Did Mallory and Irvine Succeed in Summitting Everest?

As the highest point on the planet, it’s only natural that humans would attempt to conquer Mount Everest. With an oxygen level only a third of what it is at sea level, treacherous crags, crevasses, icy cliffs and unpredictable weather, it wasn’t until 1953 that Sir Edmund Hillary and the sherpa Tenzing Norgay were confirmed to be the first to summit the mountain. But there had been previous expeditions, including George Mallory’s attempt in 1924, which had gotten tantalizingly close.

Mallory and his partner Sandy Irvine died on the mountainside but recent discoveries have reopened the hundred year old question as to whether or not they were actually the first to make it to the top. And that’s just one of the mysteries surrounding what happened to these pioneering climbers.

Everest Facts

Just so we know what we’re dealing with here to get to the top of the world, here are some brief facts about Mount Everest, also known as Sagarmatha in Nepalese and Chomolungma in Tibetan.

It’s not technically the tallest mountain on the planet because there’s a volcano in Hawaii that’s about a mile taller but most of this is under the water. Everest is the highest point on Earth, though, with its peak measured in the year 2020 at 29,032 feet or around 8,850 metres above sea level. For comparison, this is about four fifths as deep as James Cameron made it into the Mariana Trench, about one and a half times as tall as Mount Kilimanjaro or about 6 thousand and 19 Danny Devitos joined by crampons and climbing ropes.

And Everest is actually growing at a rate of between 2 and 4mm per year thanks to continental plate action which seems to be compensating for any erosion that is taking place at the same time.

There are various routes that climbers can use to get to the top, and three faces to choose as your access point, one from the Nepal side and two from the Tibetan side. Mountaineer Alan Arnette lists 20 possible routes between the three faces, however, most of these are deemed as non-standard and some have only had one successful summit. In general, most people use either the South Col Route from the Nepal side, also called the Southeast Ridge Route, and the Northeast Ridge Route from the Tibet side. For reference, Hillary and Norgay successfully summited via the Southeast Ridge Route whereas Mallory and Irvine were last seen on what is now the Northeast Ridge route area.

I remember reading a book about someone climbing Everest, although apologies to the author, I can’t remember what it was called but the thing that I do remember is that he said that because of all the acclimating you have to do, you can’t just climb straight up it, you need to make camps and keep shuttling between them to get used to the atmosphere, sort out your equipment and wait for the right weather. Because of all the upping and downing, you end up climbing the equivalent of about three Everests in your overall attempt.

Nowadays, who hasn’t climbed Everest? With modern gear, established routes and experienced guides and porters, it’s almost become a tourist attraction with 358 people reaching the summit in one day in May 2019. Don’t be too fooled though, it’s still an extreme proposition with a high possibility of death or injury. Since expeditions began in earnest in 1922, over 340 people have died on the slopes due to various things ranging from health issues such as stroke and cardiac arrest, to falls and avalanches.

In April 2015, 19 people died on Everest in an avalanche caused by an earthquake, making it the mountain’s deadliest day. It was also a deadly day in general, as the 7.8 magnitude quake also caused over 9000 deaths in Nepal.

While we’re here, let’s give a shout out to the Sherpas and porters without whom, these early treks especially would not have been possible. While the name “Sherpa” probably makes you think it means a Himalayan mountain guide who helps you carry stuff, it means “people from the East”. Sherpas are actually an ethnic group who originated in Tibet but are now mostly found in Nepal and live high up in the Himalayas. According to an article on CNN’s Travel page:

An American study in 1976 concluded that Sherpas had undergone genetic adaptations after living in one of the world’s highest regions for thousands of years. This gave them an advantage when in high altitudes with low oxygen.

Adaptations include unique hemoglobin-binding enzymes, doubled nitric oxide production, hearts that can utilize glucose and lungs with an increased efficiency in low oxygen conditions.

These days, many Sherpas are involved in helping groups climb Everest or other mountains in the range. As specialists, they organise the portering, accommodations along the way and then at higher altitudes or more dangerous areas, they will go on ahead to set up camps, ropes, ladders or just assess the conditions. Without experienced Sherpas as guides, many Everest hopefuls would fall at the first hurdle.

That’s not to say that Sherpas themselves are immune from death - Nepalese people currently account for 124 of the recorded deaths on Everest, that’s over a third. The next highest nationality is India with 24 deaths. In the early days of mountain exploration, Sherpas and porters were often treated badly and seen as expendable and were sometimes left to die or fend for themselves if things went pear shaped for them on a climb.

I must say, having spent a few days doing the Helambu trek many moons ago, a guide at least is essential. This was more of a hiking route than mountaineering but I want to spend my walking time taking in the scenery, not trying to work out if I’m going the right way. I still need to use sat nav in my own neighborhood so forget about trying to figure something like this out.

If I recall, my family had one guide and two porters but for some reason I still had to carry my own massive rucksack so I don’t know what those other two guys were doing. OK, I just checked with my family and the porters we had carried my parents’ large bags so that my sister and I “experienced the full trekking thing”. Would I have been pushing for this?

Probably not but I wasn’t the one paying or making the decisions so carry my own bag I did. I was 19 at the time and, because I was away at university, had neglected to get into any kind of trekking holiday shape for this expedition. Still, I did manage it and the porters only had to carry my bag once at the end of a very long day.

According to my family again as I have little recollection of this, at one point the porters were literally running past us poor Western saps, carrying two full size rucksacks apiece. This would also have been done in knock-off brand shoes, and fueled by nothing more than vegetable curry and hot lemon drinks.

Sherpas do hold most of the records when it comes to summiting Everest, for example, Kami Rita has successfully climbed it 30 times and Ang Rita did it 10 times without supplemental oxygen.

So yeah, Sherpas. Respect.

George Mallory and the Path to Everest

Even if you don’t know anything about mountaineering or much about Everest, you could probably pick the correct answer in a multiple-choice question about who officially summited Everest first. You may not, however, know anything at all about George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine so let’s remedy that situation now.

