Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh and for this
Speaker 1: WEEK'SYSK Select, I've chosen our twenty twenty two episode, Did
Speaker 1: Mallory make it to the top of Everest First? It's
Speaker 1: a clunky title, but an amazing episode. It talks about
Speaker 1: George Mallory, an unsung climber who may have been the
Speaker 1: first European to ever summ at Everest, a full three
Speaker 1: decades before Sir Edmund Hillary definitely did. The reason we
Speaker 1: don't know. The reason it's still a mystery is because
Speaker 1: he was lost for years and even once he was found,
Speaker 1: still didn't quite answer the question. This is an amazing
Speaker 1: history mystery podcast that also has a lot of human
Speaker 1: spirit in it, and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and this is Stuff you Should Know Lost down
Speaker 1: the Mountain op edition, but not in Tennessee because this
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the Beverly Hillbillies at all.
Speaker 2: Wow. I thought that was a roundabout funny intro.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what was coming thirty seconds ago.
Speaker 2: No, we are not talking about Tennessee. We are talking
Speaker 2: about one of the heroes of mountaineering and mountain climbing, certainly,
Speaker 2: mister George Mallory, and the great mystery to me, unsettled
Speaker 2: mystery on whether or not he ever made it to
Speaker 2: the top of Edvers Yes, Edvere.
Speaker 1: So boy, yeah, this is a tough start, Chuck, because
Speaker 1: I just realized what I reference was the Davy Crockett theme,
Speaker 1: not Beverly Hillbilly. So everybody save your emails. Okay, Oh
Speaker 1: that's right, all of you Beverly Hillbilly's cose players, save
Speaker 1: your save your emails. So, okay, we're talking about Mount Everest.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about Davy Crockett or the Beverly Hillbilly.
Speaker 1: We're talking about George Mallory, and to a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: kind of unfairly but also kind of fairly his climbing companion,
Speaker 1: Sandy Irvine. And George Mallory is extraordinarily famous, not just
Speaker 1: in the climbing community. He's a legend in the climbing community, Chuck.
Speaker 1: But you and I know about him. I knew about Mallory,
Speaker 1: didn't you before all this? Yeah, at least heard his
Speaker 1: name had a general idea about him, right, sure, named
Speaker 1: two other climbers exactly.
Speaker 2: The guy from that free solo documentary, and well all
Speaker 2: the Sherpa, I mean, we Ed makes his great pains
Speaker 2: to point out the Sherpa, But suffice to say, all
Speaker 2: you have to do is go back and listen to
Speaker 2: our episode Sherpa Warm Friendly Living, in which we dedicate
Speaker 2: an entire episode to the usually nameless Sherpa, who are
Speaker 2: usually standing just out of frame of some white dude saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: I climbed Everest again, but here, go ahead and get
Speaker 2: your picture taken.
Speaker 1: Right, And they just kind of slowly shoved them to
Speaker 1: the side. But yeah, but despite your best efforts, you
Speaker 1: still managed to prove my point. Yeah, George Mallory is
Speaker 1: extremely famous, and up to his thirties, it did not
Speaker 1: look like it was going to go that way because
Speaker 1: he started out this very famous mountain climber and mountaineer
Speaker 1: and early mountain climber mountaineer too. That's something that I
Speaker 1: feel as a beat will hit throughout this episode that
Speaker 1: these guys that Mallory was climbing with were using like
Speaker 1: they were making some of their own gear. They were
Speaker 1: figuring out mountaineering techniques as they went along. It was
Speaker 1: like a brand new thing that people were doing, and
Speaker 1: George Mallory was among the earliest people doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that one. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: a journalist or somebody was talking about pictures of the
Speaker 2: actual attempt to climb Everest and he said, these guys
Speaker 2: look like they had gone out for a picnic and
Speaker 2: were hit by a snowstorm, right, and just in how
Speaker 2: they were dressed. You know, they were in like sweet
Speaker 2: jackets and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and hobnail boots, so just like some leather boots
Speaker 1: with some spikes attached to him. Like just nothing you
Speaker 1: would even climb a hill in these days, let alone
Speaker 1: Mount Everest. But that's what they were wearing. So George
Speaker 1: Mallory didn't start out as showing signs he was going
Speaker 1: to be famous. He was a kind of a left leaning,
Speaker 1: progressive intellectual school teacher. He did rub elbows with John
Speaker 1: Maynard Keynes and Virginia Wolf from the Bloomsberry group. Bloomsberry
Speaker 1: pretty cool, yeah, but that was probably the greatest brush
Speaker 1: with fame that he had up until he started hitting
Speaker 1: Mount Everest and making that basically his stated goal. In life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he got into hiking and mountaineering when
Speaker 2: he was in his late teens and really fell in
Speaker 2: loved with it. But you know, as Ed Keenley points out,
Speaker 2: it was, you know, it was such a new sport
Speaker 2: that people didn't even really know, Like they haven't even
Speaker 2: charted like the highest mountains in the world up into
Speaker 2: a very i mean what I consider a pretty late
Speaker 2: point when you think about like expeditions at Lewis and
Speaker 2: Clark made it was in eighteen fifty two when they
Speaker 2: finally finally figured out that Everest was the tallest peak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like up to eighteen fifty two, they were basically
Speaker 1: at the point of that one's tall. Oh look at
Speaker 1: that one. That's a tall one too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wish we could put him next to each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So there was actually a guy named Radan
Speaker 1: Siktar who was an Indian surveyor who used data that
Speaker 1: the English had produced during their occupation of India to
Speaker 1: calculate just exactly how tall Mount Everest was, because they
Speaker 1: really did settle on Everest just by sight, They're like,
Speaker 1: that might be the tallest mountain we've ever seen, And
Speaker 1: indeed it turned out at twenty nine thirty two feet.
