The long winter night descends over the Ogwen Valley as I pitch my tent in Cwm Tryfan (Cwm is
the Welsh word for a glacier-formed valley). The rumble of traffic on the road turns to the sound of faraway waterfalls. The glow from Liverpool street lamps colours the easterly sky, and winter constellations appear and vanish with gaps in the passing clouds.
Mallory’s mountain story began in Wales and ends, of course, on the highest reaches of Mount Everest on 8 June 1924, where he was last seen alive ascending into mists near the summit. Not long before he disappeared, he had climbed the saddle of Lho La at 6,000m on the Tibet-Nepal border, and beheld a vast windswept valley reaching down into the world below: a place not before seen by European eyes. It is not known whether Mallory was thinking of summer days in Wales long ago when he gave this part of Everest the name it carries to this day: the Western Cwm.
In 1991, Eric Jones found himself hovering hundreds of metres above the Western Cwm, thin Himalayan air stretching into oblivion under the soles of his shoes. Unlike Mallory, Eric did not have time to admire the view, because he was clinging unharnessed onto the outside of a hot-air balloon basket. The balloon was on a course to crash into the upper slopes of Everest and Eric was busy trying to repair a broken burner.
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