In his final six-page letter to his beloved wife, Ruth, George Mallory penned a poignant account of his trials and triumphs during his arduous journey up Mount Everest. Despite his exhaustion and setbacks, Mallory maintained a glimmer of optimism, writing, “It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud.”
Mallory’s letter provides a vivid glimpse into the challenges the expedition faced. He described a near-death experience when he plunged into a concealed crevasse, writing, “In I went with the snow tumbling all around me, down luckily only about 10 feet before I fetched up half-blind & breathless to find myself most precariously supported only by my ice ax somehow caught across the crevasse & still held in my right hand.”
Mallory’s letter also reveals his deep love and longing for his wife. He expressed his understanding of her anxiety and reassured her, “Darling I wish you the best I can — that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this — with the best news.”
Days before his last ascent, Mallory described the team’s plans to rest and prepare for their final push to the summit. He wrote, “Below was a very unpleasant black hole.”
Mallory’s final ascent, along with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, remains a mystery. They were last seen alive on June 8, 1924, approximately 900 feet below the summit. While Mallory’s body was discovered at a lower elevation, Irvine’s fate remains unknown. Mountaineers who attempted to reconstruct their ascent in 2007 concluded that determining whether the pair reached the summit was highly unlikely.
