All language subtitles for The Wildest Dream - Conquest of Everest (2010)

Mount Everest.

29,000 feet.

The highest point on Earth.

Captivating and deadly.

In the 1920s,
to conquer this mountain

was the greatest challenge remaining
in a golden age of adventure.

Everest was the edge of heaven,

where many believed
no human could survive.

But not George Mallory.

Everest is the last
great conquest for man.

The Wildest Dream.

George Mallory dreamed of being
the first man to climb Everest.

On June 8th, 1924, dressed in
Gabardine and hobnailed boots,

he and his fellow climber,
Sandy Irvine, were last seen
800 feet below the summit.

Then the clouds rolled in.

They were never seen alive again.

Many believed that almost
30 years before Everest
was officially conquered,

George Mallory was the first man
to set foot on the top of the world.

75 years after Mallory and Irvine
vanished, mountaineer Conrad Anker

took part in an expedition, looking
for their bodies, high on Everest.

RADIO: 'Conrad, come in please.'

'I'm down at 26.7, over.'

Anker struck off, on his own.

'Conrad, you're way below the search
zone, you need to be higher, over.'

I was curious.

I stopped, turned around...

..and there was a patch of white.

It wasn't snow, it was matt.

A light-absorbing colour like marble.

As I got closer, I realised

this was the body of one of
the pioneering English climbers,

frozen onto the mountain side.

For a moment, I thought,

maybe I can just keep walking

and keep it to myself.

But then...

that's what we were there for.

'Group meeting.

'Mandatory group meeting, over!'

Here, wait.

This is George Mallory. Oh, my God!

Oh, my God!

You see that, George Mallory.

Oh, my God!

George Mallory and I,

our two paths have intersected
75 years apart.

My aunt called me and said in
a rather small voice on the phone,

"Suzie, they've found my
father's body on Mount Everest."

And I was amazed,
I was absolutely shocked.

It was very powerful to know where
my grandfather was and how he died.

He had a compound fracture of his
right leg, above the ankle.

Fatal on Everest.

His arms were outstretched
as if he had tried to dig his fingers
into the side of the mountain.

He was last seen up on the ridge,
heading west for the summit.

But I found him far to the east.

So Mallory was on his way back.

Maybe returning
from the summit itself.

His sun goggles,
vital against the glare from
the snow, were in his pocket.

So it must have been getting dark.

He and Irvine were tied
together by a thin cotton rope.

They were tired, absolutely beat,

no energy left,
minds not functioning clearly.

Mallory crossed his left leg over
the broken one to ease the pain.

It was a matter of minutes,

a half hour at the very most

before he died.

Did Mallory reach the summit,
almost three decades before
the first official climb?

We discovered many
things on his body.

Documents and letters
perfectly preserved 75 years later.

His wristwatch,
rusted in at ten after five.

The goggles that were
inside of his vest.

An altimeter,
the face broken and hands missing.

But one very significant item was
missing, the photo of his wife, Ruth,

which he'd promised
to leave on the summit.

Was the photo missing because
Mallory had reached the summit

and placed it there - the ultimate
tribute to his love of Ruth?

He was last seen about 800 feet
below the summit, near the
notoriously difficult Second Step.

If Mallory was able to make
it to the summit in 1924,
he and Irvine would have had to have

climbed this overhanging
cliff at about 28,000 feet.

There's never been a confirmed
free climb of the Second Step.

Everyone who climbs it today
uses a metal ladder

bolted to the
rock by Chinese climbers in 1975.

I want to go back to Everest
to try and climb the Second Step

under the very same conditions
Mallory faced.

It was a pure cliff when
Mallory and Irvine approached it.

No-one had ever been there.

It would have been

an incredible feat of climbing
if they'd pulled that off.

Adventure, risk,

there are some people that
thrive on it, that seek it out.

They want to push their own limits.

Mallory is one of those people.

Mallory grew up in Cheshire,
northern England.

He made his first fateful climb
in Mobberley, his home village.

Mallory's father was
a vicar here at this church.

It was here that
the young boy escaped

and climbed up to the top
of the church at age seven.

You can imagine that.

Finding climbing
is his true passion in life.

I actually think that
some people who climb

are wired a little differently from
the rest of us.

My grandfather really didn't feel
fear of heights or precipices

or anything like that.

He had a way of climbing that was
not quite like everyone else's.

His arms and legs would just
sort of eat up a mountain

and he would start
flowing over it like a wave.

Aged 19, Mallory entered
the University of Cambridge at
a time of great cultural upheaval.

When Mallory arrived in Cambridge
in 1905 he pitched into this ferment

and bubble of ideas,
excitement, intellectual, sexual,
social, secret societies.

He obviously possessed some
remarkable charisma, sort of charmed

presence that drew the eye,
compelled the gaze.

