure chest, opening up.
As context for anyone unfamiliar with the issue, below are some quotes from a 2008 SciAm article discussing a research paper by Fayed et al titled "Evidence of brain damage after high-altitude climbing by means of magnetic resonance imaging" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16443427/).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-cells-into-... (emphasis added):
> … one of the sobering things about the Fayed study is that even when climbers showed no signs of acute sickness, the scans still found brain damage.
> The results in the Everest climbers were the starkest… The expedition had no major mishaps, and none of the 12 professional climbers evinced any obvious signs of high-altitude illness; the only acute case of mountain sickness was a mild one in the expedition’s amateur climber. Yet only one of the 13 climbers (a professional) returned with a normal brain scan. All the scans of the other 12 showed cortical atrophy or enlargement of the Virchow-Robin (VR) spaces. These spaces surround the blood vessels that drain brain fluid and communicate with the lymph system; widening of these VR spaces is seen in the elderly but rarely in the young.
> The body is remarkably resilient: Does the brain recover from these mountaineering wounds? To answer this question, the researchers reexamined the same climbers three years after the expedition, with no other high-altitude climbing intervening. In all cases, the damage was still apparent on the second set of scans.