The Everest Story by Tim Vicary. Part 13.
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As soon as they saw it, they knew this body was different. This was no modern climber. This man had been here for seventy-five years. Some of his clothes were gone, blown away by the wind, and his skin was white.
There was no oxygen equipment. The rope around his waist had cut into the skin, and was broken at one end where he had fallen. One leg was broken in two places. His head and arms were cut.
They stood and looked at the body quietly for a while. They took photographs. Then, very gently, they began to look in the pockets of the man’s clothes.
One thing they hoped to find was a camera. In 1924, when Mallory and Irvine set out for the summit, Somervell gave Mallory a small camera to take with him. Did Mallory take photos at the summit, or not? The camera could give the answer.
In Mallory’s pockets they found some sweets, some letters from his brother and sister, a knife, a broken watch, his snow goggles – but no camera. They looked carefully all around, but the camera was not there.
It was too cold and dangerous to stay there long. But they did not want to leave the body as it was. For all of them, Mallory was a great man – one of the first and bravest of all the men who tried to climb Everest. So, before they left, they decided to bury his body. They covered the body with big stones. Then they said prayers over the body.
They had found one body, but they were still looking for answers. It was clear, though, that Mallory had stopped using oxygen. There was no oxygen equipment on his body, so he probably threw it away when he had used all the oxygen. That means Mallory and Irvine did not turn back early – like Bourdillon and Evans in 1953 – when they still had enough oxygen to get back to Camp 6. Probably they went on, trying to reach the summit even when they knew it was dangerous.
Mallory’s snow goggles were in his pocket, so perhaps he was coming down after dark. The broken rope round Mallory’s waist shows that the two men were probably still climbing down together. The moon went down early that night, at 11.25 p.m.; after that there was only starlight to help them. They were tired, thirsty, and had no oxygen. But they were only 400 metres from the tiny tent at Camp 6, where Odell had left food. They were almost safe.
And then – something happened. Perhaps something like this:
They are climbing down together in the dark. Irvine is going first, Mallory is behind. Suddenly, Mallory slips and falls. Irvine tries to save him but the rope breaks. Mallory falls faster and faster. When he hits the ground his leg breaks in two places. But he does not stop. He is sliding down the steep slope, towards the Rongbuk Glacier thousands of feet below. He has dropped his ice axe, but he turns on his face and digs his fingers into the snow above his head, trying to slow down. He stops, but he has hit his head on a rock. He lies there, unable to move, dying alone in the dark.
Somewhere far above him, Irvine is injured too. He calls to Mallory, again and again, but there is no answer. Slowly, he tries to crawl towards Camp 6, but he cannot find it. Alone, and lost in the dark and icy cold at 8,200 metres, Irvine dies too.
Did they reach the summit before they died? Only Mallory’s camera can answer that question, and no one has found it.
But there is one other important thing which no one has found. When Mallory left England in 1924, he took a photo of his wife, Ruth, with him. And he made a promise to her, in words like these.
‘I’ll look at your photo every day. But I will not bring it back. I’m going to take it with me to the summit of Everest. When I get there, I’m going to bury your photograph in the snow, on top of the highest mountain in the world.’
The five climbers searched carefully for the photograph of Mallory’s wife in his pockets.
But it was not there.
– THE END
Go back to Part 12