'My mind is in a state of
constant rebellion.

'I believe that will always be so.'

He was a dreamer.

And he was in Cambridge at a time
of great and powerful dreaming.

And eventually that dream took its
form in the shape of Everest.

This was the golden age
of exploration.

Mallory watched with the rest of
the world as explorers from America,

Norway and Britain raced first to
the North and then the South Pole.

In 1912, Captain Scott,
the legendary British adventurer,

died in the attempt to be
first to the South Pole.

Mallory was among those
inspired by the tragedy.

Britain was at the waning of
the empire at this time it's looking
for ways to reinvigorate itself

and so attention inevitably turns
to Everest as the final possibility,
the Third Pole.

Surveyors had calculated

that Everest was the highest
mountain in the world,

but no Westerner had ever been
within 40 miles.

Mallory became obsessed by
a mountain he'd never even seen.

"Everest is the highest
mountain in the world.

"No man has reached its summit.

"Its existence is a challenge
to man's desire to
conquer the universe."

Mallory wasn't just
enthralled with Everest.

He had also fallen in love
with 21-year-old Ruth Turner.

Right from the start, they
wrote each other adoring letters.

"My darling, I'm longing for you.

"I would kiss your lips and look
into your eyes and you, you, you

"all near me and with me, strong and
glorious and loving and laughing."

"I cannot find words that would be
sure to convey what I feel about you.

"What I really want is to know you
and to love you more and more.

"Dearest and most beloved,
your loving Ruth."

George and my grandmother, Ruth,
fell madly in love in 1914.

They were both idealists,
really seeing kindred spirits
in each other.

They were married three days before
the start of World War I.

Mallory enlisted and came
face to face with death once more,

fighting in the Somme, the bloodiest
battle known to man.

"There is no reckoning
with death here.

"Life presents itself
very much to me as a gift."

Mallory had witnessed the mass
slaughter of the First World War.

His fellow soldiers, some of them six
feet away, killed by German shelling.

He knew how fragile life was.

And knowing this,
he wanted to live it to the fullest.

He wanted the ultimate challenge and
that, in the '20s, was Mount Everest.

Once the war was over, the Royal
Geographical Society in London

planned the first ever
expedition to Everest.

They needed Mallory for
his supreme climbing skills.

He needed their backing
to realise his obsession.

When Mallory undertook
that first expedition in 1921,

he had to approach Everest
through Tibet, from the north.

The Nepalese refused to allow
access to the easier South side,

used when Everest was first
officially climbed in 1953.

After an eight-week journey, Mallory
finally set eyes on the mountain
that had haunted him for so long.

"Like the wildest creation
of a dream - Everest!

"A rugged giant.
A prodigious white fang.

"A colossal rock
plastered with snow.

"From the mountaineer's
point of view,

"no more appalling sight
could be imagined."

When he first saw
Everest, he describes it
really almost as an adversary.

It's very beautiful, but also
ugly or frightful, like an ogre.

There were no maps.
No-one knew the terrain there.

And this first trip,
the trip of 1921, it was imperative

that the team find the route
that would lead them to the summit.

For months, Mallory led the search,
but the route to the
summit eluded him.

Finally, late in August,
he found what he was looking for.

An enormous glacial valley
that snaked for miles around

the other giant peaks,
towards the very foot of Everest.

"My dearest Ruth, we have found
our way to the great mountain."

At the end of the valley was a wall
of snow and ice, 1,000 feet high.

It led up to a crest
that Mallory named the North Col.

And then on to the top of the world.

"We have established
our way to the summit

"for anyone who cares to try
the highest adventure."

But the heavy snow that
comes with the monsoon each summer
quickly made climbing impossible.

They had to head home.

But within six months,
Mallory was back again.

This time with film cameras,
to show Everest to the world.

He climbed higher than
anyone else before him.

But late in the season, as Mallory
led porters up the mountain,
disaster struck.

A great snowfall had come.

They got to a delicate place
on this massive ice slope

and triggered an avalanche.

"My dearest Ruth,

"seven brave men killed.

"And I am to blame.

"It has happened forever and
I can do nothing to make it good."

After the avalanche and when
George returned to Europe,

he really had no wish
to go back to Everest.

He just wanted to get away from
the deprivation and the danger

and also the memories
of that avalanche.

He had been away for a very long
period, over two successive years.

He wanted to get back to
his wife and his family.

They had three children.

My mother was the second
daughter of George Mallory.

And, at this point, I think he was
really starting to think about

wanting to be home more,

to be with Ruth more and to
address himself to raising the kids.

But a new expedition
was being planned.

And Mallory desperately
wanted to be part of it.

Against Ruth's wishes.

"I love you and you love me
and that ought to be happiness
enough for a lifetime.

"But I do want you.

