Famous Explorer’s Remains Discovered on Mount Everest Offer Clues in a Century-Long Mystery

In 1924, British explorer Andrew Comyn Irvine—nicknamed Sandy—and his partner George Mallory aimed to become the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest. But the two climbers disappeared on the expedition, prompting a decades-long mystery in the mountaineering world.

Mallory’s remains were found by alpinist Conrad Anker in 1999. But many still wondered: What happened to Irvine? And did the two ever reach the summit?

Last month, below the north face of Mount Everest, a documentary team from National Geographic made a discovery that has revived these long-standing questions. Protruding from the ice in the melting glacier was an old leather boot. Inside, they discovered a frozen foot and sock.

“I lifted up the sock and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it,” Jimmy Chin, a climber and filmmaker, tells National Geographic’s Grayson Schaffer. The team quickly realized the significance of their find—that the remains belonged to the famously lost climber. “We were all literally running in circles dropping F-bombs,” Chin adds.

Unraveling exactly what happened to the climbers on the 1924 expedition could have big implications for Mount Everest’s history. The first successful documented ascent of the peak happened in May 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the top. If Irvine and Mallory had done the same on their expedition 29 years before, it would make them the first people to summit the world’s highest peak.

The new finding doesn’t solve that century-old mystery. But it opens an avenue for future breakthroughs, just like the discovery of Mallory’s body did 25 years ago.

“It feels like Andrew [Irvine] is on the level with Mallory now, like he’s stepped out of the shadow,” says Jochen Hemmleb, a writer and mountaineer who has written about the men’s disappearance, to Outside magazine’s Frederick Dreier.

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Mallory’s body was still connected to a climbing rope when it was found in 1999, writes the New York Times’ Hank Sanders. Assuming the other end of the rope had been tied to Irvine, that discovery signified the two mountaineers might have slipped and fallen on the peak.

Over the years, many theories arose regarding the duo’s disappearance. Mark Synnott, American mountaineer and writer who published the book The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession and Death on Mount Everest, tells Outside he believes that a group of Chinese climbers may have found the bodies as early as 1960, along with a camera Irvine was carrying.

Nonetheless, Irvine’s boot “feels like another hugely important piece of the puzzle,” Synnott tells the publication. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for a discovery like this.”

But Julie Summers, Irvine’s great-niece, tells National Geographic that this discovery refutes the theories that Chinese climbers found the explorers first. After Chin identified Irvine’s boot, he called Summers to share the news.

“I have lived with this story since I was a 7-year-old, when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest,” Summers, who is also Irvine’s biographer, tells the PA Media news agency.

Some have suggested the camera, if it were to be found and examined, might contain photographic evidence of the men reaching the summit, writes the Washington Post’s Andrew Jeong. But Summers tells the Post that even if the camera is recovered, it might not provide definitive answers.

The boot, however, “tells the whole story about what probably happened,” Summers says to National Geographic. She suspects the remains were probably caught by an avalanche and trapped under the glacier.

“I’m regarding it as something close to closure,” she adds.

Alexa Robles-Gil | | READ MORE

Alexa Robles-Gil is a bilingual science journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Undark, Inside Climate News and more.