Mountains have left mankind awestruck since the beginning of time, with their beauty, mystery, danger, and spiritual appeal. The most forbidding of these, named after George Everest, who undertook in 1823 to survey the Himalayan mountain chain, has become the dernier cri for anyone adventurous (or crazy) enough to challenge the most inhospitable place on earth (also known as “The Third Pole”), the highest mountain on earth.

Ever since it was conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, the world’s highest peak has been littered with corpses of people trying to duplicate Hillary’s astonishing effort. Sir George Everest’s tintype portrait is the frontispiece of this large album of gorgeous black-and-white and color (sometimes hand-colored) photographs, documenting the earliest attempts to scale the mountain up until the present day. Background shots of Tibet and Nepal provide stark contrast to the frozen wastelands on the flanks of Everest.

Each photograph and chapter introduction is captioned in four languages, tracing the conquest of Everest from its earliest notice by Westerners until the breathtaking conquest.