Nova: Lost on Everest (2000) Review

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(More customer reviews)This Nova presentation is a first rate documentary which explores the mystery of the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine, chronicling their 1924 Everest summit attempt and the present day efforts made to find them on Everest. Archival footage of the 1924 Everest British Expedition, along with a montage of vintage photographs of these early gentleman explorers, as well as extracts from personal letters sent by Mallory to his wife, are interposed with modern day footage of Everest in order to frame the story. Commentaries by David Breashears, world class filmmaker and climber, and by various members of the 1999 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition who discovered the remains of Mallory on Everest, add depth to this documentary which is narrated by Rebecca Mornay.
The efforts of the early Everest expeditioners were truly amazing, considering that they climbed in tweeds and hobnail boots, without fixed ropes, ironmongery, or other sophisticated equipment available to climbers today. A demonstration with a circa 1920s ice axe shows how they would chop steps and hand holds into the ice. It was a terribly painstaking process.
The discovery of Mallory's body on Everest seventy five years after his disappearance into the mists of Everest is truly amazing and wondrously memorialized on this film. The efforts that went into this search were highly organized, with the search area divined through simple cartography based upon anecdotal, second hand information about the sighting on Everest by a Chinese climber, long since deceased, of an "old English dead".
Mallory's marble like body, well preserved and intact, tells of the trauma that he had sustained before his eventual death. A review of the artifacts found with his body, an altimeter marked MEE2 (Mount Everest Expedition 2), personal clothing, a pocket knife, goggles, and personal notes, all add a certain poignancy to the discovery. The burial of Mallory's body on Everest finally puts to rest a chapter in Everest history. Now only Irvine is still left to be accounted for. Perhaps the discovery of his remains will answer the question that is yet to be answered. Did Mallory and /or Irvine summit Everest before their tragic deaths?

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"I looked up at a patch of white. It wasn’t rock and it wasn’t snow," explains Conrad Anker, world-renowned climberand mountaineer. It was the half-buried body of British mountain-climbing legend George Mallory. Clothed in a tweed jacket and leather boots, Mallory had set off to scale the final slope of Mt. Everest on the morning of June 8, 1924. Soon after, he was seen for the last time just 1,000 feet from the summit. 75 years later in May 1999, Mallory’s frozen remains were discovered by Anker, a member of the world-class climbing team charged with solving a mysterious question: Was Mallory the first to reach the top of Everest?Discover what new clues Mallory’s body, bones, clothes, personal items and letters offer. Climb the daunting slopes that challenged Mallory’s mind, body and archaic equipment. See remarkable exclusive archival film footage from Mallory’s deadly expedition. And take part in mountaineering history as NOVA brings you an up-close look at this headline-making quest.

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