Speaker 1: Mount Everest was in the mid nineteenth century and still
Speaker 1: is today the tallest mountain in the entire world. And
Speaker 1: they named it Everest after the director of the survey
Speaker 1: in India. Of course they did, Sir George Everest. But
Speaker 1: if you asked a Tibetan what's the name of that
Speaker 1: big old mountain over there, they would tell you Chomo Lungma,
Speaker 1: which means mother goddess of the world in Tibetan. So
Speaker 1: even the Tibetans were like, this is clearly the world's
Speaker 1: tallest mountain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course they had their own names for it,
Speaker 2: but we generally don't know those names because they would
Speaker 2: come along later and just name it after just some dude.
Speaker 1: Right, but we some Englishmen. I mean Chomlongma, that's definitely
Speaker 1: one of them.
Speaker 2: No, I know, but ask ten people what Choe Malonga is.
Speaker 1: Right, and name two other famous climbers.
Speaker 2: Yes, but the long and short of it is, I
Speaker 2: guess the tall and short of it is. They realized
Speaker 2: that Everest was the tallest thing in eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: but big deal. They couldn't do anything about it. They
Speaker 2: could just kind of gaze upon it. It would be
Speaker 2: decades and decades before anyone even thought that they might
Speaker 2: be able to climb Everest, because here's the deal. Getting
Speaker 2: to Everest and climbing it is like ascending the peak
Speaker 2: is one thing, but just getting to that point is
Speaker 2: I don't know, ninety percent of the battle.
Speaker 1: I would say easily. Most people think you look at
Speaker 1: a mountain, you just climb up the base and go
Speaker 1: up to the side and you're done. But no, you
Speaker 1: have to basically traverse mountain ranges. Mountains just don't exist
Speaker 1: on their own. They're part of ranges and you don't
Speaker 1: really think about it, but you have to climb all
Speaker 1: these other little mini mountains to get to the big
Speaker 1: mountain in the first place. And this can be walks
Speaker 1: of you know, dozens or scores of miles and not
Speaker 1: walk it's not a straight walk over a plane. And
Speaker 1: then you get to the edge of the mountain and
Speaker 1: you go up like you're going up and up and up,
Speaker 1: and you're existing at higher and higher altitudes, which the
Speaker 1: English people who were doing this at first were not
Speaker 1: used to, so they were doing this with basically altitude
Speaker 1: sickness and all the stuff that comes with that.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's go to nineteen twenty and the
Speaker 2: stages sort of set to where they feel like it
Speaker 2: might be possible to actually accomplish something like this. And
Speaker 2: the Royal Geographic Society got together with the Alpine Club
Speaker 2: to form and they didn't like permanently come together, but
Speaker 2: they worked together to form the Mount Everest Committee to say,
Speaker 2: all right, let's give this a go, old boy, And
Speaker 2: they got permissioned from Tibet in nineteen twenty one to
Speaker 2: go on a scouting trip. And this was a trip
Speaker 2: where they would just kind of figure out how to
Speaker 2: climb Everest. Like it wasn't like they just said, all right,
Speaker 2: let's give it a go and see if we can
Speaker 2: get to the top. Like they had to take several
Speaker 2: trips just to sort of map out what they thought
Speaker 2: would be a feasible way to even try to get
Speaker 2: to the top.
