Mallory may yet rewrite history
By Maharaj K. Koul

AN expedition aimed at examining whether two British climbers were the first to scale Mount Everest, beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by nearly 30 years, said on May 25 that it had failed to find conclusive evidence.

George Leigh Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irwine disappeared on June 8, 1924. They were believed to have been killed by a fierce blizzard. "The mystery of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Mallory and Irwine will remain unsolved so long as evidence like the Kodak camera showing the ascent of the Everest is not found", said team member Conrad Anker. The research team led by Eric Simonson, which spent 60 days on the northern slope of Mount Everest, found Mallory’s body but no photographic proof that either he or Irwine had scaled the 8, 848-metre summit.

Andy Politz, who searched Mallory’s body, that had been preserved in the cold, dry conditions, said: "There is no evidence that Mallory had climbed Mount Everest, during the expedition". At a press conference in Kathmandu, Simonson displayed the relics they found with Mallory’s body, including a folded letter which he said had not yet been read.

The mystery of Mallory’s disappearance near the summit became, over the next 75 years, a symbol of vanquished heroism, summed up by his explanation of why he returned three times to tackle the world’s highest peak: "Because it is there". Anker, the American climber, who first spotted Mallory’s body on May 2, was stunned by what he saw.

Mallory was frozen solid like a Greek porcelain god. His physique was still that of a 38-year-old athletic English school teacher whose expeditions to make the first ascent of Everest illuminated the 1920s. The mountaineer, still wearing one hobnail boot, was facing the steep slope, desperately gripping the icy rock. His thin clothes were in tatters, he had a double fracture in one of his legs and a torn rope indicated a fall.

Anker and the four other members of the search team identified Mallory by the name tag on his collars. With their axes they chipped away at the ice for clues to whether he had reached the top 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. His equipment was rudimentry and he carried neither a torch nor a compass. His altimeter had been smashed by the fall. In his pocket were beef lozenges to ease the hacking cough which afflicts climbers at high altitudes, a penknife and a pair of goggles.

One of the climbers removed some of Mallory’s hair, bleached from brown to blond, and cut a small piece of flesh from his forearm to provide a DNA sample. Erin Copland, a spokeswoman for the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition in Ashford, Washington, USA, said on May 4 that other artifacts were taken from the body, including "written material" and a broken rope that strongly suggested Mallory plunged to his death. The expedition stunned the world with the news that they had found Mallory’s body at 27,000, ft about 2000 ft vertically below the top of Mount Everest.

Meanwhile, Sir Edmund Hillary, now 79 and living in New Zealand, saluted Mallory on May 4 as "a pretty heroic figure" and said "I doubt it would worry me too much if it was discovered (he) had been there before me". Hillary and Tenzing reached the top on May 29, 1953. However, he accepted that Mallory and Irvine might have made it to the summit 29 years earlier. "It (photograph) is probably the only thing that could indicate whether the party had reached the summit," Hillary said.

Leaders of the current expedition plan to make another ascent to look for Irvine’s body. They will also look for a pocket camera that could rewrite history.

For mountaineers, Mallory and Irvine have been inspirational heroes. And, 75 years ago, they had attempted to scale the world’s highest peak. Whether or not they succeeded has been a matter of conjecture but the duo will go down in mountaineering history as arguably the first men to attempt the peak.

Researchers who discovered the body of Mallory, believe that Mallory and Irvine were descending from the summit when they died. In the meantime, two of India’s leading mountaineers, Captain M.S. Kohli and Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia, greeted the news of the discovery as a great happening in the history of mountaineering.

Captain Kohli, leader of the 1965 expedition comprising nine members, including Major Ahluwalia, which scaled Mount Everest, said Mallory’s was a heroic feat which was considered one of the bravest sagas on the mount. "Of course, the revelation that the body was found 2,000 ft from the top may not prove conclusively whether Mallory was the first man to scale the summit". Both Captain Kohli and Major Ahluwalia, said: "whether Mallory reached top or not will remain a mystery. We can only presume he might have made it."

"The fact that his body was found 2,000 ft below the 29,028 ft summit may not indicate clearly whether he slipped on his way from the top or came down as he was about to make the assault. But I believe that the chances of his having reached the top are high," said Major Ahluwalia.

