George Leigh-Mallory (pictured: second left, back row) and Andrew C. Irvine were less than a thousand feet below the peak of Everest on June 8, 1924. Then swirling, wind-driven snow and mist hid them from the telescope in the base camp below – and they were never seen again. Everest was conquered “for the record” in 1953, but the tantalizing possibility remains that two men had reached its summit almost 30 years before.
Leigh-Mallory, 36, had participated in two earlier attempts on Everest. The leader of this third expedition described him as the “living soul of the offensive; the thing had become a personal matter with him.” Irvine, 22, had little mountaineering experience but was skilled with the bulky, cumbersome oxygen gear. They had made camp the night before at 26,800 feet, sending their Sherpa bearers down to tell the others that they hoped to reach the peak early the next morning. For some reason they got a late start or were held up in the early part of the climb, for it was 12:50 p.m. on the eighth when they were observed at 28,227 feet. Then the clouds closed in – and the only evidence ever found of them was Leigh-Mallory’s or Irvine’s ice axe, discovered along their route in 1933. Perhaps they fell into an icy crevasse or were swept away by an avalanche that entombed them far below the challenging peak of Everest. The answer, like the climbers themselves, was lost in clouds at the top of the world.
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