George Mallory seems to have been one of those annoying people who was effortlessly intelligent, entertaining, good-looking and athletic. He was also, even more annoyingly, extremely popular and a jolly good fellow to have around. He even appears to have swung both ways, at least before he got married, giving all sides a fair crack at the Mallory magic. He got into mountaineering at about the age of 18 when he went on a trip to the Alps in 1904 which included summiting Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest peak.

For comparison, the top of Mont Blanc is 4,805 metres above sea level, or about 15,764 feet. Everest is 8,850 metres above sea level. Mallory made several trips to the Alps and also clambered all over Ben Nevis in Scotland, Snowdonia in Wales and created a new route up Pillar Rock in England’s Lake District.

Mallory became a teacher and got married in 1914 to Christiana Ruth Turner, known as Ruth, and the pair had three children. You might have noticed that 1914 was the beginning of the First World War and Mallory did indeed go off to fight and was in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He served several roles over the course of the war and made it up to the rank of Lieutenant before eventually making it back home in 1919 and returning to teaching.

Having explored the great outdoors in the pre-war years and then landing head first into a global conflict, Mallory had a bit of an itch that going back to teaching just couldn’t scratch. Enter: the Mount Everest Committee which was set up in 1921. Thanks to his climbing experience, his personal links within the mountaineering community and the aforementioned demi-god status among his peers, Mallory was personally invited to go on the first expedition which would be a reconnaissance trip to work out the best way to the summit which would then be attempted in a separate expedition the next year, in 1922.

Given the circumstances, you’d think he’d jump at the chance, but given that he’d have to be away from his young family for months, Mallory wasn’t actually all that up for it at first. He also didn’t have much faith that the first expedition would be able to chart a course to the summit but his colleagues and his wife persuaded him that he couldn’t miss out on a potentially history-making trip and that he absolutely had to do it. So he did.

The first expedition set off from Darjeeling in India in May 1921. They weren’t exactly travelling light and the party included a hundred mules as well as a large contingent of porters, Sherpas and Bhutias, another ethnic Tibetan group. At this point in history, the expedition was not allowed to access the Himalayas via Nepal as Nepal was basically giving foreigners the finger, so they had to approach from the Tibetan side. Note to self: if you want to climb Everest, maybe meet up a bit nearer.

They had to march 300 miles or 482 km before they even got there! During this time, one of the two experienced British mountaineers died, the other got sick and had to go back and Mallory and the expedition leader were getting right on each other’s nerves. Such auspicious beginnings.

Mallory took photos of Everest and did do some climbing to scope out potential routes but the terrain was very different to his experiences with alpine mountaineering with lots of precarious glacial columns so they had to keep turning back. It also turned out that Mallory wasn’t amazing at everything as none of his photos had come out because he’d put the plates in the wrong way round. Luckily they’d been developed, or not really developed because they were blank, before the expedition moved on so he had a couple of days to feverishly race about retaking them.

The team was also doing lots of geological, botanical and geographical surveying of the whole valley area, producing new and updated detailed maps of the region. Mallory and other team members sketched out plans for where to set up their intermediate resting camps on the mountain for a future summit attempt and this first expedition team made it back to Darjeeling on the 25th of October so the whole thing had taken about 5 months. We should also note that supplemental oxygen cylinders for higher altitudes were not taken or used on this trip.

The weather in the higher reaches of the Himalayas was unpredictable and often potentially deadly so some of their route ideas and camp locations were theoretical as conditions often made it impossible for progress to be made in the time windows they had. It’s also quite funny, although also quite poignant to read about what the mountaineers of 1921 were equipped with for a jaunt up Everest. We know now from the cosy comfort of our various homes that Everest is a pretty cold place so you’re going to want to bundle up but also be able to move easily and not be too weighed down. Luckily, these days there are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to extreme cold weather mountain climbing apparel and also we have the testimonies of all those who have come before so we know what’s a good idea and what isn’t.

The reconnaissance party of 1921 didn’t really have any clue as to the conditions they’d face and the seasoned climbers among them just thought the Himalayas would be a tad more strenuous than their alpine climbs. For a quick reminder, the highest peak in the Alps, Mont Blanc, is about half the height of Everest. There’s a photo of the climbing team including Mallory and while they’ve hopefully got long-johns on or something underneath, they’re basically all wearing a shirt, a jumper and a tweed suit with long wooly socks.

The expedition leader, Charles Howard-Bury is also rocking a waistcoat and fancy watch chain and at least three of the group sported gentlemanly hats as opposed to more practical hats that might help keep their heads warm, although I don’t know if they kept them on the whole time. Their boots were leather hobnailed things, not particularly flexible or lightweight.

Nobody seeing this photo would have any idea that these men, at least one of whom looks like he’s gunning for the front cover of GQ, were standing in one of the least hospitable places on Earth. Indeed, the playwright George Bernard Shaw commented that the group looked like a “Connemara picnic surprised in a snowstorm”, Connemara being a scenic natural area of Ireland, with its highest peak, Benbaun, reaching a mere 730 metres, 2395 feet or 500 Danny Devitos in height.

Just to let you know, there wasn’t a sudden leap forward in climbing gear between this first expedition and the first real summit attempt the following year, with one exception. According to UKClimbing.com, George Finch, a chemist and mountaineer who went on the 1922 trip: “commissioned a special jacket and set of pants made from parachute silk and goose down — the prototypical modern climbing suit. The other climbers laughed at him initially, until they saw how much warmer and more comfortable he was when facing storms on the Tibetan plain.”

As for climbing gear, you know, all the harnesses, ice screws and belts and loops and axes and whatnot, they didn’t really have much of that in the 1920s. They used ropes, pegs and long, wooden-handled ice axes but not much else. This was mostly because extreme mountaineering like this wasn’t a popular pastime so there was no knowledge of what specialist equipment might be useful or necessary, and even if there was, the equipment might not even exist yet.

