Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition

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The goal of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition of 1999 was to discover whether George Mallory had summited Mt. Everest in the ill-fated attempt he made with Andrew Irvine in 1924. A group of climbers from the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany, set off towards the summit in hope of finding Mallory's camera, which would have had a picture of the summit (if they had in fact summitted). On the North Face, at 8,155 m, the expedition found Mallory's body perfectly preserved. Closer investigation proved that he had been a victim of a tragic fall in which he slipped, tried to correct himself, but did not survive.

During a second expedition in 2001, the team abandoned their search to rescue another climbing party stranded on the mountain and in deep distress. Two of the climbers were suffering from 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.

37-year-old George Leigh Mallory, whose 3rd trip this was to Mt. Everest, set off on June 8th with his 22-year-old climbing partner Andrew Comyn Irvine from their high camp at 26,800-ft. They were spotted at about 28,000-ft, "going strong for the top" by fellow climber Noel Odell climbing up from below. Intervening mists lost them to view and they never returned. Because the two were using oxygen, it was long hoped that they might have made it to the summit before perishing on the descent. In 1972, American Tom Holzel theorized in Mountain magazine that If Malory had taken Irvine's remaining oxygen and combined it with his own, he would have had enough to reach the summit.[See: http://www.velocitypress.com/mallory_irvine.shtml ] Yet Irvine was a genuine novice at climbing having only once before reached 5500-ft in Spitzbergen. Nevertheless, he was tough and expert in keeping the crude oxygen systems in repair.

Because the Tibetan North side of Mt. Everest was closed by the Chinese after WW-II--and the Nepalese side opened up, the mountain was first verifiably climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Westerners were forbidden climbing permits up to 1979, when the Japanese became the first non-communists allowed to climb the north side. During the no trespassing era, information about the difficulties of the North-side route were impossible to ascertain, and the mystery of mallory and Irvine grew.

However, once Chinese-controlled was opened up to climbers, westerners got their first-hand look at the terrain Mallory and Irvine would have had to cover. And in 1999, Mallory's body was discovered at 8150m. The rope-jerk injury around his waist strongly suggested that he had been roped to Irvine when they both fell to their deaths. the Vest Pocket Kodak cameras the two were carrying have not been found in spite of extensive searching on the vast North Face.

Although there are still many experienced Everesters who believe the case is not closed, and that Mallory at least might yet have been the first to summit the mountain, the difficulty of the route (especially the infamous 2nd Step outcropping), the distance from the summit from their last camp, Mallory's apparent exhaustion from a previous attempt and--especially--a fierce 2-hr snow squall which struck them an hour after last seen--all suggest that they did not succeed. The truth remains unknown.