Ghosts of Everest & A Life on the Edge

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Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine
by Jochen Hemmleb, Larry A. Johnson, and Eric R. Simonson (The Mountaineers Books, $29.95)

A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond
by Jim Whittaker (The Mountaineers Books, $26.95)

Until recently, mountain climbers couldn't rest on their laurels until they were dead. But since Everest's May 1996 storm, climbers both living and dead seem to be cashing in on their Death Zone bonfires.

In the hastily written Ghosts of Everest, three living coauthors effectively ride the coattails of the famously dead George Mallory, who perished on Britain's 1924 Everest attempt. Whether he could've scaled the peak with primitive clothing and equipment is an old and essentially irresolvable debate, and Ghosts exhaustively restates it without resolution. Half the slim volume is filler, an account of the authors' own expedition, which self-servingly alternates with Mallory's narrative. If you've seen the tasteless photograph of his half-naked body on the cover of Outside, this book adds little beyond the footnotes.

While the dashing Bloomsbury group hanger-on Mallory is the only compelling figure in Ghosts, in Jim Whittaker's quickie memoir he describes himself in less idealized terms. The contrast between these two men is fascinating. Whittaker has long been resented among local mountaineers for his fame and perceived self-promotion, eclipsing more "deserving" figures like Fred Beckey or Pete Schoening. But the fact is that he was the first American to bag Everest—and if you don't raise your hand in class, no one calls on you.

"People always wonder whether I ever had misgivings about joining the [Everest] expedition," he writes, "and I have to say I simply didn't." This from a man who left behind his wife and children for possible death—or glory. In the same situation, Mallory wrote: "[M]y present feeling is that I have to look at it from the point of view of loyalty to the expedition and of carrying through on a task begun."

In his otherwise cursory memoir, Whittaker's unvarnished ambition shines through more than Mallory's shadowy reluctance does in Ghosts. Mallory would've been 77 the year Big Jim topped out on Everest (1963), and it's a pity for readers that the two couldn't have met—sparing us one book, and perhaps improving the other.