Hiking - Part 9

Mountain Climbers

We've already seen hikers who pose naked on top of a summit for a photo.  Most of those places had trails to the top and were not technically challenging.  Today we consider some real mountains.

This is Killian Jornet in 2012 atop Mont Blanc, Western Europe's highest mountain at 4809 m (15,777 ft).  He got naked to protest climber equipment regulations.

Here's 18-year-old English student Ben Boleyn in 2014 atop Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain at 5,895 m (19,341 ft).  Although the climb is not technically difficult, the altitude makes it challenging.  Ben stripped after a fellow climber bet him 500 Tanzanian shillings (about 18 pence) that he wouldn't.  The climb was to raise money for a children's hospital, and he raised hundreds of pounds after posting this photo on Facebook.

Aleister Crowley is pictured above in a hot spring on the return from the 1902 first attempt to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain at 8609 m (28,245 ft) on the Pakistan-China border.  The expedition reached 21,000 feet before turning back.  Crowley was an English occultist.  He published a volume of verse described by one critic as "the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language."  He took many lovers, both male and female, and practiced a form of sex magic.  One newspaper called him "the wickedest man in the world."

But let's talk about the ultimate mountain: Mt. Everest.  Above is English climber George Mallory (at right) at Everest base camp in 1922.  At that time, no one had ever reached the summit of Everest.  Mallory is the climber who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, replied, "Because it's there."  Note that not only is Mallory naked; his fellow climber at left has on a jacket but no pants.  They may have just forded a stream.

Some sources call Mallory "eccentric".  He liked hiking naked (not just on Everest).  He was on close terms with several members of the Bloomsbury group of artists and writers, many of whom were gay.  Everyone considered him extremely good-looking.  Lytton Strachey wrote, "Mon Dieu! George Mallory!  My hand trembles, my heart palpitates ... he’s six foot high, with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles and a face – oh incredible – the mystery of Botticelli, the refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print."

But it was Lytton Strachey's brother James whom Mallory had an affair with, referred to as "l'affaire George" by Bloomsbury members.  In 1909 Mallory wrote to James, apparently breaking off the affair: "There has never really been anything to say since the day when I told you that I loved you. Am I to repeat continually the wearisome news that I want to kiss you."  He asked James to forget that they were ever lovers and hoped that James would regard him "as an ordinary friend."

A few years later, Mallory got married, apparently happily, and had three children.  In 1914, writing to Lytton Strachey about his impending marriage, he said: "It can hardly be a shock to you that I desert the ranks of the fashionable homosexualists (and yet I am still in part of that persuasion)."

The photo of Mallory above is by artist Duncan Grant, another gay Bloomsbury Group member.

Here's another photo of Mallory by Duncan Grant.

Eccentric or not, Mallory was considered the best mountain climber in the world.  After two failed attempts to climb Mt. Everest, he made a third attempt in 1924 with climbing partner Sandy Irvine.  They were last seen near the summit and never returned.  Years later, in 1999, Mallory's body was found not far below the summit.  The unanswered question: did he reach the summit of Everest 29 years before Edmund Hillary?

Mallory was not the only naked Everest mountaineer.  Above, Glen Saunders on the road to Everest base camp in 2005.  Base camp elevation is 5,364 m (17,598 ft).

Ivan Serra and a friend atop Kala Patthar mountain near Everest base camp, a mere hill at 5,644 m (18,519 ft), with a view of Mt. Everest in the distance.

This 1996 Polish climbing magazine cover shows Mariusz Kubielas on the west ridge of Everest.  Note the uncensored frontal view.  Kubielas was a city councilman at the time, and the photo caused a scandal back home.

We end with Jake Gyllenhaal on the set of the 2015 movie Everest, about a disastrous 1996 climbing expedition that was engulfed by a blizzard.  This is a scene of him banging on a frying pan in base camp to wake up the other climbers.  Some scenes were actually shot on Mt. Everest, but this one was shot in Rome, so it was presumably nice and warm for his nude scene.

Two final notes:

1. Everyone knows that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first men to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.  It is less widely known that Hillary was the first man to pee on the summit of Mt. Everest.  He later wrote that, having been warned about dehydration, "Tenzing and I had spent a good part of the previous night quaffing copious quantities of hot lemon drink and, as a consequence, we arrived on top with full bladders. Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it."  Well, when you've got to go, you've got to go.

2. In 2006, a Nepali Sherpa named Lakpa Tharke was the first person to strip naked on the summit of Mt. Everest.  He stayed naked for 3 minutes while fellow climbers took pictures.  Various sources said the temperature was -10 degrees, -40 degrees, and "subzero".  The stunt was condemned by the Nepali Mountaineering Association because some Nepalis regard Mt. Everest as sacred.  The photos don't seem to have made it onto the Internet (I looked).

Fun fact: If the temperature was -40 degrees, was that Celsius or Fahrenheit?  Both.  -40 C = -40 F.