Conrad felt another connection to the man whose body was next to him, the man who had defined for the generations the lure of reaching the summit when he had answered the perennial question “why” with the pithy answer “because it’s there.” It was that Mallory had died utterly alone. Where now a climber almost certainly would have a radio to call for help, Mallory had no one but himself. Yet he had continued to struggle, whether for his teammates, for his Stella, or for himself, it didn’t matter, because what mattered was that he had not given up. That was the quality that did not need to be
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