A documentary team has discovered human remains on Mount Everest that are believed to belong to a climber who went missing 100 years ago while attempting to summit the peak, according to a report by National Geographic. Due to climate change, melting snow and ice in the Himalayas is increasingly revealing the bodies of climbers who lost their lives in pursuit of scaling the world’s highest mountain.
British climber Andrew Irvine vanished in 1924 alongside his climbing partner, George Mallory, as they attempted to be the first to reach Everest’s summit, standing at 8,848 meters (29,029 feet). Mallory’s body was recovered in 1999, but Irvine’s fate remained a mystery until the recent discovery by a National Geographic team on Everest’s Central Rongbuk Glacier. They found a boot containing a human foot, and a sock with a label that read “A.C. IRVINE” stitched into it.
This discovery could provide significant clues regarding the location of the climbers’ personal effects and potentially resolve one of mountaineering’s most enduring mysteries: whether Irvine and Mallory reached the summit before they died. If proven, they would have successfully scaled the peak nearly three decades before the first confirmed ascent in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
“It tells the whole story about what probably happened,” said Julie Summers, Irvine’s great-niece, in an interview with National Geographic. She added, “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. When Jimmy told me that he saw the name A.C. Irvine on the label of the sock inside the boot, I was moved to tears. It was and will remain an extraordinary and poignant moment.”
The first documented ascent of Everest occurred on May 29, 1953, when New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay successfully reached the summit. Ten years later, in 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to achieve the feat.
Members of the Irvine family have reportedly offered to provide DNA samples to confirm the identity of the remains.
Irvine, who was only 22 years old when he disappeared, was last seen on the afternoon of June 8, 1924, along with Mallory, as they made their final push toward the summit.
Earlier this year, Mallory’s last letter to his wife was digitized and published online by Cambridge University. In it, he wrote that their chances of reaching the summit were “50 to 1 against us.”
Irvine is believed to have been carrying a small camera at the time, and finding it could potentially rewrite the history of mountaineering.
“This was a monumental and emotional moment for us and our entire team on the ground, and we just hope this can finally bring peace of mind to his relatives and the climbing world at large,” said Jimmy Chin, a climb team member and National Geographic explorer. Chin chose not to disclose the exact location of the remains to deter potential trophy hunters, but he remains hopeful that other artefacts, including the camera, might be nearby. “It certainly reduces the search area,” he said.
Since the 1920s, over 300 climbers have lost their lives on Mount Everest.