Let’s also have a quick word about supplemental oxygen. There are, of course, hardcore climbers who want to reach the summit without the aid of extra oxygen and while it’s possible, hardly anyone’s done it. According to Alan Arnette in a piece called “Everest by the numbers: 2025 edition”: “It is rare to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen; only 230 people have ever done so, a scant 1.8% of the total summit since 1953.”

So there you go. Of course, in the pioneer days of the 1920s, taking oxygen up with you not only meant lugging the heavy canisters and tubes around, there was also the matter of if they’d even work and, of course, the principle of the thing.

As per UKClimbing.com again: “Prior to leaving for Tibet the climbing team and the expedition’s organisers spent a lot of time arguing about the ethics of using oxygen. Mallory famously described it as a ‘damnable heresy’, rejecting oxygen on sporting and aesthetic grounds; others were wary for more practical considerations, distrusting the technology and worrying that the benefits of oxygen were outweighed by the weight of the primitive sets then available.”

Let’s just go back to George Finch for a second, he of the commissioned parachute pants - he and his climbing partner, Captain Geoffrey Bruce, used supplemental oxygen, or bottled oxygen, and made it to 8,321 m or 27,300 feet up Everest in the 1922 expedition, a world record climb at the time and only about 500 metres shy of the summit. That sounds really close, but they were so exhausted they had to go back down to a camp to recuperate. That’s the thing with such a high altitude, you really do have to keep going up and down to get used to it. Apparently Mallory was quietly confident he could best Everest even in the initial 1921 exploratory visit but it soon became clear after three attempts by different groups in the 1922 expedition that it was going to be a bit harder than they thought.

Mallory was part of the first and third attempt, both of which almost ended in disaster. In his first attempt, four climbers were roped together and were descending part of the North Ridge when one of them slipped and could have potentially dragged all four men to their deaths had Mallory not managed to quickly whack his pick axe into a good position and loop the rope around it, stopping everyone short. The second attempt was Finch and Bruce’s record which just edged out what Mallory had managed.

In the third and final attempt of this 1922 trip, Mallory, two other climbers and a group of 14 porters were caught in an avalanche which resulted in the deaths of seven of the porters. After this tragedy, the second expedition wrapped up.

Between Everest trips, Mallory was giving talks about his adventures and contributing to books about the previous expeditions. It was also during this period that when asked about why he wanted to climb Everest, he gave the famous answer: “because it’s there.” You can read this as a comment on the human desire to conquer the planet, his individual drive to get to the top of this thing or just as a flippant, slightly annoyed response because he’d probably been asked this question a million times. He also received an Olympic gold medal for “men’s alpinism” in the 1924 Chamonix winter olympics for being part of the then world-record breaking Everest climb.

Unfortunately the touring circuit wasn’t particularly lucrative for him and he managed to get another job as a lecturer but it wasn’t long until the next expedition was being organised and Mallory was invited to be a part of it once more.

Mallory’s Last Climb

The 1924 expedition kicked off in February 1924 and consisted of a team of 12, being either mountaineers, scientists, doctors, photographers, interpreters or a combination of these things, and 60 local porters. Again, three summit attempts were made with Mallory participating in the first and third. He was, again, bullish about his chances of making it and had a photo of his wife, Ruth, with him which he intended to leave at the summit. Mallory’s first attempt started on the 1st of June 1924 but because of terrible conditions, their porters refused to climb higher with any equipment to make camp number 5 so they had to descend back down to camp 4.

The second pair to make an attempt were Edward Norton, who I believe was a different person to the actor, and Theodore Somervell. This attempt also came agonizingly close to the summit, reaching 8,572.8 metres (28,126 ft), another record at the time. They’d basically made it up 29 thirtieths of Everest from the North Ridge, only 280 m (920 ft) or a mere 200 Danny Devitoes from the summit.

They had done this with no supplemental oxygen and had also started a bit later than originally planned. Light is a major point to factor in when doing something like this because you also have to make sure you give yourself enough time to be able to get back down to a campsite before it’s dark. Anyway, they were dehydrated and exhausted and the time window was shrinking rapidly so they had to abandon that attempt.

Somervell almost died because his throat suddenly got blocked up and he basically had to give himself the Heimlich maneuver to be able to dislodge whatever it was. When they’d descended back to camp 4, Norton got snow blind as he’d taken his goggles off earlier and had to be carried further down by a group of porters. He couldn’t see anything for almost 3 days but eventually recovered.

On the 6th of June, 1924, Mallory, who was 37, made what turned out to be his final bid to reach the top of the world. This time his partner was 22 year-old Andrew Irvine, known as Sandy. Mallory had come around to the positives of using supplemental or bottled oxygen by this point and Irvine was technically handy at using it and had even rebuilt the whole set-up during the 1924 expedition to make it less cumbersome and much lighter. Irvine was at Oxford studying chemistry and was also on the rowing team, having beaten Cambridge only the year previously in 1923.

Sounds like another annoyingly naturally smart and athletic person. Unsurprisingly, the two got on well so Mallory thought that, as a pair, they’d have a good shot. We know what happened on their attempt up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it’s a mystery that has endured to this day.

Not helping the physical attempts, or the answer to this mystery, was the communication aspect. Nowadays you can remain in touch with other team members, even if you’re spread over several camps and people at base camp, for example, can easily contact anyone in the wider world. Actually, I just looked into it and people have made calls from the top of Everest, albeit probably not with their usual network carrier.

In the 1920s, they only method to transmit messages on Everest was literally writing them down and either leaving them at a camp for the next person to read whenever they should arrive, or handing them from person to person until the message reached an area where the carrier could travel a bit faster to the nearest town with a post office or telegraph station which was many, many miles away. It was therefore not possible to warn anyone of impending conditions changes or relay any kind of emergency information at all. You were basically on your own and your teammates would just have to rely on you turning back up at some point to confirm the fact that you were still ok.

Actually, I tell a slight lie as there was some visual messaging the team had worked out which we’ll mention later but let’s just say it was very primitive.

