In his last letter to his wife before disappeared on Mount Everest a century agoGeorge Mallory tried to ease their concerns, even saying his chances of reaching the world’s highest peak were “50 to 1 against us.”
The letter, digitized for the first time and published online on Monday by his alma mater at Cambridge University, expressed a mix of optimism, exhaustion and the difficulties his expedition encountered in its quest to be the first group to conquer the peak.
“Dear, I wish you the best I can—may your anxiety be over before you receive this—with the best news,” he wrote to Ruth Mallory on May 27, 1924, from Camp I. “It is 50 to 1 against us , but we will still have a blow & be proud.”
It remains a mystery whether Mallory, who once famously said he wanted to conquer Everest “because it’s there,” and climbing partner Andrew Irvine reached the summit and either died on the way down or never made it that far. Mallory’s body was found 75 years later, far below the peak, but Irvine’s was never located.
The first documented ascent occurred nearly three decades later, when New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay climbed the mountain on May 29, 1953.
Magdalene College published the letters online to mark the centenary of Mallory’s ill-fated attempt to be on top of the world. The collection, which was already available to researchers, also includes letters he wrote at the front in World War I and correspondence he received from others, including his wife.
The only letter his wife wrote from England during the expedition was sent as his party sailed towards Bombay. He recounts a recent snowstorm, how her bank account was overdrawn, and how she fell down the stairs before telling him how much she missed him.
“I know I have often been angry and unkind, and I am sorry, but the main reason has almost always been because I have been unhappy to receive so little from you,” wrote Ruth Mallory on March 3, 1924. “I know that. It’s so stupid to ruin the moments I have you when I don’t.
In his last six-page correspondence to his wife, addressed to “My dear Ruth,” George Mallory tells of trials and triumphs as the group slowly climbed the mountain, setting up higher camps and then retreating to lower altitudes. to recover.
“This was totally bad timing,” Mallory wrote 12 days before he was last seen alive. “I look back and see tremendous efforts & exhaustion & gloomy looking out of a tent door and into a world of snow & fading hopes – & yet, & yet, & however, there were many things to define on the other side.
Mallory said he had a bothersome cough, “capable of tearing up your insides,” which left him sleepless and made climbing difficult. He described a near-death plunge into a crevasse when he failed to detect it under a blanket of snow.
“I walked in with snow falling all around me, luckily I only went down about 3 meters before arriving half blind & out of breath as I found myself precariously supported only by my ice ax wedged somehow into the crevasse & I still hold it in my right hand,” he said. “Below was a very nasty black hole.”
Mallory said only one member of the party remained “in good shape” and that they planned to rest for two days before moving on to the summit, which is expected to last six days.
Mallory and Irvine were last seen alive on June 8, 1924, when they were still going strong, about 900 feet (274 meters) below the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) summit. Mallory’s body was found at 26,700 feet (8,138 meters).
A group of climbers who attempted in 2007 to reconstruct Mallory’s ascent were unable to determine whether the pair managed to reach the top.
“I still believe there is a possibility they could have reached the top, but it is very unlikely,” said Conrad Anker, who participated in a documentary recreating the climb and that he discovered Mallory’s body in 1999.
In Mallory’s final letter to his wife, he says, “the candle is burning & I must stop. He finishes: “Big love to you. You are always loving, George.
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