Glorious Failures: The Mountaineers Anthology Series, v. 1

This series of excerpts from books and articles about mountaineering records some of the most famous or notorious mountain climbing “failures” of the 20^th-century. Most of the pieces are written by the climbers themselves, a few by journalists. The writing is generally sound, but not often very literary. Instead I would say that the focus is technical more than anything else, and the intended readers of these pieces are other climbers. Rarely do we receive descriptions of glorious vistas and mountainscapes. Nor do we read how climbers take stock of themselves, contemplate their situations, their mortality, when they find themselves in tight spots. Instead we receive accounts of climbing skills and strategies, of what goes wrong, of problems with supplies, of relationships with fellow climbers, of mundane particulars, and so on. I suppose the reason is that in life-threatening situations one does not have the time to be philosophical and instead must focus on surviving. One of my favorite entries involved two climbers stuck for days on end in a tent on a high mountain in the Himalayas, waiting for the weather to clear. They irritate and drive each other to distraction, like a bickering married couple. Many if not most of these accounts center on climbing expeditions in the Himalayas, on such peaks as K2, Annapurna, and Everest. Many of the climbers are British and American, some European, especially Germans. Readers familiar with mountaineering lore would recognize many of the names mentioned in these pieces—they are among the most famous mountain climbers of modern times, though I recognized only Mallory’s name—I am not a mountain climber nor a fan thereof. Most of the failures involve men in extreme situations at high altitudes that very few people ever experience—hence the title glorious failures.

The most famous climber chronicled in these excerpts is George Mallory, who disappeared with his climbing partner Sandy Irvine at 26,000 feet on Mount Everest in 1924. One of the final accounts in the volume describes the discovery of Mallory’s body on a climbing expedition in 1999.

This book was entertaining and instructive, partially because of the novelty—the exposure to a subject about which I have little knowledge (though as a boy I was fascinated with Mallory’s disappearance)—and partially also because these pieces are written from the viewpoints of climbers, so that you learn about what matters to them, of how they think an respond in perilous situations.

If I had to offer one sentence that summed up the essence of this book, it would go like this: “Lars leaned backwards and fell three thousand feet to his death, taking the rope and the last of the crampons with him.”