Captain Kohli, whose expedition was hailed as one of six great achievements in independent India by Indira Gandhi, said a member of Mallory’s team, Noel Odell, who died in 1989, had told him that he had seen Mallory 500 ft from the summit.

For Tom Holzel, a businessman who has become a world authority on the mystery following 30 years of research, the evidence of the broken rope is sufficient to revise his published theory that Mallory reached the 29,028 ft summit after leaving Irvine somewhere above 28,000 ft. "The fact that they were roped together reduces the chances that they got to the top", he said. "Because of his inexperience, Irvine would have held Mallory back."

This theory is based on the last sighting of Mallory and Irvine by Odell, who saw them at about 1 pm through a gap in the clouds, at 28,230 ft, moving with "considerable alacrity". Until the discovery of Mallory’s body, nobody knew how long they persisted. Previous theories held that they would have had to turn back by 3 pm if they wanted to return alive.

But the discovery that Mallory was climbing down without his goggles so that he could see in the fading light, suggests that they may have continued for longer than anybody imagined. Did they have time to reach the summit? Mallory’s grandson, George, insists they did. Irvine had a good head for climbing. According to his nephew, Bill Summers, Irvine’s athletic achievements were evident at Oxford, where he rowed for the university. Despite his lack of climbing experience, he was selected for the 1924 Everest expedition on the strength of his performance on a student trip to Spitsbergen.

George Mallory, an Australian who climbed Mount Everest in 1995, believes his Englishman grandfather may well have scaled the world’s highest peak. Mallory Jr on May 4 said he believed his grandfather was descending when he fell. "I can’t imagine that he would have been on his way up at the time he died because by then he would have survived through to the end of the day, I am pretty sure", said Mallory, who lives in Mooroopna in Australia.

The search for Mallory and Irvine this year was the idea of Graham Hoyland, great nephew of Howard Somervell, who lent Mallory the Kodak Vest pocket camera which could contain proof that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit. A Manchester England-based television producer Hoyland aged 41, persuaded the BBC to back his project and joined the expedition, only to be forced by illness to abandon it before Mallory’s body was discovered.

The BBC film’s executive producer, Peter Firstbrook, who left base camp before the search concluded, was believed to be completing an account of the search for Mallory and Irvine for BBC Books. On May 7 it was reported that publishing rights for another book about Mallory, by best-selling author Wade Davis, had been sold in the UKfor $ 180,000 after netting $ 420,000 in the USA in April. Audrey Salkeld is collaborating with Nova producer David Breashears on another book for the National Geographic.

Simonson said Mallory’s body had been buried at a secret location under some rocks, in order to prevent souvenir hunters from taking photographs or stealing more items from the body. "It is unlikely that people will visit the site in future", he said. "Or at least they will have to work pretty damn hard to find it".

Jochan Hemmleb, a 28-year-old German climber and Mallory historian, chose a location for the team to search, based largely on a report from the climber, Wang Hongbao, of a body on the North Ridge route Mallory and Irvine would have taken. Mallory’s body was found on a snow terrace, just below the spot where an ice axe believed to be Irvine’s was found in 1933.

At 38, Mallory’s achievements on the mountains and his bravery in the trenches during the First World War had brought him little tangible gain. His attempt to become a writer had failed and he was dependent on a schoolmaster’s salary. His financial difficulties were creating strains in his relationship with his wife Ruth. The expedition of 1924 was Mallory’s third attempt on Everest and it was clear that on his return he would have to concentrate on a career.

He had to seize his last opportunity to achieve immortality. To many, his choice of Irvine as climbing partner was the fatal flaw. On the fateful morning of their disappearance, Mallory and Irvine faced grim odds against their success. By modern standards, they were hopelessly dehydrated and undernourished, and their equipment was inadequate.

We still do not know what happened that afternoon. If Mallory and Irvine did make it to the summit, they left no permanent trace. The key to whether Mallory died with the knowledge that he had achieved his ambition of reaching the summit, may now lie in a camera the pair took with them. The search for it, and Irvine’s body will resume soon. If it can be found, and the film developed, history may yet be rewritten.