"We want to live together
all the time

"and share thoughts
and joys and sorrows,

"and we can't apart
as we can together."

"I am having a horrible time,
on a tightrope.

"It would be an awful tug
going away instead of
settling down here with Ruth.

"But it would look rather grim
to see others, without me,

"conquering the summit."

Mallory clearly loved
Ruth very dearly.

She was his sweet, domestic, beloved
partner who represented all that was

appealing about home, family, the
flatlands of Cambridge, sea level.

But Everest represented
all that was exciting,
adventurous, visionary, mystical.

His personality was pulled
between those two poles.

Early in 1923,
the crisis came to a head

when Mallory sailed to America to
speak about his Everest adventures.

He was the star turn at
the Explorers Club in New York.

I can just imagine

the audience on the edge
of their seats

as Mallory told them
about the biting wind,

the lack of appetite,

the fierce cold.

A New York Times journalist asked
the question, "Why climb Everest?"

Mallory gave his legendary reply.

"Because...

"it's there."

Three words that have probably
become more famous than

Mallory himself, suggest a sort of
fatalism bubbling away in Mallory.

The mountain remains, it's unclimbed

and so the quest remains.

And he is the man who is locked
in to this almost fairytale
relationship with the mountain.

He's been twice and he must go back
for the third time.

I think the idea that someone else
would build on his progress and get

to the summit on his shoulders was
quite difficult for him to accept.

It was after all his
route and his mountain.

It is actually a surprisingly selfish
thing for someone like Mallory
to experience but then

mountaineers all do have this kind
of element of selfishness deep down.

Aged 38, this was Mallory's last
chance to conquer the mountain.

Conrad Anker will
follow Mallory's footsteps,

leading his own expedition to
Everest and the Second Step.

During his climb, Conrad plans to
test clothes and boots modelled on
those he found on Mallory's body.

Using this replica clothing,

I'm going to have this chance to
go back and see what it was like

for Mallory to try
climbing Everest in 1924.

But like Mallory, Conrad is
torn between his passion for Everest
and his love for his family.

My family's anxious about this trip.

I'm going to Everest.

It's a deadly mountain.

What's it worth?

Is it worth leaving your kids behind?

Why are you going to this mountain?

Are you going to be safe?

You know I love you.

And I can see there,
as I was trying to rationalise it

to my wife and children
that it's a safe thing

and it's a fine thing to go on
Everest and it's a noble thing -

that these were the same
answers that Mallory had for Ruth.

I know what it's like to be
the wife of a climber and

I know what it's like to be the wife
of a climber who doesn't come home.

Jennifer was previously married

to one of America's finest
mountaineers, Alex Lowe,

Conrad's climbing-partner
and closest friend.

Just a few months after
finding Mallory's body,

Conrad was climbing with Alex when
the mountains claimed another life.

An avalanche struck Alex and I as
we were climbing in the Himalayas.

He died

and I was three feet away from him.

You could just look at him
and tell that he was burdened with
this world of guilt and grief.

That somehow he could have prevented
Alex's death.

In the aftermath of this tragedy,
we communicated with each other

and eventually we grew
to fall in love

and it wasn't just Jennifer that my
love grew for, it was also the boys.

Jennifer must really like climbers
to willingly bring me into her life

and then marry and have me adopt
the boys because she knows
it's downright dangerous work.

Boys, dear.

Look what I found downstairs!

Whoa! Good God!

Is this my Halloween costume, or is
this what I'm going up Everest in?
You guys are laughing.

You look like Inspector Gadget.
You're supposed to take me serious.
Mom can appreciate it.

No, it's amazing to think of those
guys going for the summit
in clothing like that.

Would you climb
Everest in that suit? No.

What would you wear?

I wouldn't climb Everest.

Before climbing Everest, Mallory
had to choose his climbing partner.

Among the candidates was
a 21-year-old chemistry student,

Andrew "Sandy" Irvine -
a mountaineering novice.

My great uncle "Sandy" Irvine
took life by the horns

and if an opportunity presented
itself to him, he would take it.

He loved the theatre, he loved cars
and, above all, he loved women.

And he had this very indiscreet
love affair

with his best friend's stepmother.

It was a terrible scandal.

But Sandy Irvine was
first and foremost an oarsman.

When he got to Oxford, he was
selected to take part in the
Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.

The annual Boat Race
was the most prestigious
sporting event of the day.

They were victorious,
and what Mallory saw in Sandy

was this extraordinary ability
that great oarsmen have,

to row through pain, to push himself
almost beyond normal human limit.

But there was another reason
for choosing Irvine.

Mallory needed someone technical
to master the oxygen equipment
vital at high altitude.

And unlike Mallory,
Irvine was very practical.

Sandy asked the Mount Everest
Committee to send him a 1922 set,

plus the drawings, and he spent hours
and hours in his rooms in Oxford

trying to make it serviceable,
trying to make it lighter, stronger

and less fragile so that the climbers
could use it with greater confidence.