Speaker 1: Right, Apparently no one from Europe had been within sixty
Speaker 1: miles of Everest itself, so this was all new, uncharted
Speaker 1: territory basically for these guys. And again it's really important
Speaker 1: to say, like we're going to be telling the story
Speaker 1: from the English point of view, and like you said,
Speaker 1: the Sherpa rarely figure into that, with the big exception
Speaker 1: of Tensing Norgay, who officially was the first to summ
Speaker 1: at Everest with Edmund Hillary. But these guys weren't doing
Speaker 1: this alone. They had, depending on the expedition and how
Speaker 1: much money it had, scores to hundreds of sherpas like
Speaker 1: attending them, helping them climb, moving their stuff, and just
Speaker 1: basically making life much easier on these guys. That said,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to undermine the amount of effort
Speaker 1: and strenuousness that these guys, yeah, and talent that these
Speaker 1: guys underwent in just figuring out how to get to
Speaker 1: Everest to start on that first nineteen twenty one expedition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool to read contemporary, yes, contemporary accounts
Speaker 2: of what modern climbers think of Mallory and his not
Speaker 2: just tenaciousness, but his actual talent level and his climbing
Speaker 2: style was apparently very unique and just revered today by
Speaker 2: modern climbers. Is And you know, it's not to take
Speaker 2: anything away from what anyone does today, because what people
Speaker 2: can accomplish day is amazing. But they accomplish these things
Speaker 2: based generally on you know, they can be taught by
Speaker 2: other people and like this is how it's done, Like
Speaker 2: Mallory and the King. We're figuring this out for the
Speaker 2: first time. And by the way, I might have said
Speaker 2: Hillary instead of Mallory. Yeah, because I'm just thinking of
Speaker 2: climbing hills.
Speaker 1: Right, and we should just go ahead and say just
Speaker 1: to get any confusion out of the way. Edmund Hillary
Speaker 1: summitted evereston I think nineteen fifty three. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the first expeditions to ever again in nineteen twenty Mallory
Speaker 1: and Hillary, I don't believe ever met. They were of
Speaker 1: different generations of climbers, but Mallory was considered one of
Speaker 1: the pioneers, as were the other men in his expeditions
Speaker 1: that he went on.
Speaker 2: All right, So if I said Hillary, I meant Mallory.
Speaker 2: Are we all good?
Speaker 1: I think we're good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, all right. So they got permission again for
Speaker 2: this trip in nineteen twenty one, and Mallory was in
Speaker 2: his early thirties. He was included in this first group
Speaker 2: and I think was really chomping at the bit to
Speaker 2: do so. He has a wife and three young kids
Speaker 2: at home, but really nothing could stop him from going
Speaker 2: on this first scouting trip.
Speaker 1: No, and he was thirty three on the nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: one trip, and he says, basically, hey, dear, I'm going
Speaker 1: to quit my job and leave you and the children
Speaker 1: for I don't know, seven months at least to go
Speaker 1: on this expedition see you. And that's where he went.
Speaker 2: But he did say to his wife, here's what I'll do.
Speaker 2: I'll take this picture of you, babe, and I will
Speaker 2: carry it with me always, and I will place you
Speaker 2: at the top of Everest to live there forever, more
Speaker 2: in case than ice when I get up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm sure he probably took it with him
Speaker 1: on the first expedition, But the first expedition wasn't planning
Speaker 1: on summoning Everest. But from what I gather from Mallory,
Speaker 1: he would have been down to give it a shot
Speaker 1: that first time out. Like that's how obsessed with Everest
Speaker 1: that man became, right, and he actually was really successful.
Speaker 1: The expedition was this was again the first expedition by
Speaker 1: the English to map Everest, and they managed to do it.
Speaker 1: They managed to find a way onto Everest what's called
Speaker 1: the North Call, which is a ridge that connects one
Speaker 1: mountain to another, and they found that North Call which
Speaker 1: is the way still today. If you're coming from the
Speaker 1: north from the Tibetan side up Everest, you still use
Speaker 1: that route that these guys mapped in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's important to point out which side that
Speaker 2: they would have gone up then and what side you
Speaker 2: go up now, because there is a route that China
Speaker 2: kind of secured and basically has held that Americans can't go,
Speaker 2: and that'll be a key sort of later on in
Speaker 2: this mystery. So put it bin in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because China invaded Tibet in nineteen fifty and said
Speaker 1: this side of the mountain is closed to Westerners. But
Speaker 1: this happened. That happened to three decades after Mallory and
Speaker 1: his expeditions, so they were using that north route, and
Speaker 1: still to this day. The north route is considered technically
Speaker 1: more difficult because it requires you to spend more time
Speaker 1: at higher elevations with its attendant lower oxygen concentration, which
Speaker 1: makes the whole thing way harder. And then secondly, the
Speaker 1: way in through the north route requires twenty two miles
Speaker 1: of walking just to get from base camp to the top,
Speaker 1: whereas the south route, which is what Westerners use today
Speaker 1: coming from the Nepalese side is about twelve and three
Speaker 1: quarter miles of walking. Nothing to sneeze that still, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it just kind of underscores the just how hard the
Speaker 1: things that these guys were doing with zero equipment.
