Last secret of Everest
QUESTION Has the body of Sandy Irvine, who ascended Everest with George Mallory in 1924, been found?
GeorGe Leigh Mallory and Andrew Comyn ‘Sandy’ Irvine disappeared on June 8, 1924, while making their final assault on the summit of Mount everest. Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, but Irvine has not been found.
Its discovery might solve one of everest’s great mysteries — did the pair reach the top of the world’s tallest mountain 29 years before Sir edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay?
Irvine was thought to be carrying the duo’s camera, which might provide proof they had reached the summit.
Mallory and Irvine were last seen by support climber Noel odell at 12.50pm just 750 ft from the summit. He saw them moving upwards before clouds swept in. They were never seen alive again.
In 1979, Chinese climber Wang Hongbao claimed he’d found a body he described as the ‘english dead’ during a short foray from Camp VI. He was on a joint ChineseJapanese expedition and told his story to Japanese climber ryoten Hasegawa. Wang died on the mountain before he had the chance to give the body’s location.
A 2020 expedition using Hasegawa’s description, drone footage and geo mapping led an expedition to a crevice below the summit. This was investigated, but no body was found.
It’s possible Irvine may one day be discovered. on everest, the cold and wind freeze and desiccate corpses and there’s very little bacterial activity or animal life to cause decomposition.
Climate change is revealing the bodies of climbers lost in the snows. However, the jet stream or an avalanche may have swept Irvine’s body from the slope.
He was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, in 1902. The athletic 21-year- old was an undergraduate at Merton College oxford when the Mount everest Committee invited him to join the expedition in 1923. Unlike other members of the British team, he had limited climbing experience. However, he made himself invaluable by redesigning the oxygen gear, without which the final attempt on the summit would not have been possible.
Irvine’s diaries are preserved at Merton College. He wrote his last entry on the evening of June 5, when he and Mallory were camped at 23,000 ft on the North Col, poised to begin the first of three attempts on the summit.
He complained his fair skin had been blistered by the sun: ‘My face is perfect agony. Have prepared two oxygen apparatus for our start tomorrow morning.’
Max Trowton, Malvern, Worcs.
QUESTION The Prime Minister is fond of saying ‘alas’. Where does this come from?
THE complaint ‘alas’ was taken up by the english from the 13th century.
‘A!’ comes from the Anglo-Norman and old French ha, expressing sorrow (we now say ah). The old French word las (masculine) or lasse (feminine) means weary or tired, thus the old French ha, las! or halas!
It ultimately comes from the Latin word lassus, meaning weary, which also gave us the word lassitude.
The whole doublet alas and alack! dates from the 18th century. Andrew Finch, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs.
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