The Great Ganesha

The mountain seems to constantly fascinate Westerners. Or the BBC, at any rate. Yet again, Everest is in the news. This time, no one has summitted (or at least, no one worthy of mention in the news), but a climber has used replicas of clothes worn by Mallory and Irvine – who are alleged to have summitted a full 29 years before Norgay and Hillary. The climber, Graham Hoyland, did this to disprove the theory that the Mallory team’s clothes were not protective enough to allow them to reach the top. Contrary to all expectations however, not only were the clothes good enough, but other climbers seeing Hoyland dressed that way, wanted to know where he got them from! Hoyland says:

“All the other climbers thought the jacket was stylish and wanted to know where they could buy their own versions of the clothes!”

For those interested in climbing, you may (or may not) be surprised to know that the clothes held up extremely well to the test. Hoyland says:

“We both got too hot working on the glacier so we felt that Mallory’s clothing would have been more than adequate to climb to the top in”

You might think that all those layers must be heavy. In fact, they were lighter than today’s synthetic wear! Says, Professor Parsons (one of the project leaders):

“The results stand out as a challenge for future outdoor innovators because Mallory’s clothing and footwear was 20% and 40% lighter respectively.”

Not only were they lighter, but it seems they were also more comfortable to wear than the regular synthetic clothes. Hoyland says:

“I immediately found the underclothes warm to put on, whereas the modern polypropylene underwear feels cold and clammy”

So, the clothes were warm, comfortable to wear, made to fit and to top it all off, the clothes were not as stinky as the polypropylene stuff tends to get. Says, Hoyland:

“[The polypropylene underclothes and outer fleeces are pre-sized and] are unforgiving in stretch, and begin to smell unpleasant if worn for more than a couple of days. There is a harsh synthetic sensation next to your skin. By contrast, the Mallory clothing was made to fit me.

All is not well however, there were some problems (nothing’s perfect!):

“The immediate problem was fastening buttons with cold fingers.”

Despite this drawback, this finding is pretty cool. I’ve never been a big fan of the synthetic stuff for the usual reasons: it doesn’t fit well, it smells and it can get pretty uncomfortable at times. This is nice.

For the full article click here.

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