Speaker 2: All right, so I think it's a good time for
Speaker 2: a break. Sure, I'm gonna finally sort out the difference
Speaker 2: between Hillary and Mallory.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an eighties sitcom.
Speaker 2: No, all right, So I'm gonna work all that out
Speaker 2: and we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back, and I want to go over a
Speaker 1: little more about when you how you get to a mountain.
Speaker 1: And we don't have to go in great detail, but
Speaker 1: you're basically going up one mountain to get to that
Speaker 1: ridge that connects that small mountain to Everest, the taller mountain, right,
Speaker 1: But to get there requires hiking, mountain climbing, ice climbing,
Speaker 1: rock climbing, every kind of climbing you can imagine. And
Speaker 1: one of the first things you have to do, no
Speaker 1: matter whether you come from the north route or the
Speaker 1: south rout is cross a glacier and that is way
Speaker 1: harder than it sounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this thing is you know surrounded in
Speaker 2: part by glaciers, and like you said, there are so
Speaker 2: many different disciplines if you're going to do something like Everest,
Speaker 2: and especially in nineteen twenty one twenty two, that I
Speaker 2: just don't think we can overstate like the near impossibility
Speaker 2: of this feet at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially with the glacier. There's crevasses. They can be
Speaker 1: really deep, you know, one hundred or more feet deep,
Speaker 1: and you can fall into that and die. There can
Speaker 1: be ice slides it's also known as avalanches. They can
Speaker 1: come and bury you. There's something called I think seacres,
Speaker 1: which are how size blocks of ice that you sometimes
Speaker 1: have to climb that you could also topple and be
Speaker 1: crushed by. Like that's just the glacier. That's like the
Speaker 1: first obstacle to get toward the mountain. And again they
Speaker 1: were doing this with zero equipment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we did. We did a whole episode
Speaker 2: on ice climbing, right.
Speaker 1: We totally did.
Speaker 2: And I remember so we talked about sea coorse.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, all right? Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar,
Speaker 1: and I also was like, yeah, ice climbing is really hard.
Speaker 1: I know that from experience and researching it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I mean this one. The sharp episode was
Speaker 2: really good. Ice climbing was good. I believe we did
Speaker 2: one on dead bodies on Everest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a long time ago we did one on
Speaker 1: altitude sickness too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this all comes together. Point is it's really
Speaker 2: really hard and there are so many ways to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what else wants to kill you up there, Chuck?
Speaker 1: That they weren't aware of until that nineteen twenty one expedition.
Speaker 2: The yetti.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where the YETI was introduced, or at least
Speaker 1: the concept was introduced to Westerners who brought it back,
Speaker 1: and then I believe on a later, like nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one expedition, a guy named Eric Shipton took some photos
Speaker 1: of what were supposed to be Yetti tracks, and that's
Speaker 1: when like the West really went wild for the Yetti.
Speaker 2: That's right, So let's catch ourselves up. It's September twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty one, when they reach the North Coal and
Speaker 2: this is where they're like, all right, we think this
Speaker 2: is it. We think we have found a path that
Speaker 2: can actually get us. They didn't realize there would one
Speaker 2: day be an easier path, probably, but they said, we
Speaker 2: think this is the way to go. And it should
Speaker 2: be noted that not only these expedition trips to sort
Speaker 2: of map things out, but each subsequent attempt to ascend
Speaker 2: Everest that ended up in I don't want to say failure,
Speaker 2: but I guess it is failure if they didn't accomplish
Speaker 2: it devastating. But each one of yet, each one of
Speaker 2: those is really important too, because you know, every higher
Speaker 2: peak that you get to, you're able to sort of
Speaker 2: establish of course not everywhere, but you're able to establish
Speaker 2: camps along the way, right, and these camps are then
Speaker 2: used later on as you know, base camps like one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 2: et cetera. In fact, it maybe six might have been
Speaker 2: the highest camp at the time, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: And then so but it's super important to establish that
Speaker 2: for like all the hikers to come. Just because it
Speaker 2: was a failed attempt doesn't mean a lot of great
Speaker 2: stuff wasn't accomplished.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you are hiking or you're climbing up
Speaker 1: a mountain and there's a higher camp that you're coming
Speaker 1: up to, you can make your way over the day
Speaker 1: to that camp and then just stay there for the night.
