How a climber's foot found on Everest could alter a 100-year-old belief
A team of climbers led by well-known adventurer Jimmy Chin filming a National Geographic documentary recently found a preserved boot with a foot inside it on Mount Everest.
This boot is believed to belong to Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, a British climber who disappeared in 1924 while attempting to summit Everest with his partner, George Mallory.
The discovery can potentially dispute the belief that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit first.
In June 1924, Irvine and Mallory embarked on an ambitious expedition to become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They were last seen on June 8, 1924, about 800 feet below the summit.
For nearly a century, whether they succeeded in reaching the top has remained unanswered. The discovery of Irvine's foot could provide crucial evidence to solve this mystery.
The preserved boot, revealed by melting ice on a glacier, was found on the Central Rongbuk Glacier by the north face of Everest. The sock inside the boot had a name tag stitched with "A.C. Irvine," strongly suggesting that the remains belonged to Sandy Irvine.
This finding is significant because Irvine was believed to be carrying a camera with undeveloped film that could show whether he and Mallory reached the summit.
If the camera is found and the film is developed, it could provide photographic evidence that Irvine and Mallory were the first to summit Everest, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's successful ascent in 1953.
For Irvine's descendants, the discovery has been profoundly emotional. Julie Summers, Irvine's great-niece, expressed her astonishment and relief upon hearing the news.
"I just froze.... We had all given up any hope any trace of him would be found," she told the BBC.
The family has provided a DNA sample to confirm the identity of the remains, and the climbing community eagerly awaits the results.
During their September descent from the Central Rongbuk Glacier on Everest's north face, the Chin's team of climbers discovered an oxygen bottle dated 1933. This bottle was linked to an Everest expedition that had found an item belonging to Irvine that same year.
Motivated by the possibility that Irvine's body might be nearby, the team searched the glacier for several days. Eventually, one of them spotted a boot popping out from the melting ice.
Peaks, especially Mount Everest, the highest in the world, have long been magnets for adventurers and mountaineers. Climbing Everest is considered the ultimate mountaineering challenge.
Interestingly, On October 9, 2024, Nima Rinji Sherpa, an 18-year-old from Nepal, became the youngest climber to summit all 14 of the world’s highest peaks, known as the “eight-thousanders."