Mallory and Irvine struck out from camp 4 for their summit attempt along with eight porters who were carrying the oxygen bottles and food etc. Mallory had also borrowed a Kodak Vest Pocket camera from fellow climber Somervell, to take some pictures from the top, should they get there. The group made it to camp 5 and half of the porters returned to camp 4 with a note from Mallory saying that the weather looked good and “things look hopeful.”

The next day, the 7th of June, Noel Odell who was a geologist and member of the climbing team, went up to Camp 5 with a porter. When he got there, the remaining four porters who had gone with Irvine and Mallory came back down with a couple of notes from Mallory. One of them was addressed to Odell and said that Mallory and Irvine had left their compass in the camp by mistake and that they’d probably be using two cylinders of oxygen each for their final push the next day although “it’s a bloody load for climbing”.

Two cylinders would probably have weighed about 16 pounds or 7.25 kilos. They were strapped onto the climbers backs in a frame harness as seen in almost the last photo taken of Mallory and Irvine alive which Odell had snapped the previous day.

Mallory also said in his note that it was “Perfect weather for the job!” so you can imagine that hopes were high that this would finally be it. The final note he wrote was addressed to John Noel, the photographer and cinematographer for the trip, and said:

Dear Noel,

We’ll probably start early to-morrow (8th) to have clear weather. It won’t be too early to start looking out for us either crossing the rockband under the pyramid or going up skyline at 8 p.m.

He had poignantly signed both his notes: “Yours ever, G. Mallory.” He actually meant 8am, not pm on his note as that would be way too late for a summit attempt but everyone knew what he meant. This is the last definite thing we know about the two climbers.

John Noel had taken the actual last images of the pair, the day after Odell took his photo. Noel took a short film of Mallory, Irvine and the four sherpas who were still with them at the time, walking across a relatively flat area of the North Ridge. Noel guessed he was around 2 miles away from the group i.e. two miles across from them, not 2 miles below, so the figures are very small but definitely people walking along.

Back to the 8th of June, John Noel set his camera up to focus on the pyramid area that Mallory had mentioned which they had both talked about previously so Noel knew where it was. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours of checking the mountainside with a telescope, the climbers were not spotted before the area became obscured by cloud. The last confirmed sighting of the pair was by Noel Odell, the mountaineering geologist, who had climbed up to camp 6 to do some geological stuff and also to help Mallory and Irvine when they descended.

Here’s his account of the final sighting: “At 12.50, just after I had emerged from a state of jubilation at finding the first definite fossils on Everest, there was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere, and the entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow-crest beneath a rock-step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest.

The first then approached the great rock-step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more.”

Odell thought that the climbers were on the second step of the final pyramid climb to the summit, meaning that they were just 800 feet or 240 meters away from their goal. That’s only 150 Danny Devitoes, people, the smallest number yet! He has also been quoted as saying they were “going strong for the top” and he eagerly awaited their return at camp 6.

Unfortunately, bad weather rolled in and as the time dragged on, Odell couldn’t wait at camp 6 any more for them as the tent there could only fit two people in it so he had to descend to a lower camp. Over the next day or so, Odell returned to camps 5 and 6 but didn’t see any sign of Mallory and Irvine. Eventually, on the 10th of June, Odell knew there was no hope of the men returning alive and he used the prearranged sign of six blankets in a cross formation in the snow to signal to other members of the party that Mallory and Irvine were lost and there was no hope.

On the 11th of June, the 1924 Everest expedition started to leave the mountain, minus two of its brightest stars. Both Mallory and Irvine have commemorative plaques, windows and various things named after them so their memories continue. They have a peak each named after them in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains and their legend endured precisely because their bodies were not recovered.

People who die on Everest are usually not recovered because they’ve either fallen into an inaccessible area or it’s just too dangerous or difficult for other party members to bring them down or for helicopters to reach them. There are currently around 200 bodies still on the mountain which leads me to my favourite phrase to make myself feel better about being lazy: “Every dead body on Everest was once a highly motivated person”.

Because everyone knew that Mallory and Irvine were still up there somewhere, if they were found, it could help in determining whether or not they did actually make it to the top. In a piece for the-Independent.com called “Mallory: The Everest Enigma”, Ed Douglas says: “But that last, tantalising glimpse of him, and the sheer courage of what those early climbers attempted, in their gabardine coats and wool sweaters, their hobnailed boots and feeble ropes, meant that Mallory’s story survived.”

Everesting Place - What Happened to Mallory and Irvine?

People have, of course, tried to find Mallory and Irvine over the years but there was no news until a clue was found in 1933. A climbing party found Sandy Irvine’s ice axe lying on a slab underneath the First Step of the final ascent. They assumed that Irvine had slipped to his death from this area.

The big break in the case didn’t happen until as late as 1999, although the story really starts in 1975. A Chinese mountaineering party was camped at about 26,800 feet on the North Face of Everest and one of the party, Wang Hung-bao, reported seeing what he called “English dead”. It was lucky that he mentioned this to someone else as he was killed soon after in an avalanche and that was all the information anyone had.

This story didn’t really catch hold among the mountaineering community as other members of the party said they hadn’t seen anything and they were together at all times. It turned out, however, that Wang Hung-bao had gone off for a short wander by himself from the high camp so it was possible he was the only person to spot something. If there was a body, it was definitely going to be Mallory or Irvine because no other Western climbers had reached that height on the North Face at the time.

In 1999, a group was formed called the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition. They wanted to find the bodies of the climbers to ascertain whether or not they had made the summit. One of the key pieces of evidence to help answer this question would be the Kodak camera Mallory was known to have in his possession.

It was unclear whether Irvine also had a camera but he was interested in photography so there might have also been a second one. It was widely assumed that Irvine would actually be carrying the Kodak as Mallory would have been the climb leader and so any unnecessary weight or bulk for him could be given to Irvine to carry.