Speaker 1: If there's not a higher camp you have to turn
Speaker 1: around at some point and make your way to that
Speaker 1: next lower camp to survive. Yeah, you cannot be caught
Speaker 1: overnight on Everest anywhere at these elevations that these guys
Speaker 1: are hiking at without tent and or a sleeping bag,
Speaker 1: or you're going to die. That's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: A human being can't survive on the you know, the
Speaker 1: higher altitudes of Everest without that kind of stuff. So, yes,
Speaker 1: establishing a camp is an enormous thing. But also they're
Speaker 1: learning stuff firsthand about how humans respond to low oxygen concentrations,
Speaker 1: what the weather conditions are, like, what time of year
Speaker 1: you can hike, Like every detail is a brand new
Speaker 1: novel detail that is really crucial in understanding how to
Speaker 1: get to the top eventually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what time of day you have to start
Speaker 2: out in order to get up there and safely get
Speaker 2: back down. Because some people, including Hillary, Yes, Hillary, and
Speaker 2: it's a thorny subject, but some people, as far as
Speaker 2: the Mystery of Mallory goes, some people don't consider it
Speaker 2: a successful ascent unless you come back down. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of the thing. And I think Hillary was one
Speaker 2: of those, and his family also said, Hey, listen, not
Speaker 2: to slag anyone, but we kind of only consider it
Speaker 2: a success if you go up and you're able to
Speaker 2: come back down and live to tell about it, essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think that was which is an interesting point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think that point was made by Hillary himself,
Speaker 1: which is kind of saying yeah, he's yeah, He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you've made it to the top,
Speaker 1: it doesn't count.
Speaker 2: Like I'm doing this interview right now.
Speaker 1: Right I'm sitting here. So there's one thing I want
Speaker 1: to point out that I don't know has become clear yet.
Speaker 1: It's clear to me because we did this research and
Speaker 1: I found out what the deal was. But you might
Speaker 1: be asking yourself why was mountain climbing so big at
Speaker 1: this time? Why were these people doing this? And there's
Speaker 1: a really good explanation for that. Ever, itself was considered
Speaker 1: the third Pole because people had already made it to
Speaker 1: the South Pole and the North Pole. We didn't yet
Speaker 1: have the technology to explore the deep ocean or space,
Speaker 1: and we had been almost everywhere else on Earth. So
Speaker 1: this was like the last place for humans to I
Speaker 1: guess basically conquer or pit their endurance against. And that's
Speaker 1: why it was so attractive to people.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that was a very eloquent way to say that.
Speaker 2: I think we should mention that Mallory himself is the
Speaker 2: very person who very famously coined the term because it's
Speaker 2: there when asked why they would try to do something
Speaker 2: like this, Yeah, why climb mountains because it's there?
Speaker 1: That alone makes him just worth remembering. You know what
Speaker 1: a cool response.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, why are you going to eat big mac because
Speaker 2: it's there?
Speaker 1: Everything that's ever come since then where somebody says because
Speaker 1: it's there, you're actually quoting George Mallory, that's right.
Speaker 2: All right. So let's talk for a second about oxygen.
Speaker 2: Low oxygen is no good for the human body. And
Speaker 2: we've mentioned several times that your oxygen levels are very
Speaker 2: low when you're ascending Everest. And these days they make
Speaker 2: it really easy on you, it's all. You know, the
Speaker 2: kind of oxygen and they take is very easy to take.
Speaker 2: They make it very user friendly. But back then they
Speaker 2: had like glassed bottles of oxygen that were carried in
Speaker 2: like wooden crates, and it was a real pain to
Speaker 2: get there. It was super super heavy. But they knew
Speaker 2: at the time, you know, well, they learned that they
Speaker 2: would absolutely need this stuff, but Mallory was sort of,
Speaker 2: I don't think indifferent. I think he was sort of
Speaker 2: annoyed by the whole thing that you actually had to
Speaker 2: take this stuff, to the point where he didn't even
Speaker 2: use them, I believe in the nineteen twenty one test run, right.
