Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes
Maurice Isserman
Language: English
Pages: 592
ISBN: 0300115016
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa teammate Tenzing Norgay is a familiar saga, but less well known are the tales of many other adventurers who also came to test their skills and courage against the world’s highest and most dangerous mountains. In this lively and generously illustrated book, historians Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver present the first comprehensive history of Himalayan mountaineering in fifty years. They offer detailed, original accounts of the most significant climbs since the 1890s, and they compellingly evoke the social and cultural worlds that gave rise to those expeditions.
The book recounts the adventures of such figures as Martin Conway, who led the first authentic Himalayan climbing expedition in 1892; Fanny Bullock Workman, the pioneer explorer of the Karakoram range; George Mallory, the romantic martyr of Mount Everest fame; Charlie Houston, who led American expeditions to K2 in the 1930s and 1950s; Ang Tharkay, the legendary Sherpa, and many others. Throughout, the authors discuss the effects of political and social change on the world of mountaineering, and they offer a penetrating analysis of a culture that once emphasized teamwork and fellowship among climbers, but now has been eclipsed by a scramble for individual fame and glory.
alone for Darjeeling, hoping to follow the Singalila Ridge north to Kangchenjunga. The hostile disposition of the Sikkimese government having frustrated these plans, he went east to Assam and made his way up the Brahmaputra as far as Dibrugarh. Adolf and Robert, meanwhile, made their way to the recently established hill station of Nainital in Kumaon, from where Adolf undertook the second crossing of Traill's Pass—having first made a propitiatory offering to the goddess in Almora—and continued on
climbing party. Wilfrid Noyce recalled his first impression of Tenzing: "There was his now famous shy smile, showing whitest teeth, as he shook hands with the sahibs. . .. He looked much larger than the other Sherpas, and his dress of military-style shorts and puttees, topped by a green beret, gave him a more commanding appearance."75 There had been some trouble in the fall in recruiting Sherpas for the expedition, a product of ill feeling left over a pay dispute dating back to the 1951 Everest
Godwin-Austen had reached from the south but had not crossed in 1861) to the village of Arandu at the foot of the Chogo Lungma Glacier. He and Zurbriggen, meanwhile, proceeded up the Hispar to the Hispar Pass and "Snow Lake," the great mountain basin at the head of the Sim Kang and Biafo Glaciers. Passing under the prominent aiguille that Conway named the Ogre (Uzum Brakk), they then followed the Biafo along its course through the Latok and Meru groups to its terminus in the Braldu Valley, thus
Brown, The Hard Years, 113. 91. Streather's ascent of Kangchenjunga made him the first climber to have ascended two peaks over 25,000 feet. Hardie, In Highest Nepal, 9–10. The expedition's one casualty was Sherpa Pemi Dorje, who died on May 26 of cerebral thrombosis and was buried near Pache's grave. For accounts of the climb, see Band, "Kangchenjunga Climbed," 207–26; Charles Evans, "Kangchenjunga," American Alpine Journal 10 (1956): 54–59; Evans, Kangchenjunga. 92. "Success on Kangchenjunga,"
his hastily assembled army of over 400 inexperienced and ill-provisioned porters to a punishing schedule of forced double marches.21 Eight days in at Dzongri, just beneath the 16,454-foot Kang La on the border of Sikkim and Nepal, fifty Lepcha porters—some of them already frostbitten and snow-blind—rebelled and dropped their loads; many others simply melted away or adopted a stance of passive resistance. H. W. Tobin, the chief transport officer and representative of the Himalayan Club, strove