Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The goal of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition of 1999 was to discover evidence of whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had been the first to summit Mt. Everest in their ill-fated attempt of 8-9 June 1924. The expedition was organized by regular Everest expedition leader Eric Simonson and informed by researcher Jochen Hemmleb, with a team of climbers from the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany. Hemmleb's investigations of sketchy reports of earlier sightings and photographs had led him to identify what he believed was the area in which Irvine's body lay, some distance below where his ice axe had been found by Percy Wyn-Harris on the expedition led by Hugh Ruttledge in 1933. The team hoped in particular to find a camera on Irvine's body which, had the pair been successful, should have contained a picture of the summit. Within hours of commencing the search on 1 May 1999, Conrad Anker found a body on the North Face, at 8,155 m; but to their surprise it was that of Mallory, not Irvine.

Mallory lay face-down, arms outstretched as if to break a sliding fall, with one broken leg and a serious wound to the skull, but otherwise very well-preserved and relatively uninjured. It seemed probable that he had been a victim of a fall while roped together with Irvine. The body was only an hour or two from the safety of their camp.

Many artifacts were found on the body, but no camera. Three discoveries in particular fuel continuing speculation.

First, Mallory's goggles were in his pocket, suggesting he was descending at night when he fell (though he may have had a second pair, ripped off in his fall).
Secondly, on an envelope he had noted the amounts of oxygen in each of their cylinders, figures which suggest a slight possibility that the pair may have taken three cylinders on their final climb, rather than two as generally believed.
Lastly it was absence of an artifact which was perhaps most intriguing: it had been reported that Mallory carried a photograph of his beloved wife Ruth with him which he planned to place on the summit in the event of success: it was not among his many personal possessions.

The expedition conducted a Christian service for Mallory and buried his remains.

[edit] Second expedition

During a second expedition in 2001, the team abandoned their search for Irvine to rescue several other climbing parties stranded on the mountain and in deep distress. The victims included 2 Chinese glaciologists, three Siberian climbers, an American guide, and his Guatemalan client. Several of the climbers were suffering from High altitude cerebral edema, a condition where the victim can hallucinate, lose balance and eventually the ability to even walk, due to lack of oxygen (which high up on Everest is only one-third that at sea level) in the brain. This condition has led to many deaths and injuries in mountaineering.

In the spring of 2004, Jake Norton and Dave Hahn returned to Everest with a film team and support from Sherpas Danuru and Tashi to look once more for evidence of Andrew Irvine and answers to what happened to Mallory & Irvine in 1924. While the team was able to scour the Yellow Band, the combination of a small team and uncooperative weather eliminated most chances of a major discovery.

During that same season, search parties were on the mountain from the website EverestNews as well as with Graham Hoyland (Howard Somervell's grand-nephew and member of the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition) who was a member of Russell Brice's expedition that year.