- Thurston Irvine was 10 when he watched his brother embark
at Liverpool Docks, bound for Everest. 'Well,' he said, 'that's the last
we'll see of him.'
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- Weeks later on 8 June, 1924, Andrew Irvine and George
Mallory disappeared while attempting to reach the summit, creating the
greatest mystery in mountaineering history.
-
- Now, 80 years after they were swallowed from view by
gathering clouds, four expeditions are competing to find the body of Irvine,
hoping it will finally reveal whether the two reached the summit 29 years
before Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary.
-
- All four are keeping a close eye on each other's progress
while jealously guarding their own plans. Last week one of the teams, organised
by American website EverestNews.com, said a mystery climber with a metal
detector was spotted on the mountain. Others have been seen searching near
where Mallory's body was found in 1999.
-
- Almost 40 expeditions are now on Everest, among them
film-maker Graham Hoyland, a member of the team that found Mallory. His
great uncle, Howard Somervell, was on the 1924 expedition and gave Mallory
a camera. No camera was found in 1999, and those searching for his climbing
partner hope that it will be on Irvine's body.
-
- Producer Dick Colthurst said bad weather had forced Hoyland
back to base camp last week. With the monsoon due at the start of June,
the pressure is on.
-
- Andrew 'Sandy' Irvine was 22 when he died. He had taken
time off his degree course at Merton College, Oxford. Irvine was embroiled
in an indiscreet affair with the wife of steel magnate Harry Summers, and
the family hoped his ardour would have cooled by the time he came back.
Mallory initially found him dull-witted. 'One to rely on,' he wrote to
his wife, 'for everything except conversation.' But soon a strong friendship
formed.
-
- Everest historian Audrey Salkeld, part of the first expedition
to look for the two climbers in 1986, believes Hoyland has a reasonable
chance of finding Irvine, based on evidence from a Chinese expedition which
reached the top in 1960, the first to do so on the route Mallory chose.
'One of their climbers described finding a body dressed like Irvine curled
in a cleft.'
-
- But the EverestNews.com expedition organiser George Martin
says a sherpa claims to have found Irvine in a different location. 'We're
going to go to this site and see whether or not it's Sandy,' said Martin.
-
- 'Everybody's got different information, different places
to look and different theories,' said Colthurst.
-
- Also searching on the mountain is Eric Simonson, from
the US team which found Mallory. Mallory's body was found by chance when
American climber Conrad Anker left the search zone on a whim and stumbled
across it.
-
- Simonson and his team have been criticised for returning
to the body after holding a burial service, lifting it from the frozen
rocks, and photographing the face. Thom Pollard's photographs, which remain
unpublished, show the climber had a severe head injury, most probably the
result of a short fall.
-
- A small industry has mushroomed around the legend. Apart
from books and documentaries, several films are being developed. One is
rumoured to have a screenplay by Jeffrey Archer. Websites dedicated to
the subject have attracted all kinds of conspiracy theorists.
-
- Like all the best mysteries, enough is known to form
an opinion but not enough to settle the controversy. Salkeld believes 'historians'
need to be more rigorous. 'They're dreaming up theories and using a mish-mash
of evidence. It's all too fuzzy and not logical. In the final analysis
you've got to let the romance go.'
-
- Colthurst says that any new evidence will help provide
a more scientific approach.
-
- Martin believes things have turned a little darker in
the world of Everest history. Mallory's grave has become 'a curiosity'
for climbers and receives regular visits. One American removed the jawbone
from another body - that of Maurice Wilson, who disappeared on the mountain
in 1935.
-
- 'He keeps it in his office,' Martin said. 'This Mallory
thing does weird things to people. I hope it doesn't do that to me.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/everest/story/0,13321,1217896,00.html
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