Speaker 1: No, I don't believe.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I don't think he did either in the nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two expedition that followed where they actually did try to
Speaker 1: make summit, and it wasn't for years before he was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe oxygen's a good idea. Some of them even thought
Speaker 1: it was like a hindrance in general because it was
Speaker 1: an extra thirty pounds that you had to carry, yeah,
Speaker 1: up this mountain. And if you watch, if you watch
Speaker 1: video of people climbing Everest today, especially as they get
Speaker 1: closer and closer to the top and there's less and
Speaker 1: less oxygen, yeah, they do even they seem to like
Speaker 1: have regret for being where they are. But even with
Speaker 1: oxygen on, if you watch them, they'll take a step
Speaker 1: so one foot and then they'll bring the other foot
Speaker 1: up and maybe they've traversed a foot of Everest right then,
Speaker 1: and then they have to wait like fifteen thirty seconds
Speaker 1: before they make the next one because they're that tired
Speaker 1: because there's that little oxygen. And that's with oxygen on.
Speaker 1: So these guys were trying these kind of a sense
Speaker 1: without oxygen, I can't imagine, like, you know, how you
Speaker 1: would even do that. And it's actually it's not clear
Speaker 1: whether you really could some everest without oxygen, although I
Speaker 1: think people have tried to maybe even been successful, so
Speaker 1: I guess it would be clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in twenty two, I believe Mallory and a
Speaker 2: couple of other climbers hit twenty six eight hundred feet,
Speaker 2: which is remarkable, before they decided to turn back. And
Speaker 2: again this is without using oxygen on that twenty two try.
Speaker 2: And then this is the part where I was a
Speaker 2: little bit confused. Maybe you can clear it up. When
Speaker 2: did the avalanche happen? Was that in twenty one where
Speaker 2: seven people were killed? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So no, in twenty one there was an avalanche that
Speaker 1: wiped out some of the camps they'd established, but didn't
Speaker 1: hurt anybody. Okay, twenty two they weren't as lucky, and
Speaker 1: seven Sherpa died in an avalanche, all right, And Mallory
Speaker 1: kind of considered himself that at least partially responsible. Even
Speaker 1: though he wasn't the only person who pushed for this
Speaker 1: last attempt for the summit, he was one of them.
Speaker 1: And an avalanche was triggered by that third attempt and
Speaker 1: killed some of the people further down on the mountain
Speaker 1: when they were covered up by it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are people you know who have looked
Speaker 2: back in kind of poop pooed Mallories poo poot his carelessness.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if it was carelessness. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was carelessness just because he was a careless person.
Speaker 2: I think it was a little more his tenacious attitude
Speaker 2: sort of overrode good sense sometimes. Is the way I
Speaker 2: took it? Is that how you took it? I think
Speaker 2: that was part of it.
Speaker 1: But I also get the impression that he was like
Speaker 1: just downright flighty, Oh was he? Yeah? Like there was
Speaker 1: a he was in charge of the camera for the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two expedition and apparently he put the film
Speaker 1: in backwards but was taking pictures the whole time and
Speaker 1: they didn't turn out because he didn't have the film incorrectly,
Speaker 1: Like that's a classico sure, but if you do that
Speaker 1: things like that over and over again, you start to
Speaker 1: develop a reputation as being flighty.
Speaker 2: I guess. So the thing I think is cameras, Like
Speaker 2: operating a camera wasn't second nature at this point in history,
Speaker 2: and it's like, just give this guy a camera. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I could see him just being like I
Speaker 2: don't even know what this thing is or how to
Speaker 2: really operate it, Like, don't give it to me. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: you kind of have to take it, and he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, I'll do my best.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 2: I mean, I kind of created that narrative, but but
Speaker 2: it was a good one. He was good at mountain climbing.
Speaker 2: He may not have been a good photographer.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough. But there's a very famous quote by
Speaker 1: a doctor, Tom Longstaff, who was the doctor on the
Speaker 1: expedition in nineteen twenty two, said Mallory was quite unfit
Speaker 1: to be placed in charge of anything, including himself. So,
Speaker 1: I mean people definitely thought of him. I'm going to
Speaker 1: say flighty, and I'm not judging. I'm pretty flighty myself.
Speaker 1: You me would certainly tell you that. But so I
Speaker 1: think I recognize it when I see it. Maybe that's what.
Speaker 2: It is, as you me your doctor long Staff.
Speaker 1: Yep, I'm gonna start calling her that now.
Speaker 2: I should be like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I look that up too, Remember our surname's episode. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, is that a dirty last name?
Speaker 2: No, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: It turns out if you were a bailiff or somebody
Speaker 1: involved in law enforcement, you would have carried like a
Speaker 1: long stick, oh okay, to probably beat people with. And
Speaker 1: that's where they got that name. So his ancestor was
Speaker 1: involved in law enforcement. I looked it up. I went
Speaker 1: long Staff, surname Penis and doctor Longstaff.