And so, the fact that Sandy was so
practical with the apparatus

I think made it quite clear
in Mallory's mind

that he was a useful man
to have climbing with him.

Conrad Anker has also chosen a young
Englishman as his climbing partner -
Leo Houlding.

Like Irvine, Leo is young, strong,
a natural athlete, and has never
climbed at high altitude.

The 90-feet high Second Step

will be a dangerous venture
into the unknown.

I'm definitely
concerned about the altitude
and the acclimatisation process

just because
I've never been high enough before

to know whether I might be one of
those people it doesn't gel with.

I don't want to let
Conrad down, and I'm sure
Irvine felt some of that pressure.

Leo's never been to altitude,
this unknown,

and you can't walk into a hospital
and take a test

that will say,
"Oh, you'll do well at altitude."

Some people do really well,

but I've seen fit people doubled over
with splitting headaches.

Being invited to climb the highest
mountain in the world with Conrad,

one of the best climbers in his
generation, is such a privilege.

For Irvine, being invited
to climb with George Mallory,

the best climber of his generation
on the unclimbed Mount Everest,

I just can't imagine
how he must have felt.

I am walking on metaphorical air.

We shall go all out for the summit.

If I have to die,
then there would be no finer death

than in an attempt
to conquer Everest.

On February 29th, 1924,

Mallory set sail from Liverpool,
after making Ruth a solemn promise.

As my grandfather was leaving
England and leaving my grandmother,

he told her that
he would leave a photograph of her

at the top of Mount Everest,

and I think he was pretty confident

that he would get there and
that he would leave that photograph.

With the eyes of the world
upon them,

Mallory and Irvine set out on
the three-week voyage for India.

Late that March, their convoy began
its 350-mile trek.

5,000 miles apart, Mallory and Ruth
wrote to each other frequently.

Couriers carried their letters
across the world and,

after the months of tension they'd
gone through, he and Ruth made up.

"I do miss you a lot.

"I know I have rather often
been cross and not nice,
and I'm very sorry.

"I was unhappy at
getting so little of you.

"Very, very much love to you,
my dear one.

"Your loving Ruth."

"Dearest one,
we went through a difficult time
together in the autumn.

"Your letters bring you much nearer.

"I wish I had you with me."

We can think of the relationship
between Mallory, Everest and Ruth
as a kind of love triangle.

When he was at home with Ruth,
he was dreaming of Everest.

When he was away with Everest,
he was dreaming of Ruth.

Until a certain point, until he got
sufficiently close to the mountain
that it cast its spell over him.

The convoy of 300 pack animals and
70 porters journeyed through Tibet.

Provisions included
four cases of Montebello champagne

and 60 tins of quail and foie gras.

On April 25th, 17,000 feet up,
they reached the last pass
before Everest,

Pang La.

The Pang La is the pass
where you get the first
stunning view of Everest, right?

Yeah, and it's this vista.

You've got five of the world's
highest peaks in one view.

That's Everest.

Wow!

It's so much bigger than all the
other ones, isn't it? Just... Yeah.

It's really special that we haven't
had any sign of the mountain and
then you drive up to this high pass

then she just reveals herself in all
her glory, you know, Chomolungma,

Mother Goddess of the Earth, the
mountain we call Everest. Just bang!

This wonderful old
photograph they had taken on
26th April 1924 is pretty amazing.

See Everest there,
there's Mallory, Irvine,

a couple of their Sherpas they
had with them and their pony.

This is almost exactly
the same spot, right?

Pretty close, and they spent
three weeks trekking on the plateau

to get to this point,
to be able to see it.

And they were on their feet,
they'd walked every day. I mean,

you think for us to get here,
we've been in a jeep.

On April 29th,
Mallory and Irvine set up

their centre of operations,
Base Camp, 12 miles from the summit.

Like Mallory, Conrad will rely
heavily on Sherpa porters,

accustomed to high altitude.

But this is still
a dangerous mountain.

Over 200 people have died here,
among them many Sherpas.

Well, most important is safety.
Ten fingers, ten toes, one nose,

all come back. Eyes!

Two eyes! Yes, two eyes! Oh, good!
And if you see something

with us, if we look sick,
then you tell us and say,

"Go down! Burra sahib...

"China burra sahib, finish!"

BELL RINGS

HE CHANTS

'Before one embarks on an expedition,
it's customary to have a puja,
which is a blessing ceremony.

'As Chomolungma is Mother Goddess of
the Earth, the mountain is a deity.

'For the Tibetans and the Sherpas,

'safe passage depends on having
a good puja.'

CHANTING

BELL RINGS

THEY CHANT

Good luck, everybody.

Lots of luck.

