June 14, 2007| American climber Conrad Anker and his British climbing buddy, 27-year-old Leo Holding, didn’t quite reach the goal they set out for, in their attempt on the Mount Everest route climbed by British mountaineer George Mallory 83 years ago, wearing gear from Mallory’s time—1920’s leather boots with nails and layers of silk and woolens. The team switched to modern high-tech gear due to cold temperatures but summited the mountain at about 10:45 Thursday morning, according to the expedition’s website, ueverest.com. A film on the expedition, titled A Patch of White, is slated for release next year.

Eight years ago, Anker discovered Mallory’s frozen body 2,030 feet below the summit. No one knows if Mallory and his partner, Sandy Irvine, whose body has never been recovered, ever reached the peak during their 1924 attempt—29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa were the first to summit, by record.

The route attempted by Mallory (and completed by Anker) heads up the Chinese face. Although Anker made the decision to don today’s climbing clothes in the end, he did climb the 100-foot rock wall, the Second Step, with what is thought to be 1920’s authenticity. By removing the affixed ladder, Anker was able to free-climb the wall in the same way Mallory probably did—an ambition he revealed in a pre-summit interview in the June issue of Outside. (www.outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200706/everest-conrad-anker.html ).

Climbing historian Elizabeth Hawley told Reuters that this was the first free-climb on the Second Step since almost fifty years ago, when a Chinese expedition completed the task.

Listen to or download a podcast of Outside’s June interview session with Anker. www.outside.away.com/mediaplayer/application.html?uniqueid=a07017&page=popup
For more on the expedition, head to ueverest.com.

• • •

• • • • • • • • • •