The Abominable by Dan Simmons Page A

Still, Jean-Claude and I continue our conversation in little more than a hurried whisper.
    “So Mallory insisted that the best way to the North Col—the most obvious route from the north side of Everest—was from the east, up the Kharta Valley. It was a…how do you say cul-de-sac? ”
    “Dead end.”
    Jean-Claude grins. Sometimes I think he enjoys the rough-edged quality of English. “ Oui— a very dead end. And Mallory kept leading them all around the mountain, pursuing one dead end after the other. He even had Guy Bullock go so far up the West Rongbuk that they almost crossed the border into Nepal, looking over to the south approaches to Everest and deciding that the glaciers and icefalls approaching the South Face and ridges were totally impassable. The solution had to be on this North Face side.”
    “I wonder…,” I whisper, but more to myself than to J.C.
    “At any rate, months were wasted,” says Jean-Claude. “Wasted at least as far as the Deacon was concerned—exploring ever eastward and westward, measuring everything, photographing everything. Never finding a workable approach to the North Col.”
    “I’ve seen some of the photographs,” I say, glancing to make sure that the Deacon is still at the far end of the summit. He doesn’t appear to have moved a muscle. “They’re beautiful.”
    “Yes,” says J.C. “But the first series of photographs for which Mallory climbed a serious peak to gain the perfect vantage point, he put the plates in the camera the wrong way around. Nothing came out on the print, of course. Bullock and the others did most of the real photography.”
    “What’s this got to do with Mallory and the Deacon falling out?” I ask. “Almost becoming enemies after so many years of association and…I presume…mutual respect?”
    Jean-Claude sighs. “Their first base camp near the mountain was pitched at the head of a small valley where a river runs down onto the plain. They must have walked by that valley a hundred times but never explored it. The Deacon wanted to look into it as a possible approach to the North Col right from the beginning, but Mallory always overruled him, insisting that it just ran to the East Rongbuk Glacier and stopped. They could see the entrance to a side valley—easy walking with gravel and just pinnacles of old snow as all that was left of the former glacier—and the Deacon suggested that this valley might curve west again—which it does—and would give them a safe and easy path to the North Col and the beginning of their climb. Mallory said no to that…what is the word?…that opportunity, and the weeks of useless reconnoitering to both the east and west dragged on. Also, Mallory and the Alpine Club had decided the summer monsoon season was the best time to try to climb Mount Everest, but by June, even Monsieur Mallory had to agree that the summer monsoon season, with its endless snowfall, was bad, bad…a bad time to reconnoiter the mountain, much less to attempt a climb—since the storms were much…how do you say it?…more fiercer higher up.”
    “So that was their nineteen twenty-two falling-out,” I whisper.
    Jean-Claude smiles almost sadly. “The last brick…no…what do you say? The last something that breaks the back of the camel?”
    “Straw.”
    “The last straw was the Deacon’s constant urging that they climb Lhakpa La to get a view from there. For many weeks Mallory thought such an effort would be useless and said no to the Deacon’s request.”
    “What’s Lhakpa La?” I ask. My knowledge of Mount Everest’s immediate geography in this late June of 1924 is just about nonexistent. Essentially I know that the tallest peak in the world shares a border with Nepal and Tibet, that Tibet is the only way one could get to it—given the politics of the era—and that this meant the climb, should it ever happen, will have to be up the North Face. Up the North East Ridge above the North Ridge and the North Face, to be specific,