Everest

“One day in the late spring of 1924 an observer on the East Rongbuk Glacier at the foot of Everest, staring up at the summit of the mountain through a telescope, saw the morning mists part around the summit, and saw there two black figures climbing steadily upwards. One of them was an Oxford undergraduate, the other was Mallory. They were, at that moment, at a height of 28,400 feet, higher than any man has ever climbed before and only six hundred feet below the top.”

“The early expeditions, though they failed, did make the picture much clearer. The problems of Everest emerged- problems of supply and support, unbelievably treacherous weather, and worst of all, the problem of altitude itself- the terrifying lack of oxygen. Several of the early climbers attacking the summit from the north got within a thousand feet of it. Mallory and Irvin for instance, who attempted it in 1924. Neither of them came back. Why should a man climb Everest? It was Mallory himself who gave the classic reply: 'Because it is there'. Everest remained a challenge: aloof, inviolate, murderous.”

“Training for an Everest expedition in 1994, Mallory wrote, he had Everested by cycling eight times up Mount Donna Buang, outside Melbourne.”