Taking the mention of the “English dead” as true, the team mapped out an area of the mountain they thought the body could be, which was an area of about 20 minutes plausible travel in all directions from where the Chinese had made their camp in 1975. After trekking up to camp 6, it only took about an hour for the team to find the body at an elevation of 26,760 ft (8,156 m). Because the ice axe found in 1933 had belonged to him, everyone was assuming that this was Sandy Irvine.

The team was in constant communication with each other and the team leader back at base camp and initially they used codes like “Snickers” and “tea” for the body as they didn’t want anyone else who might be climbing Everest at the time to know what they had found. This was for several reasons - they wanted to work undisturbed, they didn’t want anyone taking risks to try and take a look, and as the body had lain in peace for 75 years at that point, they wanted it to be treated respectfully. If anyone had overheard, they could inform the rest of the world in a matter of minutes.

The body was well-preserved thanks to the cold temperatures, although birds had done some damage to the back side of it. There was a rope around the waist with a frayed end. The team could tell from markings on the skin that there had been a great pull on the body from the rope.

The right leg was broken and the body was lying face down with its arms out as though to stop a fall. The right boot was intact but there were only small pieces of the left. The team also noticed damage to the shoulder blade.

It was only when checking the clothing in more detail that the team realised they weren’t looking at Irvine at all. They found several clothing tags with Mallory’s name on them, and, while it’s conceivable that Irvine could have been wearing Mallory’s clothes, they also found various personal items of Mallory’s with his initials on them and letters addressed to him. They also found such essentials for a climb up the world’s highest mountain as a tin of Brand & Co’s Savoury Meat Lozenges, three monogrammed handkerchiefs and a bill from a department store.

What they didn’t find was a camera and they speculated that maybe he had been carrying a rucksack that wasn’t with the body now. This is plausible as no oxygen tanks were found either and we know Mallory was carrying at least two on his back. By the way, they weren’t just rifling through his pockets, the body was still frozen into the mountainside so it took ages to chip around it and get any pockets open.

There was significant trauma to the ribs found, meaning that Mallory had probably slammed into the mountain while attached to the rope. The team surmised that Mallory and Irvine had been roped together. There was a subsequent search with a metal detector and more excavation of Mallory’s body which uncovered evidence of severe head injury.

After this search, Mallory was reburied under some rocks with a short ceremony.

So what of Andrew “Sandy” Irvine? If he wasn’t where researchers assumed he was, where could he have lain all this time? There hadn’t been any other plausible sightings of what might be his body and the 1999 team didn’t make any progress in finding his possible location.

It wasn’t until September 2024, one hundred years and two months since his death, that Sandy Irvine finally made his presence slightly known. A team filming for National Geographic were on the Central Rongbuk Glacier under Everest’s north face when they spotted a boot that had become visible in the thawing ice. It was clearly an old design and contained the remains of a foot and a long sock.

When they took a closer look, there was a clothing label on the sock bearing the name “A.C. Irvine”. Jimmy Chin, a photographer and filmmaker with the party, thought it likely that the boot had thawed out only a week or so before they found it.

The team got permission to remove the boot from the mountain as ravens were seen pecking at it, and the remains were sent for DNA analysis, although this is probably moot, as Jimmy Chin says: “I mean, dude, there’s a label on it.”

As of the time of writing, nothing further has been found. The National Geographic team haven’t disclosed the exact location of where they found the boot to preserve any potential remains and to keep the trophy hunters at bay, but they’re confident that this clue narrows the search area for Irvine and potentially the camera which could answer, once and for all, if the pair made it to the top before what looks like slipping or being swept to their deaths.

Did They Make It? The Argument For

Let’s be honest, we want them to have made it, right? Personally, I really do, so this section might be a bit more influenced by hope and emotion than the counter arguments but we’re still sticking to the facts, obviously. Here are the main reasons why people think Mallory and Irvine were the first people to get to the top of Everest.

The last sighting by Noel Odell placed them very near the summit and he said they were “going strong” and moving “with considerable alacrity”. From his initial description, it seemed that the pair were on what’s known as the Second Step, which is very near the top. Jake Norton, who has summited Everest several times and was on the team that actually found Mallory’s body says on his website: “if they were atop the Second Step at that time, it is almost unthinkable that they did NOT reach the summit: with all major challenges behind them, it would be smooth sailing from there to the top of the world.”

The missing photograph. George Mallory was known to have a photo of his wife on him when he made his last climb, which he was going to leave at the top. When the research team found him in 1999, he had all kinds of odds and ends on him, but there was no photograph. This has led many people to believe that he did, in fact manage to leave it at the top. As a previous almost-summiter, it seems unlikely that Mallory would want to place it anywhere else.

When the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition searched his body, Mallory was also found to have a pair of snow goggles in one of his pockets. We know from the experience of Edward Norton, no relation to Jake who we just mentioned, that snow blindness could be extremely dangerous. Remember how he took his goggles off, then became snowblind and couldn’t see for nearly 3 days? There’s no way Mallory would risk anything like that.

The fact that the goggles were folded and deep in a pocket seems to suggest that they were on the way back down in lessening light when the accident happened.

The possibility of the camera. If Irvine’s body is ever found, it is hoped that the camera will be with it. Kodak has said that there’s a chance any film could still be recovered and then we’ll know for sure if Mallory and Irvine were, in fact, the first to summit Everest. Until this crucial clue is found, it’s unlikely that we can ever solve this mystery for sure.

Did They Make It? The Argument Against

Alright, let’s take a look at the counterarguments in order.

Odell’s final sighting has not been conclusively proven to have been on the Second Step. In fact, Odell himself soon changed his mind and thought it more likely there were on the First step, putting them further from the summit and also at such a time of day that a summit attempt was not really feasible. Would this have put them off if they were on the edge of the safe cut-off time but thought a push for the summit was within their grasp? We don’t know that but what we do know is that if they weren’t past the Second Step when Odell saw them, it wasn’t actually likely that they could have made it up there anyway.