The monks from the ancient
monastery nearby gave Mallory

a very mixed welcome
when he approached their
sacred mountain, Chomolungma.

It was 83 years ago on this day,
May 15th,

that Mallory and his team came here
for a blessing from the Lama.

The head Lama welcomed
the strange white climbers,

but it was an ominous encounter.

Along with the blessing,
the Lama had a very stern
warning for the expedition.

He spoke of disaster to come,
prophesying that
the mountain's demons

would delight in
forcing the climbers off Everest.

The monks had even created an
illustration, a very gruesome one,

of the gods disemboweling a Western
man and pitching him into hell.

It must have been
a terrifying moment for Mallory.

He was not a superstitious man,
but I think it would have been hard
to be in that landscape

at that time on the third expedition
and not feel the atmosphere
to be saturated

with signs and portents
and hints and forebodings.

Despite the bad omens,
Mallory hoped that this time,

he'd summit the mountain.

The weather was good.

He planned to reach the top
of Everest by mid-May to beat the
snows that came with the monsoon.

On May 2nd 1924, the giant
convoy of climbers and porters

made its way out of Base Camp.

"My dearest Ruth,

"the thought of you will be present
in the most important decisions.

"I am eager for
the great events to begin."

Mallory realised that
the way to attack Everest

was a series of camps,
almost militaristic in style.

You go some way up,
then come back down, recuperate

and then move back up.

It's how you acclimatise.

He pioneered this technique
and it's the one we still use
on Everest today.

Conrad and Leo
follow Mallory's route

through a forest of ice pinnacles,
up to Camp Three.

You definitely can't cheat or hide
from altitude and acclimatisation -

it just makes everything
really hard work.

This is it, Leo. Finally!
Camp Three for 1924.

At Camp Three, altitude really begins
to show its nasty side effects.

With each breath, you're getting
fewer molecules of oxygen in.

It's insidious.
You lose your appetite,
you have splitting headaches,

you have a difficult time just
doing the simplest of tasks,

yet 9,000 feet above you, the summit
of Everest and it's calling you.

Somewhere above their Camp Two,
Mallory and Irvine

experienced their first bout of
bad weather. A storm came in,

the temperatures plummeted,
and Mallory realised

it wasn't going to be Easy Street
up to the summit of Everest.

"My dearest girl,

"I was acting as a lone horse
and arrived first at Camp Three.

"The glacier is everywhere
beneath the stones.

"My boots were frozen hard
on my feet.

"I was a good deal
depressed by the situation.

"I love you always, dear one."

Shall we try it on?
Yeah, I'm pretty keen to...

see how this stuff works.

Check this out.

Can you imagine climbing up with
these things? They're something else.

So, I've got every layer on here.

Mallory and Irvine had
seven layers on when they went
for the summit in '24.

But the big difference
is here, in the footwear.

I tell you, the rest of this
outfit seems pretty good, eh?

But compared to the boots that we
wear these days, these things look
decidedly, you know, inappropriate.

Wearing hobnailed boots and
Gabardine jackets, Conrad and
Leo venture on to the mountain.

We were right near the spot where

seven of Mallory's porters
lost their lives in the avalanche.

But, as in 1924, we were just
bound together by a thin cotton rope.

Using Mallory's technique, Conrad
cuts steps into the steep ice slope.

This is real mountain terrain.
I mean, if you lose your footing,

you'll fall down 1,000 feet
to the base of it,

and we need to start being
careful now. There's crevasses.

There's a danger of avalanche.

When you stand on the edge of
a crevasse,

you just see this slot
disappearing down into the glacier.

Hundreds of feet deep.
But the dangerous ones are
the ones that you can't see.

You can be walking across a snow
bridge just a few feet thick and
fall through it to certain death.

Yikes, she's deep, isn't she?

Yeah.

I'm right at the bridge!

Ten feet of rope.

Be careful, my friend.

It's phenomenal that they were able
to get to 28,000 feet

in what I would basically call

clothing you'd walk through
the forest.

Good job, Leo.

No, good job, Conrad.

Oy!

Oh, I'm knackered.

In 1924, Mallory's team were
pinned down by weather so severe,

Sandy Irvine feared for his life.

May 10th.

Had a terrible night
with wind and snow.

I don't know how the tent stood it.

Very little sleep
and about two inches of snow
over everything in the tent.

Awful headache this morning.

Irvine was suffering
from altitude sickness.

His role as Mallory's
climbing partner was now in doubt.

The harsh conditions forced the
entire team back down to Base Camp.

When they arrived there, they found
that two of the staff were dead.

Instead of
preparing for a summit bid, they
were burying people in Base Camp.

It must have been quite strange for
Irvine to come to terms with that.

One of our NCOs
suddenly got paralysis,

probably due to a clot on the brain
from frostbitten fingers.

