Toward the end of a career with an infinitesimal margin of error, famous climber Conrad Anker mulls

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Lowered Horizons

Toward the end of a career with an infinitesimal margin of error, famous climber Conrad Anker mulls what comes next.

By Nick Ehli
MARCH 17, 2021

BOZEMAN, Mont. — Thousands of hours strapped to the side of miles-high mountains, freezing winds assaulting exposed skin, the sun reflecting almost blindingly off snow — it all shows on Conrad Anker’s face.

The lines there confirm his nearly 60 years, most of them lived as one of the world’s elite alpinists. Theirs is a profession with an infinitesimal margin for error: how high is too high, which slope is too steep, where to find the edge between adventure and foolishness, adoration and reproach, life and death.

The long list of friends Anker has lost to climbing grows every year, and their absence weighs heavy on him. He is the anomaly, the aging patriarch, who again and again has confronted a grim question: Why not me?

But not on this day, which he is spending in Hyalite Canyon barely a half-hour south of his home, chainsawing a storm-toppled pine tree to clear a trail. The canyon is a special place for him. Ancient geological oddities built it, and each winter water seeping from cliff walls freezes and creates a vertical playground of icefalls the color of Caribbean waters. Adventurers with picks, spiked boots and sufficient bravado come from all over, and they shower Anker with questions about avalanche conditions and requests for photos.

{snip}

By his desk in his basement office, he keeps a 1969 copy of “Life” magazine, its cover a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon. It reminds him that all things are possible, even though Anker realizes that some of them no longer are possible for him. He has no regrets, he says, about the climbs he won’t make. ... “Eventually,” he allows, “the bell-curve of what I do will get to the point where walking down a path will be my personal Everest. And I’m fine with that.”

[ret5hd]

1. Found this pic of Hyalite:

[Budi]

2. Anker was part of a search team to retrieve two 1924 climbers, Mallory & Irvine

My god this conversation about locating one body from a failed1924 Mt Everest climb.
Ankers was part of this recovery team in May of 1999.

This convo gives an idea of what kind of people it takes to do such a job.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/lost/search/day.html#firstaudio


The Day Mallory Was Found

Below are excerpts from radio transmissions and video recorded on the day in May 1999 when NOVA-sponsored climbers discovered the body of George Leigh Mallory high on Mt. Everest.
Mallory disappeared with his partner Andrew Irvine in 1924, and the mystery of whether they might have reached the summit has persisted ever since.

For particulars on the various individuals involved in these conversations, see Meet the Team, and to put the discovery in context, see the Dispatches.

(Go straight to the audible conversations via RealAudio.)

In these early-morning radio communications, researcher Jochen Hemmleb, an expert on the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine who remains at Base Camp, talks to Dave Hahn, a member of the search party.

The search group, which also includes Conrad Anker, Jake Norton, Andy Politz, and Tap Richards, is climbing from the expedition's Camp V at roughly 25,500 feet towards Camp VI. Here they will begin their search for the 1975 Chinese Camp VI, near the spot where one of the Chinese climbers reported seeing an "English dead." Expedition leader Eric Simonson, meanwhile, is at Advance Base Camp.
Read the convo..

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George Herbert Leigh Mallory (18 June 1886 – 8 or 9 June 1924)[1]:546–47 was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s.