Speaker 2: Definiteast sounds like a born name.
Speaker 1: It definitely does.
Speaker 2: All right, So now let's go to nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 2: The test runs had happened, the real attempts had happened,
Speaker 2: and then finally nineteen twenty four rolls around. They didn't
Speaker 2: just take the year off in nineteen twenty three because
Speaker 2: they were tired. They didn't get funding, like it costs
Speaker 2: a lot of money and these people aren't like bankrolling themselves.
Speaker 2: So the Mount Everest Company could not raise the money
Speaker 2: in twenty three, so they waited until nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 2: When Mallory jumped up in class and said me, me, me, me,
Speaker 2: me again. Yeah, and almost didn't go though, because one
Speaker 2: of his mates, George Finch, a fellow climber, was I
Speaker 2: believe left off the list, and Mallory was like, if
Speaker 2: he's not going to go, I'm not there gonna go
Speaker 2: And they said okay, and then he went, well, I
Speaker 2: still want to go.
Speaker 1: He put on a fake mustache and put himself down
Speaker 1: as George Hallery exactly. So there was a guy who
Speaker 1: went who was kind of a surprise selection. His name
Speaker 1: was Andrew Sandy Irving Irvine. Sorry, and Sandy Irvine was
Speaker 1: a student still. He was an engineering student. That's actually
Speaker 1: one of the reasons they brought him along. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a schlub as far as mountaineering goes. He just was
Speaker 1: not nearly as experienced as most of the people on
Speaker 1: that nineteen twenty four expedition. But being an engineering student,
Speaker 1: he could fiddle and fuss with the oxygen apparatus which.
Speaker 2: Had in the cameras.
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, probably he knew how to put the film
Speaker 1: in the right direction. But since I get the impression
Speaker 1: that since the nineteen twenty one and twenty two expeditions,
Speaker 1: it had become clear to these these these people on
Speaker 1: these expeditions, on the nineteen twenty four expedition that oxygen
Speaker 1: wasn't like really important and to have somebody who could
Speaker 1: make these these rigs more efficient would be really, really valuable.
Speaker 1: So they brought Sandy Irvine along.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also saw that Irvine was, you know, despite
Speaker 2: his fiddler's reputation, was strong as an ox.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's another nice thing.
Speaker 1: If you see there's a famous picture of he and
Speaker 1: him and Mallory next to each other facing the camera
Speaker 1: like posing for a picture. And he's easily a full
Speaker 1: head taller than Mallory was, and about his wide too,
Speaker 1: so he was a big, big boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Mallory was very handsome too, if we should note, yes,
Speaker 2: good looking dude.
Speaker 1: He really was very pretty. I think you could.
Speaker 2: Say pretty mad.
Speaker 1: And then one other note about Mallory on this to
Speaker 1: start off this nineteen twenty four expedition. Again, this is
Speaker 1: the third expedition to Everest, and he was the only
Speaker 1: member of this entire expedition who had been on all
Speaker 1: three expeditions, which again really underscores Mallory was obsessed with
Speaker 1: summiting Everest.
Speaker 2: That's right, So to June first, now, I think, so, man,
Speaker 2: all right, Mallory and George Bruce make this first attempt.
Speaker 2: This one didn't work out when basically the sherpass said
Speaker 2: all right, we're not going any further. It's too dangerous,
Speaker 2: and they basically dropped their stuff and turned back. So again,
Speaker 2: this one didn't work out. But one of the positives
Speaker 2: is they established a camp at twenty five thousand feet,
Speaker 2: which I believe was the tallest camp at the time
Speaker 2: or the highest camp.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so that's again that's a huge success for
Speaker 1: a summit attempt, right, even more groundwork. The following day,
Speaker 1: another couple climbers, Edward Norton and t Howard Somerville, made
Speaker 1: their own attempt on the summit. Norton kept going beyond Summerville,
Speaker 1: and he made it within a thousand feet of the
Speaker 1: summit of Everest, which, depending on your perspective, sounds really
Speaker 1: close but actually isn't or is actually super close even
Speaker 1: though it sounds far away.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty close.
Speaker 1: It is. But if you look at a map and
Speaker 1: see where twenty eight thousand feet is and then where
Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand feet is she had a way to go,
Speaker 1: but far and away. That was the record, and it
Speaker 1: was a record that stood, at least officially until Hillary
Speaker 1: and Norgay summitted Everest in nineteen fifty three. So it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. But Norton in Somerville really paid
Speaker 1: for their attempt Somerville. He almost suffocated from a high
Speaker 1: altitude cough. And then Norton developed snow blindness because they
Speaker 1: would wear goggles that were like basically sunglass goggles, and
Speaker 1: you had to wear them during the day, not just
Speaker 1: from the wind, but because the UV was really really
Speaker 1: abundant because of the thin air up there, so you
Speaker 1: would get what's called snow blindness. You would get Caro
Speaker 1: Titus on your corneas, and that's what happened to Norton.
