The Everest Story by Tim Vicary. Part 12.
Watch on KineScope.
Chapter twelve
The final question
By 1999, many people, both men and women, had climbed Everest. They came from the USA, India, China, Japan, Italy, and many more countries. One climber, Goran Kropp from Sweden, rode his bicycle to Everest, climbed the mountain without oxygen, and rode home again. But still nobody had found an answer to the question: what happened to Mallory and Irvine?
A climber called Jochen Hemmleb became interested in this problem in 1988. He studied the problem for years, and his bedroom was full of books and photos of Everest. But with every new piece of information, there were new questions.
In 1924, Odell was at 7,926 metres, climbing up behind Mallory and Irvine towards Camp 6. At 12.50 p.m. the clouds cleared, and Odell could see the summit ridge of Everest above him. High up on the ridge, he saw two tiny black dots moving on the snow. They were moving quickly. He saw them climb a rock step on the ridge. Then the clouds came back and they disappeared.
There are three rock steps on the north-east ridge: the First Step, the Second Step, and the Third Step. The Second Step is much harder to climb than the First and Third Steps. It is a steep rock wall, like the front of a ship. But it is only about 250 vertical metres from the summit; and the Third Step is even closer. So the first question is: which of the three steps were Mallory and Irvine climbing when Odell last saw them?
In 1924, Odell said it was the ‘rock step at a very short distance from the base of the final pyramid.’ And both of them climbed quickly to the top of it. It is difficult to climb the Second Step, but much easier to climb the Third Step. And the First Step is quite a long distance from the summit.
So at 12.50 p.m., Mallory and Irvine were probably at either the Second Step or the Third Step – only ‘a very short distance’ from the summit. If that is right, did they stop there? Probably not. All the difficult parts of the climb were behind them. They had oxygen, and Odell said they were ‘moving quickly.’
So did they reach the summit, before they died? Many people think it is quite possible. But others think Odell made a mistake. ‘He only saw them for a moment,’ they say. ‘He probably saw them climb the First Step – much further from the summit.’
Reinhold Messner agrees. ‘Mallory did not climb the Second Step,’ he says. ‘Odell saw them on the First Step.’
So who is right? And how can we know?
In 1933, a British climber found Irvine’s ice axe at 8,460 metres, just below the First Step. But why was it there? Did he put it down, or drop it in an accident? And did this happen on the way up, or the way down? No one knows.
In 1960, a Chinese climber found an old wooden tent post and rope, like those used in 1924, just below the Second Step. And in 1979 a Japanese climber met another Chinese climber, Wang Hongbao, on the mountain, and heard a strange story.
Four years earlier, Wang said, he had found a body – ‘an English dead’ – near the Chinese Camp 6, at 8,100 metres. Was this Mallory, perhaps, or Irvine? The Japanese climber wanted to ask more questions, but the very next day, Wang himself was killed in an avalanche.
So the questions continued. In 1999, Jochen Hemmleb was part of an expedition that set out to find some answers.
From Tibet, they climbed slowly up the East Rongbuk Glacier to Camp 5, just under the North East Ridge. At 7,900 metres, one climber, Andy Politz, reached the place where Odell had last seen Mallory and Irvine far above him. Where had they actually been, when he saw them? Politz looked up. He could clearly see each of the First, Second and Third Steps.
‘You are really close to them at that point,’ he said. ‘And there was only one place that (was) “a very short distance from the base of the final pyramid”, and that was the Third Step – the one nearest the summit.’ He took a lot of photographs and video film to make this clear.
The five climbers reached Camp 6, near the place where Wang Hongbao had seen the ‘English dead.’ On 1 May 1999, they set out to find the body again. They climbed across a steep snow slope, some going up, others down.
It was a dangerous, frightening place. A strong wind made it easy to fall. After half an hour, they had found the bodies of not one but six dead climbers. All the dead bodies had broken arms or legs. And the climbers knew that at any moment they could fall and die too, like the men before them.
But the dead bodies wore modern clothes, in bright red or orange colours – very different from the clothes that climbers wore in 1924. Then Conrad Anker saw something white on the rocks below him. He climbed down carefully towards it. Then he called the others on his radio. ‘Come down here,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’