Here are some facts about George Mallory, the famous English mountaineer.
- George Herbert Leigh Mallory was born on 18th June 1886 in Mobberley, Cheshire.
- He first started to become interested in rock climbing during his last year at Winchester College.
- He studied history at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and he was a keen sportsman. He rowed for his college at Cambridge.
- Mallory was good friends with the poet Robert Graves.
- He married to Ruth Turner in 1914 (just before the outbreak of WW1) and they had two daughters and son.
- George Mallory fought in World War 1 as part of the Royal Garrison Artillery.
- Mallory climbed Mont Blanc in 1911 and in 1913 he climbed Pillar Rock in the Lake District.
- In 1921 Mallory was part of an expedition to explore routes up to the Mount Everest‘s North Col (a pass formed by a glacier). In 1922 Mallory, Howard Somervell and Edward Norton reached the crest of the North-East Ridge of Mount Everest (a height of more than 8,000 ft). They didn’t use any bottled oxygen.
- In June 1924, Mallory attempted to climb Mount Everest again. On 8th June, Noel Odell, another member of the expedition, saw George Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, for the last time. They were climbing a rock step high on the mountainside. They never returned home and it thought that they died late on 8th June or early on 9th June. It is not known whether or not they reached the summit of Mount Everest before they died.
- Following several attempts, Mallory’s body was finally discovered in 1999 by Conrad Anker. It was very well preserved and it revealed that he had probably died from a puncture wound to the head (possibly caused by his own ice axe). Although the location of their final campsite has been located, the body of Mallory’s climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, has yet to be found.
- Two peaks – Mount Mallory and Mount Irvine – in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California were named in honour of the two climbers.
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