As no-one had yet attempted this route yet, Mallory and Irvine would have been unprepared for the difficulty of free-climbing this headwall given their lack of supplies. Everest wasn’t officially summited via the North side until 1960 by a Chinese party. Researcher Gareth Thomas shares more information on this on his website: “Although they were delayed for three hours at the headwall of the second step, porter Qu Yinhua eventually climbed the step with the aid of a shoulder stand from one of his companions and a piton nailed into a crack in the rock.

Hence, the Chinese proved that the second step could be climbed, but only in extremis, since Qu was required to remove his boots to get purchase on the rock and subsequently lost his toes and heel to frostbite. Later attempts on the Northeast Ridge have made use of a metal ladder left by a subsequent Chinese expedition at this critical point.”

Mountaineer Conrad Anker, who was also part of the team that found Mallory’s body, attempted to free climb this area in 1999 but did end up briefly stepping on the ladder although he hypothesised that “Mallory could have done that.” He managed to do it for real in 2007 and other people have also managed it in various weather conditions so while this started as a point to say that it might have been too difficult for Mallory and Irvine without any climbing aids, it’s not 100% clear that they couldn’t have done it.

This actually leads into a side theory that they didn’t take this route at all, instead going off-script and trying a route that’s known as “the couloir” instead. You didn’t just have to climb up, remember, you also had to get back down. If Mallory and Irvine assessed the Second Step some distance before they reached it, which they would have, they might have decided it wasn’t feasible and decided to go down the Couloir route instead.

This is actually not a bad theory because Edward Norton had made his earlier world record climb by going along that route. He was too exhausted to continue and had to descend, but remember, he had not taken supplemental oxygen on his attempt. Mallory and Irvine were all rigged up and good to go.

Nobody had attempted the Second Step before. Norton had blazed something of a trail down a different route. Why would they have NOT given his route a whirl, confident that they could make it further with the help of the extra oxygen?

If they had gone down this other route, it might also explain why it took so long for Mallory to be found, because everyone was looking in the wrong place.

Gareth D. Thomas posits that Mallory and Irvine could have made it, then returned via the Couloir again, meaning that when Mallory fell, it would have been from a lower elevation than presumed, thus explaining why his body was found in a neat position where it looks like he tried to break his own fall, rather than all splayed out like it might have been if he’d landed from a greater height. On his website, Thomas says:

Mallory and Irvine’s descent along a lower route would explain this shorter fall. A return from the Couloir is one of very few explanations for this scenario, and I believe the best.

He also points out that very few climbers go from the couloir to the summit, then back along Norton’s route so maybe any remaining clues would be found in that area somewhere. Everest mountaineer Jake Norton also shares the opinion on the condition of Mallory’s body, saying on his website: “having seen other bodies (namely, Sergei Arsentiev) who did fall from the ridge crest, there is such a stark difference in body posture, condition, damage/injury, etc., that it makes it very difficult for me to imagine (Mallory) falling from the Ridge and ending up relatively intact.”

This is one of those mysteries, however, that can’t currently be proven either way. What we do know is that Odell saw the pair at nearly 1pm. If they were at the first step, they were much too far behind time to try a summit attempt, especially if they did go via the couloir which is a longer route with terrain unknown to the pair past where Edward Norton got to. Some researchers question whether Mallory would have chosen Norton’s route given that the snow conditions were bad when Norton had to turn around and they were going up only a few days later.

The location of Odell’s sighting has been questioned as his apparent vantage point doesn’t line up perfectly with the view he said he had. He didn’t take any pictures so we can’t crosscheck accurately. He changed his mind about where the climbers must have been in pretty short order so we can’t say for sure where on the route they were and therefore what options were open to them that late in the day. Let’s get back to the other arguments now.

The photograph. Yes, Mallory said he’d leave it at the summit and the team didn’t find it on his body which, in our hopes and dreams, points to him having indeed left it at the top of Everest. If we speculate logically, we can also say that maybe at some point he knew they wouldn’t make it, so either took the photo out to place it at their highest reached point, or to say goodbye to his wife because he was sure they were going to die.

We cannot know for sure that he even had the photo in the first place, although he had a lot of other random paperwork on him so it doesn’t seem that unlikely. Nobody has ever mentioned seeing the photo at the summit but of course, if it was ever put up there, it likely would have blown away or rotted to nothing by now. Unfortunately, the absence of the photo on Mallory does not prove the presence of it on the summit.

The snow goggles. These were found folded and unbroken in one of Mallory’s inside pockets, the inference being that he hadn’t needed them so was therefore descending the mountain in worsening light. That Mallory was descending is not in doubt, but unfortunately, we can’t extrapolate this one detail to mean that they definitely made it to the top before coming back down.

The camera. All hopes for the camera and therefore possible proof of a successful summit now lie with finding the remains of Andrew Irvine. If he is ever found, and the camera is still with him, the film will also need to be successfully recovered in order to see what’s on it.

That’s a lot of ifs but the tantalising possibility of it is what keeps the researchers going. Finding Irvine’s boot might potentially narrow the search area, but over the course of the century since he died, thaws, freezes and avalanches mean that boot could have easily have ended up quite a way from the rest of his remains. Anecdotally, there have been a couple of possible sightings of his body over the decades but all have been in different areas and none have been corroborated.

Also, remember that conditions on Everest are quite dynamic, so even if a body is spotted on one expedition, heavy snow or a rockfall will make it totally invisible to another.

Here’s another strong argument against them reaching the top. At 2pm, when they would have been relatively close, elevation wise, a snowstorm hit the mountain. Mallory and Irvine wouldn’t have had any warning about this as there was no way of communicating with them at the time. Howard Somervell, one of the group’s climbers, had been taking barometric readings which showed a large drop in pressure at base camp, meaning terrible conditions for anyone at higher altitudes.

Graham Hoyland, one of the team who found Mallory and himself a distant relative of Somervell, said in an interview with CNN:

They were climbing into an absolute sh*tstorm – not only a blizzard but a sort of snow bomb.