The poor fellow died
within half a mile of Base Camp.

Meanwhile, Mallory plans
another dangerous summit bid.

But he allowed no sign of the team's
suffering to show in a letter
to his eldest daughter, Clare.

"My darling, there is not so much
wind today, so it is nice and warm.

"Now, tea has come and for the first
time since I don't know when - cake.

"Shall we have a little
tea party together,

"one day in August, with a flat,
warm, squidgy cake and nothing else?

"Haven't you got a greedy daddy?!"

It was already mid-May,

and soon, the snows would come.

The monsoon arrives
early June every year.

It releases
a tremendous amount of snow.

Climbing is impossible.

We had the same challenge as Mallory
in 1924. We were there

late in the season.
If we didn't get up the mountain

before the monsoon hit,
we'd be in very serious trouble.

Over 22,000 feet up, Conrad and Leo
start the ascent of Everest itself.

They are on one of the most
treacherous parts of the mountain -

the giant wall of ice and snow
that leads up to the North Col -

the launch-pad to the summit.

Despite all the modern equipment,
the altitude hits Leo hard.

You know, this is the first time
I've ever been to this altitude and
you just move so desperately slowly,

it's unreal. You just can't
believe... You take two steps and
you're completely out of breath

and I'm sure it's only
going to get worse as we get up.

With hobnail boots and no
guide-ropes, Mallory led the assault
on the North Col,

cutting steps into what he called
"its great battlements of ice."

The North Col was a triumph.

I enjoyed the conquest of the
ice wall and making the steps.

Afterwards, I was practically
bust to the world.

Looking back down the valley,

he was already higher than the
greatest peaks in Europe or America.

But the summit
was still 6,000 feet above.

Here on the Col, Mallory set up his
bridgehead to Everest, Camp Four.

He planned higher camps
further up the mountain.

These would take him within
striking distance of the summit.

Mallory had a cough
that wouldn't go away.

Irvine was suffering from diarrhoea,

the cold never left them.

COUGHING

My dearest Ruth, I couldn't sleep -

distressed with bursts of
coughing fit to tear one's guts.

Fierce squalls visited our
tents and shook them with

the disagreeable threat of tearing
them away from their moorings.

There was never a more determined
and bitter enemy.

23,000 feet up, Conrad and Leo test
out Mallory's gear one last time.

Suddenly, temperatures plummet
to 20 below freezing.

They're in severe
danger of frostbite.

Thank you. No problem. Oh!

Oh, man, I can't imagine going
to 8,500 metres in these boots.

Which is my theory -
that if those guys were moving,

they were OK.
But once they stopped moving,

the clock was ticking and it was
a different game altogether.

Oh!

My toes are freezing. Agh!

In '22,

Mallory frostbit one of his fingers

and he commented that
it was bad, but not that bad,

and then sort of in
a little note aside, he said,

"I wouldn't mind
if I lost a finger for this summit."

And, If I was in his shoes,
I probably would have thought
the same thing,

because it was
the Golden Age of Exploration.

Ah, come on my little beauties.

Agh!

Bad weather blocks Conrad's path
and the monsoon snows are imminent.

He and Leo risk being trapped
high on Everest, beyond rescue.

It was a stressful moment.

What are we doing?
We're climbing into the second week
of June, the monsoon's on our ass.

I get on the phone to Jennifer
and I say to her,

"It's not worth what
I'm putting you and the family
through, and I'm ready to come home."

The window was closing.
I knew the monsoon was coming.

I was looking at the satellite
imagery of the weather.

I said, "Conrad, you know what,
I'm looking at the computer screen

"and I'm seeing a giant wall of
weather and it's the monsoon."

And I said, "Conrad, you need to be
confident that you can make it.

"But if you have a chance
to climb the Second Step,
I want you to go for it."

"My dear one,
what is happening to you?

"I wonder so much.

"Are you happy and are you well?

"All the immortal love
my soul has is with you."

Early in June 1924,
two of Mallory's team,
Norton and Somervell,

pushed on up the mountain

but Everest forced them back.

Snow blind,
Norton had to be carried down.

Somervell almost choked to death
before coughing up part of his
frostbitten larynx.

Clearly, it was time to go home.

They were weak with exhaustion.

The monsoon was due.

But Mallory refused to give in.

My dear girl,

this has been a bad time altogether.

Perhaps it's mere
folly to go up again.

But how can I be out of the hunt?

Six days to the top from this camp!

It's 50:1 against, but
we'll have a whack yet

and do ourselves proud.

Great love to you,
ever your loving George.

The big question is why
George Mallory thought it
was worth one more shot.

I think the way to reconcile the
overriding conflict in his life,

was actually to climb the
mountain and be done with it
and go home to Ruth and say,

"I've done it, it's over, now we can
get on with the rest of our lives."

He knew that this was it.

