The Fabled Mallory-Irvine Mount Everest Climb Tragedy

"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."

"I lifted up the sock and saw a red label with ‘AC Irvine’ stitched into it."

Jimmy Chin, National Geographic explorer climb team member

"I have lived with this story since I was a seven-year-old when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest"

"When Jimmy told me that he saw the name AC Irvine on the label on the sock inside the boot, I found myself moved to tears."

Great-niece, biographer, Julie Summers

 

"Lo and behold, there was the name plate ‘A.C Irvine,’ perfectly legible, stamped on the sock." 

"And when that happened, it was just full freak-out, you know, F bombs and people were like, ‘Oh my god’."

Mark Fisher, expedition filmmaker

A sock embroidered with "A.C. Irvine" and a boot were discovered on Mount Everest by a team led by Jimmy Chin.  Jimmy Chin / National Geographic via AP

It's taken a century, but finally one of the greatest and most enduring mysteries of the failure to return from their Mount Everest ascent by George Mallory  and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, may be on the cusp of revealing their fate as they descended the mountain. The question always hovered; had they made it to the top, the first two mountaineers ever to have mastered the climb to the top of the world's highest mountain? The descent of such a mountain is as fraught with danger as is the ascent; climbers having expended enormous energy are not at their best at the descent; weather, time of day all play into a safe return. One wrong turn at the wrong point and fate could send an alpinist hurtling to death below.

Now, according to an expedition led by National Geographic, it is highly likely that part of that mystery has been revealed and that further examination of the extraordinary find might lead to another find, one that has long been sought and to the present has evaded search; the camera that would have been used to document the successful arrival at the Everest mount, that holy grail for so many people since that time who have aspired to reach its summit, many succeeding, many failing and among them the misfortune of deaths delivered to some. 

A documentary film set to be released illustrating the search was momentarily eclipsed with the announcement that a foot encased in a sock and boot embroidered with 'AC Irvine' could be that of Andrew Irvine who at age 22 disappeared, along with co-climber George Mallory on June 8, 1924, close to the mountain's peak. Aspiring to become the first people to mount Everest, the pair was seen last at the 800 foot mark from the summit prior to their disappearance. Historians and other climbers ruminated on the mystery they represented, some among them with the belief the pair had managed to reach the top of Everest, then headed down to a base camp.

George Mallory and Andrew Irvine in the last known photo of them on their fatal Everest climb in June 1924 (Alamy)

 George Mallory's body was found in 1999 with no clues that might have interpreted whether the two climbing companions might have reached the summit of the world's highest mountain, at 29,032 feet. With this latest discovery of the hundred-year-old evidence represented by a boot, a sock, and a preserved foot which will render proof of identity when a family member's DNA is used for genetic recognition, part of the mystery with respect to whether the pair summited still will not be clarified.

That would change should the Kodak Vest Pocket camera  that accompanied the climbers be discovered, to render proof through a photographic memento of their summit. Predating the celebrated summit of 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepal's Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first documented summiteers of Mount Everest. The find of the sock and boot was discovered at an altitude lower than was Mallory's remains -- below the North Face of Mount Everest on the Central Rongbuk glacier.

The Royal Geographical Society based in London received report of the find. That old respected institution had organized Mallory's and Irvine's expedition jointly with the Alpine Club.

Mark Fisher, one of the filmmakers who found the shoe, said the nameplate stamped on the sock was "perfectly legible."   Jimmy Chin / National Geographic via AP

"And then we started surmising like, ‘Oh, could it be?’ Because there’s so many theories about what happened to Irvine, right?"

"And we did start joking with each other, saying, ‘Oh, we’re gonna find Irvine, and we’re gonna find his camera’."

 "There was a lot of excitement about what we just found, because it was undeniable. We haven’t done DNA tests yet, so we can’t 100% say with certainty that this is indeed Irvine’s boot, but like I said, the nameplate is perfectly stitched on there. It’s perfectly legible. It’s the exact match of Mallory’s boot."

Mark Fisher

Photographer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin was leading a National Geographic team below the north face of Mount Everest in September when they discovered a boot and sock embroidered with “A.C. Irvine,” believed to belong to the lost mountaineer Andrew Comyn Irvine.  Photograph by National Geographic/Erich Roepke

Nuclear Winter : Nihon Hidankyo, Nobel Peace Prize

"[The award was made as the] taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure."

"[The Nobel Committee] wishes to honour all survivors who despite physical suffering and painful memories have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace."

Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair, Norwegian Nobel committee

"We are partners in this fight."

"[The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] know nuclear weapons the best."

"They know how it feels like, how it looks like,  how it smells when your city is burning from nuclear weapons use."

Beatrice Fihn, past executive director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

 

Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. This is a Japanese organization comprised of survivors of the wartime U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nihon Hidankyo won the award in recognition of their tireless activism against nuclear weaponry. The organization's branch chairperson, Yoshiyuki Mimaki had been standing by awaiting the announcement, and when it was given, he cheered: "Is it really true? Unbelievable!", he exulted.

A month ago, yet again, Russian President Vladimir Putin put the world on notice that he had decided to shift his country's nuclear doctrine. This had a defined purpose; to deliver a message to the Democratic West supporting Ukraine's courageous counteroffensive against its neighbour's unilateral move to destroy its independence and reduce the country once again to an appendage of Greater Russia -- Vladimir Putin's yearning for a return of the power of the USSR. 

Russia, he implied, would not hesitate to make use of its vast stockpile of nuclear weapons should those NATO nations supplying Ukraine with defensive weaponry allow it to strike inside Russian borders with longer-range weapons; effectively reducing its measure of the threshold for the potential use of Russian nuclear weapons as a blackmail-deterrent. Simply put, the Kremlin would not tolerate nations sympathetic to Ukraine's courageous response to a full-scale invasion enabling Ukraine to return to Russia the scope of its assault in self-defence.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons had won the prize in 2017 for its like-minded campaign. As did Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs in 1995 for "their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the longer run to eliminate such arms."

"The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people, and their effects are still being felt today."

"By the end of 1945, the bombing had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima, and a further 74,000 in Nagasaki. In the years that followed, many of the survivors would face leukemia, cancer, or other terrible side effects from the radiation."

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Devastation in Nagasaki, 1945. Courtesy Imperial War Museums.

"It is very clear that threats of using nuclear weapons are putting pressure on the important international norm, the taboo of using nuclear weapons."

"And therefore it is alarming to see how threats of use is also damaging this norm."

Jorgen Watne Frydnes, Nobel Committee