Mallory’s Mystery Solved? Remains of Sandy Irvine found on Everest
On 29 May 1953 Mount Everest was officially summited for the first time. The climbers, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, entered the history books for their achievement, something nobody had managed before.
At least, that is what is believed. However there was another ascent, decades earlier, which may have achieved the impossible and reached the top of Everest. In June 1924 two mountaineers set out to reach the summit, and may indeed have done so.
The two, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, never made it back to their camp. They died at some point during the attempt, but the crucial and unanswered question since has remained: did they make the summit and die on the descent? Were these two the first to reach the top of Everest?
Mallory’s body was found in 1999, but no conclusions could be drawn from that discovery. It was his companion, Andrew “Sandy” Irvine who had carried the camera. Now, a National Geographic documentary film team have found a crucial clue in unravelling the mystery, the partial remains of Irvine.
According to a report in National Geographic, the documentary team that included the filmmakers and climbers Jimmy Chin, Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher spotted a boot emerging from a glacier. The team believe the boot had been trapped in the glacier, only emerging now to be discovered.
The whereabouts of the rest of Irvine’s body is currently unknown, but the discovery has given searchers a massively reduced area in which to concentrate their efforts. As to the identify of the owner of the boot, of that there can be no doubt: Sandy Irvine wrote his name on the sock inside.
Header Image: The North Face of Everest. The route, in green, that Mallory and Irvine would have taken to reach the top of Everest. The question mark notes the second step which is believed by many to have defeated them. Marker No. 1 is where Mallory’s body was found in 1999. Source: Luca Galuzzi / CC BY-SA 2.5. Insert: Andrew Irvine (1902-1924) during his college years at Merton (Oxford) (public domain)
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