Mallory Found

So, they found George Leigh Mallory’s body (“Mallory’s Body Is Found on Mt. Everest,” May 3). Many mountaineers would have preferred that he’d never been looked for, never been found.

The world’s last image of Mallory and Sandy Irvine came through the eyes of Noel Odell, who was at 26,000 feet on that rather overcast day in 1924. Looking up, the mist opened briefly and Odell spotted them “moving expeditiously” upward, only a few hundred feet below the summit. Then the mist closed in again.

That is how the world remembers them, and that is fitting. Theirs has been a wonderful story for climbers and non-climbers for 75 years. Sometimes, mystery and enigma are far preferable to truth and reality. Some mysteries are better left unsolved. I don’t want Mallory to become just another dead mountaineer.

BOB ROCKWELL

Ridgecrest