The article goes on to say: “Hoyland has experienced ‘snow bombs’ himself on Everest. ‘It’s terrifying – the temperature drops hugely, you’re gasping for breath. There are winds of 100 knots. One guy I know was blown off the mountain, and ended up further up the mountain,’ he said.

Effectively, the drop in air pressure meant that the mountain suddenly became higher – around 650 feet higher, to be precise. Hoyland calls it ‘an invisible death trap.’”

He also points out that the clothes the pair were wearing would not have been very effective against such cold weather. After hoping that the mountaineering pioneers had managed to succeed, Hoyland has since concluded: “unfortunately when you read facts and they’re different, you have to change your mind. You can’t carry on being a wishful thinker.”

In his last letter to his wife, dated 27th of May 1924, Mallory also notes that he’s not exactly in fighting form. He starts off saying: “Dear Girl, this has been a bad time altogether.” He then recounts a near-death experience he had when slipping into a crevasse and somehow managed to save himself with his ice axe while “below was a very unpleasant black hole.” No-one could hear him shouting but he eventually managed to get back on track but “cutting against time at the end after such a day just about brought me to my limit.”

He then says: “My one personal trouble has been a cough. It started a day or two before leaving the [Base Camp] but I thought nothing of it. In the high camp it has been the devil. Even after the day’s exercise I have described I couldn’t sleep but was distressed with bursts of coughing fit to tear one’s guts - & so headache & misery altogether; besides which of course it has a very bad effect on one’s going on the mountain.

Somervell also has a cough which started a little later than mine & he has not been at his physical best.”

Indeed, we mentioned Somervell nearly dying from a constricted throat earlier. He’s quoted as saying:

We were unroped and Norton was ahead and I couldn’t breathe in or out so I sat down in the snow and made violent efforts to cough. But I couldn’t and I thought ‘Oh well, this is the end. Cheerio everybody!’

And then I remembered my medical training — that most of our breathing is done with the diaphragm and so I gave one huge cough and at the same time pressed hard with my hands into my tummy. That did the trick. Up came a horrible black slough which I think was the inside of my larynx. Intense pain —but complete relief. It hurt like hell but it was air in sufficient quantity to keep me alive. If only it had happened higher up, we might both have gone on very much further.

Incidentally, Somervell thought it “quite possible” that Mallory and Irvine did make it to the top.

Anyway, Mallory was in bad health at the start of his final attempt and says: “The physique of the whole party has gone down sadly. The only chance now is to get fit & go for a simpler quicker plan.(…) But I’m quite doubtful if I shall be fit enough.”

At the end of his last letter, he writes: “It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud.”

Unfortunately, the tally marks on the “against” side of the argument are starting to add up more and more. I don’t want to do Mallory a disservice by saying I don’t think he could have made it now but when you factor in the snowstorm, the unknown territory of the final stretch and his under par health, it does seem less and less likely. Conrad Anker, who discovered Mallory’s body in 1999 has concluded that it’s “possible, but highly improbable, that they made it to the top.”

Mallory’s son John was only three when his dad died. He has publicly stated his view as: “To me, the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is only half done if you don’t get down again.” This seems a bit harsh to me but I guess he probably has deep-rooted abandonment issues and maybe it wasn’t meant as coldly as it appears in print.

Another Mystery

Everyone’s hopes, it seems, still rely on finding that camera which leads us to the other mystery involving the bodies. Rumour has it, Mallory’s is no longer where the expedition team found it and subsequently reburied it. Rumour also has it that Irvine was located a while ago and has also since been removed from the mountain. What’s going on here?

Jamie McGuinness, a man who has climbed Everest six times and been on the lookout for the historic duo, thinks that Mallory and even Irvine were removed some time in the early 2000s. In an article on The Guardian’s website, McGuinness says: “Irvine’s body is almost certainly no longer up there. We gave it a good search with drones, and we spotted several other bodies, so we know we weren’t missing anything of the right size.”

Fellow climber Mark Synnott said that they’d also gone back to exactly where Mallory should have been. As per the Guardian article by Ed Douglas:

We had GPS co-ordinates for where the body was,” Synnott said. “We flew the drone to that spot. We took photos. I looked at the pictures really carefully with Thom [Pollard], who had been there [in 1999].” Pollard was the last of the American team to leave the body and told Synnott that one of Mallory’s legs was still clearly visible. “I feel if Mallory’s body was still there, we would have seen it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why remove the body?

I’m not 100% convinced that Mallory has been moved, though. Synnot didn’t physically revisit the site, he was looking at drone photos which isn’t the same as being able to move rocks aside with your hands to see if something’s underneath. If Mallory’s leg was visible, that would mean it was probably open to the elements, scavenging birds etc. Therefore it could have been bleached of colour, covered in snow, covered in rocks or lots of other things.

There would be no real reason to move him now anyway, as no evidence of a successful summit was found on his body.

In 2012, McGuinness was at Base Camp and asked a China Tibet Mountaineering Association official if they’d removed Irvine’s body from the mountain in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. According to McGuinness, the official replied, somewhat horrifyingly: “It was thrown off the mountain a lot earlier than that.”

Oh no! What could be the reason for something like that? If it’s true, Ed Douglas writes that “It is more likely connected to longstanding sensitivities in China about the sceptical western reaction to China’s ascent of the mountain more than 60 years ago.”

What he’s talking about is that the Chinese group was officially the first to summit Everest via the North Ridge route in 1960, remember the guy who had to take his boot off and lost a heel? If Irvine’s body was found and there was evidence or potential evidence that he and Mallory had actually made it 36 years earlier, that might be enough of a reason to quietly remove said evidence.

