140- Conquest

You, finding life, rather dull, dreaming again of exotic places, wishing you were somewhere else? We offer you... Escaped! Escape with us now to the windswept peak of Mount Everest, and the story of a man who sacrificed everything to climb it.

As Leonard Lee tells it in his gripping story, conquest. You want to know what it's like up there? I'll tell you, it's a constant torrent of wind and snow. It's jagged rocks, iced as slick as an ice blade.

No man has ever set foot on the place. It's as bleak and barren and lonely as the moon. But it's Everest, Mount Everest. And when you stand on its peak and know that every inch of the world is below you, There in the palm of your hand lies the final conquest.

We're not going to make the mistakes Norton and Somerville made. We'll spend the first night at camp five and the second night at camp six. That brings us to 26,800 feet. Are you going to make the North face to the Cold War Mallory?

No, that's what they did. We're going to make a frontal attack direct. We'll follow the crest of the northeast ridge to the peak. That's tougher climbing. The only chance, Hamilton. And we'll take oxygen on the last dash.

Well, best of luck, Mallory. Thanks. We watched them as they left camp for 23,000 feet on the face of a roost. Mallory and Irvine, stocked with their provisions. Heatons, carabiners, hammers, axes, packed-board snowshoes. Two diminishing silhouettes against the powder snow of the wrong-book glacier.

Finally disappearing behind a jet in the North Carl. We watched them and prayed for them, and we hated them. Because we weren't part of that final run to the top. Two days later, June 10, 1924, a man crawled toward us in the snow.