Dead man's foot on Everest revives 100-year-old mystery

The discovery of the shoe and foot of Andrew Comyn Irvine, an explorer who died in 1924, could solve one of mountaineering's greatest mysteries.

In 1924, Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine set out on the journey of a lifetime - through India, Tibet and the Himalayas, as the youngest member of a British expedition aiming to become the first person to reach the summit of Everest.

But that goal did not come true.

Irvine, then a 22-year-old student at Oxford University, and his schoolmate George Mallory died somewhere near the summit of Everest in June 1924.

A shoe belonging to British climber Andrew Irvine was found. (Photo: National Geographic).

Whether they conquered the world's highest peak remains the biggest mystery in mountaineering.

Unsolved mystery

Any evidence that Irvine and Mallory conquered Everest would change history: New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay are credited with being the first to reach the summit in 1953. If the theory is correct, Irvine and Mallory did it three decades earlier.

Historians believe the Kodak camera they carried may contain evidence of their successful summit attempt.

But when Mallory's body was discovered in 1999, the camera was nowhere to be found. Since then, hopes of finding Irvine's body and the camera have gradually faded.

Last week, a mystery buried for 100 years resurfaced after a National Geographic documentary crew on Mount Everest stumbled upon an old boot on the Rongbuk glacier.

Inside was a frozen human foot and a sock with the unmistakable red letters "AC Irvine" written on it, proving it belonged to Irvine.

Irvine's name was found on a shoe buried for hundreds of years. (Photo: National Geographic).

Mark Fisher, one of the three filmmakers who discovered the boot, said he and his colleagues Erich Roepke and Jimmy Chin were terrified.

"Oh my gosh, we just found Irvine ," Fisher said, likening it to finding a pot of gold in the desert.

^{This 78km2} glacier is filled with icy, fragmented icebergs and ice "pyramid" towers up to 15m high that shoot straight into the sky.

"There have been many expeditions over the past 100 years, many of which were solely for the purpose of finding Mallory and Irvine. The fact that we found the boot is truly a miracle ," Fisher said in an interview on October 13 at his home in Victor, Idaho.

Fisher believes the glacier had partially melted and exposed the boot just about a week before the team found it.

Also according to AFP , climate change is causing the ice layer around the Himalayas to thin, revealing the bodies of many climbers who have been lying there for decades while trying to conquer the world's highest peak.

Researchers believe the discovery of Irvine's remains could narrow the search for the camera and help solve the century-old mystery of who first climbed Mount Everest.

The boot and foot are now in the hands of the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association, the Chinese government agency that oversees access to the north face of Everest, where the boot was found.

The agency declined to comment beyond confirming that it owns the boot and foot. According to National Geographic , DNA samples are being compared with those of Irvine's closest living relatives.

The family's lingering pain

Julie Summers, Irvine's niece, got a call last week. It was her friend Jamie Owens from the Royal Geographical Society, whose members helped organize the 1924 Everest expedition.

'Can you talk to this guy from Kathmandu?' Owens asked.

The next morning, Summers — who has written a book about Irvine and studied him for years — joined a Zoom call with Chin — one of three people who had found the boot while on Everest recently.

'And we knew it was Sandy Irvine's boot,' Summers recalled Chin saying. She was stunned.

Summers said she felt relieved to hear those words. She also found some comfort in knowing that the discovery contradicts an unconfirmed conspiracy theory that Chinese climbers removed Irvine's remains from the mountain.

She and most of Irvine's surviving relatives want Irvine to stay on Everest if his body is found, just as Mallory's family wanted when his body was found 25 years ago.

The death of Irvine - the third of six children - devastated the family. Summers' grandmother, Evelyn, refused to talk about her late brother, nicknamed Sandy, to whom she was very close. Irvine's parents - Summers' great-grandparents - suffered in silence "in a very English, stoic way" , Summers said.

In October 1924, Irvine's mother wrote to her eldest son, Hugh, four months after he disappeared on Everest. "Your father and I have never questioned whether Sandy went up Everest or not. But that does not mean the hole in our hearts is healed."

Summers said the boot doesn't answer the question of whether Irvine and Mallory ever reached the summit. But she believes it will help ease the search for the Kodak camera, which remains a difficult task. Ultimately, she said, the mystery may linger.

'We will probably never know the truth,' she said, because even if the camera is found, it may not contain a photo of the mountaintop.