It’s now 100 years since George Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine disappeared high on Everest; speculation has been rife ever since. Robin Ashcroft takes a broad perspective
AT about lunchtime on June 8, 1924, Noel Odell was at more than 26,000ft on Everest, climbing in support of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. It was a calm, but cloudy day and the Northeast Ridge was wreathed in mist.
At 12.50pm, there was a break in the cloud and Odell noted in his diary: ‘Saw M & I on the ridge nearing the base of the final pyramid.’
Odell would later elaborate, if not clarify: ‘I noticed far away on the snow slope leading up to what seemed to me, to be the last but one step from the base of the final pyramid, a tiny object moving and approaching the rock step. A second object followed, and then the first climbed to the top of the step.’ As the cloud thickened, it was the last time they were seen alive: the ‘mystery of Mallory and Irvine’ was born.
There are three steps on the ridge, but, in 1924, no one was familiar with the detailed topography of the ridge’s crest, as it was still terra incognita. We now know, however, that only the ‘Second Step’ presents a major challenge, but it is one that is formidable.
Personal tragedy apart, the sadness around the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition is that speculation over Mallory and Irvine’s achievements came to overshadow recognition of those of others. After Mallory’s US lecture tour in 1923, he’d become something of a media celebrity and ‘because it’s there’ was already common parlance. Celebrity is often magnified by death, distorting a wider perspective.
A team photograph was an established Everest tradition by then and that from 1924 showed a remarkable group of men. Previously, George Bernard Shaw had pithily described the 1921 expedition as a ‘Connemara picnic surprised by a snowstorm’ after seeing their photograph. They did appear to be dressed more for the grouse moor than for the Himalayan heights, but, by 1924, the climbers were remarkably well equipped. They wore windproof outer clothing, multiple insulating layers and a highly effective design of boot —all have subsequently been proven to compare well with modern expedition attire.
Given British social mores of the time, they would have deplored being seen as too professional in their approach, but they were highly competent. Not least Edward—‘Teddy’ —Norton, who stands in the middle of the photograph, complete with a woollen scarf to lend a schoolboy air to his demeanour.
Looks, however, can deceive; he had climbed in the Alps since his teens, had performed strongly on the 1922 Ev
