In 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set off from their camp high on Mt. Everest in a bid to become the first to reach the summit. Party members claim to have seen the pair only a few hundred meters shy of the top before clouds obscured the view. That was the last time anyone saw the men alive.
Since then, the burning question has been… did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit before dying? If so, they would have done it almost 30 years BEFORE Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic climb.
Andrew Irvine
Seems like a question impossibly lost to time and circumstance. However, some have speculated that there could be a way to know the answer. After all, what does everyone do when they make it to the top of a mountain? Well, they take a picture of themselves up there. And it just so happens that Andrew Irvine was carrying a Kodak camera with him. Find the camera, develop the old film, answer one of mountaineerings oldest questions… and possibly rewrite the history books!
Understandably, this camera has become a bit of a Holy Grail for historians and the climbing community. In 1999 an expedition was launched to try to find the lost climbers, and they managed to successfully uncover Mallory’s remains. Of course, he wasn’t the one holding the camera… but clues on his body have helped to strengthen speculation about the pairs fate. For example, Mallory was supposed to carry a photo of his wife to leave on the summit. This photo was not found on his body.
With the ’99 expedition raising more questions, it became clear that unless the camera could be found, this would remain a mystery forever. Enter Tom Holzel.
Holzel believes that, after decades of pouring over maps and photos, he may have finally pinpointed the resting place of Irvine. It shows up as only an “oblong blob” on a high resolution picture of the mountain, but it is along the descent route the climbers are thought to have taken.
“Based upon what happened, the body could only be in a certain number of places,” Holzel says. “The panoramic view enabled us to figure out where he could have gone down.”
A new expedition is being put together to inspect the blob, and the area around it, in 2011. If it is in fact Irvine, and if the camera is found on his body, and if the film is salvageable… maybe this mystery will be put to bed, or maybe, just maybe, the history of that mountain will be rewritten.
But that is a lot of “ifs.” What else might that oblong blob be?
“What Tom sees might very well be a body,” Simonson says, adding, “but it might not be Irvine’s body.” An estimated 120 corpses still remain on Everest.
– Eric Simonson, the guide who led the expedition that found Mallory, Scientific American
That is a pretty gruesome statement about the dangers of mountaineering. I guess we will know more in 2011.