He couldn't come back again
later if he didn't get to the top.

It would be impossible
to put Ruth through that again.

I must tell you, dearest one,
I feel full of energy and strength.

My plan will be to carry
as little as possible,
go fast and rush the summit.

Mallory now needed oxygen
and Irvine more than ever.

He wanted his partner, now over
the worst of his altitude sickness,

to apply his technical
skills to the final assault.

Irvine has been brilliantly
skilful about the oxygen.

He has practically invented
a new instrument.

5th June.

It will be a great triumph
if my impromptu apparatus
gets us to the top.

It has been very trying for everyone

with terribly strong
reflection off the snow.

Have prepared two oxygen apparatus
for our start tomorrow morning.

These are the last words
written by Sandy Irvine.

He would have gone wherever
Mallory would have wanted him to go

and I'm quite sure that he had
every intention of coming back

from the mountain with both feet,
both legs, both arms intact.

I don't think he even entertained,

truly entertained, the idea
that he would die.

I think he believed that
he was indestructible.

Early on June 6th,
support-climber Noel Odell

photographed Mallory and Irvine
as they set out from the North Col.

Who could hold back,
when such a victory,

such a triumph of human endeavour
was within their grasp?

One must conquer, achieve,
get to the top

to know there's no dream
that mustn't be dared.

There's nothing on top of Mount
Everest. There's not a pot of gold.

Why are we doing this?

You want the glory.

You want that feeling of
standing on top of the world.

Gambling on beating the monsoon,
Conrad makes his choice -

to follow Mallory
up to the Second Step.

We're starting our summit bid
and it's 10th June.

I think 5th June is the latest
anyone's ever climbed pre-monsoon.

The clouds in the background are an
indication the monsoon rolling in

so we're going to play it by ear,
one day at a time, but...

..this is our window.

WIND HOWLS

It's just ridiculously tiring,
like it

feels like someone's taking the
Michael, you like one step, and

your head's on your hands.

That is unreal, isn't it?

It's like an out of body experience.

On June 7th, cameraman John Noel

filmed the last images
of Mallory and Irvine.

They were two miles above him
with their porters,

climbing into the death zone,

where the lack of oxygen makes it
impossible to function for long.

In the death zone, above 26,000 feet,

the body enters into
what is known as necrosis.

One is dying.

Humans weren't meant to
survive at this altitude

and you're on borrowed time.

As they enter the death zone,
Conrad and Leo use oxygen,

like Mallory and Irvine before them.

I was just thinking, "Oh, the death
zone, this place isn't that bad."

All of a sudden,
the first of the dead bodies

that we encountered
appeared right by the path.

And it was a real, I mean, when else
do you walk past a dead body,

you know,
unless you're in a war zone?

You're never going to witness
anything quite like that.

It's such an extreme environment
up there that no-one can

do anything about it,
they can't bring them down.

High in the death zone,
some 2,000 feet below the summit,

Mallory and Irvine
pitched their last camp.

Here Mallory wrote to
cameraman John Noel,

who was waiting further down
to film the moment of triumph.

Dear Noel,
we'll probably start early tomorrow
to have clear weather.

Start looking out for us
either crossing the rock band

under the pyramid
or going up the skyline at 8pm.

Clearly he meant to say 8am.

He was tired.

He had been on expedition
for three months and now

over three days in the death zone.

Just advance your headlight.

We knew the monsoon was imminent.

We only had a 12-hour window.

We had to strike
while the iron was hot.

You're so nervous that
I woke up before the alarm

and turned our headlamps on.
Got all the layering systems set up.

When you step out of the tent
it was a bit like a starting gate,

I was ready to go.

Leo was so excited.

He had that boost of summit energy.

It's probably similar to
what Mallory and Irvine had

on their summit day when they were
there, within striking distance
of the first ascent of Everest.

Imagine the morning of June 8th 1924.

They're cold, they've had
a restless night of sleep.

Compound this with lack of appetite,

severe dehydration.

Their bodies are wasted.

Their mental faculties
are compromised.

Simple things become
monumental chores.

28,000 feet is at the limit
of what is humanly possible.

Even with supplemental oxygen
it's very, very desperate.

And above them is a route
that no-one has ever been on.

And when you're the first,
overcoming this sense of the unknown
is one of the greatest challenges.

Think about it.

The anxiety, fear, trepidation,
combined with the exhilaration.

All those things

stirring around

and held fast

by pain and suffering.

Mallory and Irvine
climbed the North Face,

up towards the summit ridge where
the Second Step blocked their path.

We got to the ridge just on schedule,
right after dawn.

Absolutely wonderful.

At 12:50 on June 8th 1924,
support climber Noel Odell

sighted Mallory and Irvine
through a gap in the clouds.

My eyes became fixed
on a tiny black dot

a short distance
from the base of the final pyramid.