While “thrown off the mountain” might have been used for dramatic effect, there are several researchers into Mallory and Irvine’s climb who do think that Irvine probably has been removed or, at least, moved from a location where he might have been seen more easily. The thing is, is that boot that was found just last year in 2024. Does this mean that the rest of Irvine is still up there or was it already detached from his body when the rest of it was taken off the mountain? There are different schools of thought as to where Irvine might be lying and as we’ve said before, it’s quite possible that his body could have moved anyway due to geologic and meteorologic activity on the mountain.

Another rumour is that both bodies have been removed and are in a museum somewhere in China. I suppose we must point out that Chinese mountaineering authorities say that none of this is true and they haven’t done anything with the bodies.

The “China moved them” idea is verging into conspiracy theory territory and while we’re definitely up for some of that on this channel, all we have in this case are a few rumours and second and third-hand accounts. Here’s one such example from a website called explorersweb.com which mentions Mark Synnott, the climber looking for Irvine who we mentioned a minute ago:

Retired U.S. Marine Wayne Wilcox reported that he was in Beijing for the Olympics when his wife had a conversation with a British diplomat. The diplomat told her he had previously talked with Pan Duo, the only female member of the 1975 Everest North Side expedition. She became the first Chinese woman and the second woman overall to summit Everest.

Apparently, Pan Duo told the diplomat, who told Wilcox’s wife, who told Wilcox, who told Synnot and Thom Pollard that the climbers had found a body at about 8,200m. She mentioned there was a camera with the body but when the film was developed in Beijing, the film had no pictures. When she later spoke to journalists (according to Wilcox), she changed her account and said that she recalled no camera.

If this story is true, it means that the failure to develop the pictures still leaves us in the dark as to the summit attempt. But this story is third or fourth hand and the alleged originator of it changed the most salient detail at a later date so we can’t really put much stock in it as reliable evidence.

Let’s end with a bit more muddying of the waters. In 2010, a documentary film came out called “The Wildest Dream” about Mallory’s disappearance which included two climbers, Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding, taking on the Second Step after removing the ladder the Chinese had installed and with no supplemental oxygen. Here’s what Houlding says about it:

People go on about how the Second Step is a 90 ft cliff, but to climb it, it’s more like a 12ft cliff. There’s a gully and an exposed step, but [that section] is not hard. Then there’s a snow patch and the vertical section. It was easy. I was a bit disappointed. I’d been worrying whether I was going to be able to do it. They could have done it. No question.

Houlding was 7 years younger than Mallory at the time though, and in better health with a far better support team behind him. He was also tackling the step many decades after Mallory so there would have been melting and erosion since then. He also wasn’t caught up in a snowstorm at the critical moment so wind your neck back in, mate.

In this case, the lack of evidence is the only evidence we have that Mallory and Irvine might have got to the top of Everest before Hillary and Norgay. For his part, Sir Edmund Hillary seems fine with the idea that Mallory might have beaten him to it because, like Mallory’s son, he puts as much emphasis on the descent as the ascent. He’s quoted as saying:

If it were discovered that Mallory had, in actual fact, set foot on the top of Everest, obviously it would make some difference to Tenzing and myself. For 33 years, we have been regarded as the heroic figures who first reached the summit of Everest. Well, now I guess we’d be just downgraded a little bit, to being the first two men who reached the summit and actually got safely down again. Which brings up a point, of course.

If you climb a mountain for the first time and die on the descent, is it really a complete first ascent of the mountain? I’m rather inclined to think, personally, that maybe it’s quite important, the getting down. And the complete climb of a mountain is reaching the summit and getting safely to the bottom again.

Well of course he’d personally think that because he was the first to do it. If he’d got stuck halfway on the way back down and had to be airlifted off, he’d probably still claim the title of first to the summit, don’t you think? I would, anyway.

If the camera, or possibly even two cameras, are still on the mountain somewhere, we might get an answer to this mystery but until then, all we’ve got is wishful thinking and the hope that wherever they are, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine are resting in peace.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the first confirmed climbers to summit Mount Everest?

Sir Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were confirmed to be the first to summit Mount Everest in 1953.

What is the height of Mount Everest?

Mount Everest is 29,032 feet or around 8,850 meters above sea level.

What are the main routes to the summit of Mount Everest?

The main routes to the summit are the South Col Route from the Nepal side and the Northeast Ridge Route from the Tibet side.

What is the significance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine’s 1924 expedition?

George Mallory and Sandy Irvine’s 1924 expedition is significant because they were tantalizingly close to summiting Everest, but they died on the mountain. Their fate and whether they reached the summit remain one of the great mysteries of mountaineering.

What challenges did early Everest climbers face?

Early Everest climbers faced challenges such as treacherous crags, crevasses, icy cliffs, unpredictable weather, and low oxygen levels. They also had limited climbing gear and no established routes.

What is the role of Sherpas in Everest expeditions?

Sherpas play a crucial role in Everest expeditions by organizing portering, accommodations, setting up camps, ropes, ladders, and assessing conditions. They have genetic adaptations that make them more efficient in high-altitude, low-oxygen conditions.

What is the significance of the Kodak camera in the Mallory and Irvine mystery?

The Kodak camera is significant because it was known to be in the possession of George Mallory or Andrew Irvine. If found with photographs, it could potentially provide evidence of whether they reached the summit of Everest.

What are some of the arguments for and against Mallory and Irvine reaching the summit?

Arguments for include their last sighting near the summit and the missing photograph of Mallory’s wife. Arguments against include the difficulty of the Second Step and the snowstorm that hit the mountain around the time they were near the summit.

What is the significance of the boot found in 2024?

The boot found in 2024 is significant because it bears the name ‘A.C. Irvine,’ suggesting it belonged to Andrew Irvine. This discovery could help narrow the search area for his remains and potentially the camera that might provide evidence of their summit attempt.

What is the current status of Mallory and Irvine’s bodies?

Mallory’s body was found in 1999 and reburied, but there are rumors that it has since been moved. Irvine’s body has not been definitively located, and there are speculations that it might have been removed from the mountain.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Did Mallory and Irvine Succeed in Summitting Everest?
• Hero image source by anogh / openverse, cc0.