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BOOKS
More from Mountain Gods
A sense of deja vu marks these explorations of the
Everest mystique.
By Suman Dubey
Compendiums of adventure
stories, based on extracts from other books rather than complete tales
in themselves, are seldom satisfying. The extracts must necessarily be
brief, they usually don't tell enough of the story and there's a frustrating
sense of the incomplete about them. Peter Gillman's collection-an updated
re-issue of a work that first appeared almost a decade ago-does indeed
have this shortcoming. Putting together bits and pieces of the Everest
epic as told by its principal actors over 80 years does not add up to
the story of its exploration and ascents. Indeed, to really appreciate
these extracts and to avoid feeling a bit lost in the multiplicity of
events and expeditions, the reader should know something of the mountain's
history.
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EVEREST: EIGHTY YEARS OF TRIUMPH AND
TRAGEDY
Ed by Peter Gillman
Little, Brown & Company
Price: Rs 795
Pages: 240
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That said, Gillman's
updated Everest is likely to appeal to those who are drawn by the mystique
of the world's highest mountain. There is, after all, little to compare
with the long and tortured saga of its exploration and the often fatal
attraction it has held for men and women wanting to tread its summit.
A lot of writing about the mountains is pedestrian and entirely forgettable.
Few books bring together sensitive authors who can narrate a story with
events and experiences that deserve to be told and Everest has more than
its share of the mundane. For those who want to catch the flavour of adventure,
success and failure on its flanks, Gillman is an attractive option.
Here, among others, we have George Mallory's
daily notings of 1924, Somerville's epic climb with Norton to the highest
point reached by anyone till the Swiss on the south side of Everest in
1952 and Hillary's description of the first ascent. Latter day climbers
like Doug Scott and Pete Boardman, Peter Haberler and Andrej Zawada, Stephen
Venebles and Eduard Myslovski describe new routes. Tragedies abound, Murray
Sayle on Harish Bahuguna's avoidable death in 1971 among them.
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THE DREAM ASCENT: Members
of the 1921 reconnaissance expedition
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The updating is timely because it brings the
story through the 1990s when the mountain's history was punctuated by
some very dramatic episodes. Well-known to even the non-climbing world
are two of them. First, the disaster that occurred in May 1996 when the
folly of large-scale commercial climbing was dramatically exposed to the
non-climbing world in the very public death of five guides and climbers
on the South Col route (more people perished on the North Col route and
on other dates in the same year). Second, the discovery in May 1999 of
the body of Mallory, high on the slopes of the North face of the mountain,
75 years after he and his companion Andrew Irwin vanished during their
summit attempt in 1924. Not so widely known were two major new routes
completed in the last decade: the north-east ridge accomplished by the
Japanese and a new and dangerous climb on the north face by the Russians.
The new edition also includes updates till October 2000 of some of Everest's
grim statistics. While 981 climbers made 1,318 ascents of its summit between
May 1, 1953 and December 2000, 167 climbers died on the mountain between
1922 and 2000. The record shows 98 ascents without oxygen, 62 by women
and 11 by Apa, a Sherpa from Nepal, the highest for one person. The youngest
and oldest climbers to reach the top recorded in the book have already
been overtaken by new achievements in the summer of 2001. That's one reason
why this book may need to be updated.
But while there's no doubt that new thresholds
will continue to be reached-2001 also saw the first complete descent on
skis from the summit-the mountain will eventually run out of new routes
and, chances are, memorable writing about it.
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