Another moved up to join it.

They were moving expeditiously
as if to make up for lost time.

Then the whole
fascinating vision vanished,

enveloped in cloud.

Mallory and Irvine were missing.

No trace can be found.

Awaiting orders.

Instead of capturing
their victorious ascent,

cameraman John Noel
had to film the search for them.

Days later,

blankets laid out as
a cross in the snow

signalled the devastating news.

Mallory and Irvine were lost,
presumed dead.

Mrs Mallory.

Herschel House, Cambridge.

Committee deeply regret
receive bad news.

Everest expedition today.

Your husband killed.

Last climb.

Committee offer you and family
heartfelt sympathy.

Ruth received the news one evening.

She decided not to tell
her children that night

cos they'd already gone to bed.
She actually went to bed herself,

slept with the terrible knowledge
and then, in morning, woke them up,

took them into her bed, and
told them this terrible news.

George's spirit
was ready for another life,

and his way of going to it
was very beautiful.

I know so absolutely he could
not have failed in courage
or self-sacrifice.

If only it hadn't happened.

It so easily might not have.

The golden age of exploration
had ended in tragedy.

The fallen hero was mourned
by king and country.

It must have been an
extraordinary day,

the bells ringing out
around Britain in mourning

and then a memorial service
in St Paul's,

the mourners packing the pews and
speeches given in Mallory's honour.

Mallory, the man,
soon became Mallory the legend.

Many people were convinced
he had reached the top of Everest.

But to summit, he would first have
had to free climb the Second Step.

On June 14th, our expedition
reached the Second Step.

This formidable rock face that stood
between Mallory and the summit.

The Sherpas cleared the fixed-ropes
and hauled the ladder away -

restoring the Second Step
to what it was like in 1924.

Goal is today, pull the ladders up

and...

climb it

"free" - that is without
the assistance of the Chinese ladder.

This whole time on the expedition
I knew it was going to come down to

this half hour
on a cliff band at 28,300 ft.

Could I do it in the form

that Mallory and Irvine
would have encountered it,

free of any ladder, free of any rope,
free of any indication of man?

You have the whole
North Face of Mount Everest,

all the way down to the
central Rongbuk glacier below you.

7,000, 8,000 feet of exposure.

God, what am I doing?!

Just like Mallory and Irvine,
Leo and I were tied together.

It's the brotherhood of the rope.

Imagine this,

June 8th 1924.

Come on, you've got it!

Whoa!

You OK?

Yeah. Man!

What happened?

Bad step.

Had I not caught myself,

there's a good chance I could have
fallen over the edge, pulled Leo

from the mountain, and fallen 7,000
feet to the central Rongbuk glacier.

I think it shook him up somewhat
and he ended up spending
quite a long time

'Figuring out what to do next,
recomposing himself,

'I mean, I'd say,
at least 20 minutes.'

Want to stand on my shoulders?

I'm going to give it another go.

My job was to

climb the Second Step.

I knew that I had to try
it from a different angle.

OK. Nice step.

I think I got it, Leo.
I think I got it.

Oooaawwwww!

After eight years of
keeping me awake at night

and being the 90 feet of climbing
that I had to get done,

I got the Second Step.

I can't breathe.

I realised that my toes
had gone completely numb.

My biggest fear through
this whole experience

has been
getting frostbite in my toes.

I was just concerned about getting
to the top of the Second Step

as quickly as I possibly could.

I thought about Mallory.

Our ascent of the Second Step

opens up the possibility that
they could have pulled it off.

Earlier, I was under the impression
that the Second Step

was an impossibility
for climbers of that time.

Now I'm changed on that.

They definitely
were capable of doing it.

The Second Step is not too much of
an obstacle for them to overcome.

They were determined

and, if they were strong
and they were moving quickly,

there's a chance they
made it to the top.

Dear one, I will be thinking of you
as you set off for the summit.

I know you can achieve
your wildest dream.

If we get within 200 yards or so
of the top of Everest, we shall go.

And if it's a one way ticket,
so be it.

Eight years after I found
the body of George Mallory

the circle is complete.

A few hours before
the monsoon closed in,

Leo and I summited Mount Everest.

And we have shown that
these could have been

Mallory and Irvine's final footsteps.

Is this the summit crowning the day?

How cool and how quiet.

Have we vanquished an enemy?

None but ourselves?

# Every day I look beyond
the endless sky

# And see you smile

# Every night I dream
that you are by my side

# In a thousand frozen moments
I have stared into your eyes

# Brought you with me,
all these miles I have climbed

# I brought you with me

# On the edge of heaven

# I will wait for you

# On the edge of heaven

# Find me there

# On the edge of heaven
Stand with me, my dear

# And you will feel the end of time

# And you will feel the end

# Oh, feel. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk