The quest for the world’s highest peaks

What makes men and women climb high? Most commonly, according to Daniel Light, ‘the prosecution of science or the advancement of empire’. It might also be general flag-waving or just personal fulfilment, as in the case of ‘private traveller’ Godfrey Vigne, who opened his English eyes to the wonder of the Karakoram in the baleful 1930s.

London-based Light – ‘a keen climber, not a serious mountaineer’ – has produced a colourful survey of mostly 19th-century mountaineering across the globe, starting with the geographer and natural philosopher Alexander von Humboldt and his five-year expedition to South America. The baron came back convinced he had got within 1,000ft of the highest point on Earth, then thought to be Chimborazo in Ecuador, and told tales of a strange sickness that came on at altitude: vomiting, dizziness, shortness of breath and bleeding from lips and gums.

The White Ladder, Light’s hugely entertaining book, is divided into four sections, following four types of climbers in a loosely chronological narrative. They are imperial surveyors of Asia; sporting alpinists; ‘amateurs’; and the first to tackle Everest. The book ends after George Mallory vanishes ‘going strong for the top’ – so before Sir John Hunt and the triumph of 1953. The author has a lot of fun as he makes his way up and down. In the closing paragraph of Part One he reveals:

The sport of ‘alpinism’ would bring a new urgency to the quest for the world’s highest peaks, personified by a man whose ego would eventually outgrow the mountains of Europe. He arrived with a bang, and his name was Whymper.

The tone is brisk, chummy and companionable: the reader feels safe on the end of Light’s rope. ‘There are 14 mountains of 8,000 metres or more in the world,’ he explains. ‘That’s roughly 26,250ft in old money.’ Most lie along a 300-mile stretch of Nepal’s border with Tibet or in the Karakoram.