Speaker 1: He burned his corneas from the reflected sunlight because he
Speaker 1: didn't keep his goggles on long enough. And on the
Speaker 1: way back down from twenty five thousand feet back down,
Speaker 1: he had to be helped. Every footstep had to be
Speaker 1: placed by shurpas and the doctor on the trip. Every foot,
Speaker 1: every footstep he made all the way back down out
Speaker 1: of the Everest area.
Speaker 2: That's amazing it really is all right. So on this
Speaker 2: third attempt, Mallory brought Irving. Sorry, why do you keep
Speaker 2: saying that? I said? Because you said it?
Speaker 1: Sorry?
Speaker 2: Brought Irvine along, and they were sending notes down. You know,
Speaker 2: they're sending messages back down with Shurpas along the way,
Speaker 2: basically saying yeah, I love you. They were sending notes
Speaker 2: back down to the other camps, basically giving reports on
Speaker 2: what's going on, saying things are going well, the weather
Speaker 2: looks like we should be able to do it. We're gonna,
Speaker 2: we're gonna, you know, we're gonna try and do this
Speaker 2: like tomorrow or whatever. And so all the notes that
Speaker 2: were coming down were pretty positive, and basically everything we
Speaker 2: know about this comes from a gentleman, a gentleman geologist
Speaker 2: named Noel O'Dell. It was actually a pretty big hero
Speaker 2: in this story too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was pretty awesome actually, and he lived to
Speaker 1: be a ripe old man, sorry ripe old age.
Speaker 2: He spelled really bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a really cool interview with him from
Speaker 1: a Nova episode. I can't remember what it's called, but
Speaker 1: it's from like the eighties, and they interviewed Noel Odell
Speaker 1: about this. So he factors in big time in a minute.
Speaker 1: But Odell was He went up to one of the
Speaker 1: high camps. He wanted to look for fossils. Being a geologist,
Speaker 1: he also brought up supplies of food and water to
Speaker 1: those higher camps to help the climbers on their way
Speaker 1: back down. And this was the third attempt. Remember, the
Speaker 1: first attempt didn't work, second attempt didn't work. It kind
Speaker 1: of resulted in disaster. And then this third attempt was
Speaker 1: going to be the last one. And Mallory said, hey, Irvine,
Speaker 1: why don't you come with me. We're going to try
Speaker 1: to make the summit of Everest. And there's something that
Speaker 1: you need to know about this third attempt. Mallory was
Speaker 1: I think thirty seven maybe by this time, and as
Speaker 1: far as mountaineers and climbers go, especially back then, he
Speaker 1: was old. This was probably going to be his last
Speaker 1: expedition to Everest, and this attempt for the summit was
Speaker 1: the last attempt on this expedition ergo. This was Mallory's
Speaker 1: last shot at summiting Everest, and he was setting out
Speaker 1: from the highest camp that had ever been established. Basically,
Speaker 1: I believe it's the highest camp still today on that
Speaker 1: north route.
Speaker 2: All right. It sounds like a great cliffhanger, no pun intended.
Speaker 2: So let's take our final break here and we'll wrap
Speaker 2: up the story right after.
Speaker 3: This stuff you should know, all right.
Speaker 2: So Mallory is on his last attempt as a human
Speaker 2: to do the thing that he was obsessed with since
Speaker 2: he was, you know, a young late teenager. Beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2: So so handsome geologist Noel Odell is up there again.
Speaker 2: He is. He is doing sort of the cool, groovy
Speaker 2: Appalachian trail hangout dude thing that is still for people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's doing some trail magic up there. And at twelve
Speaker 2: fifty he sees Mallory and Irvine on the northeast ridge.
Speaker 2: But there are a few hours and this is really key,
Speaker 2: there are a few hours behind schedule from where they
Speaker 2: should be, and there's a very narrow window again for
Speaker 2: like what time of day you can pull this off
Speaker 2: and then safely get back down. So to be a
Speaker 2: few hours behind schedule is a big deal on whether
Speaker 2: or not you're gonna survive basically. So what he says,
Speaker 2: and we'll just go ahead and read the quote. What
Speaker 2: he says he saw is the following the entire Summit Ridge,
Speaker 2: and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became
Speaker 2: fixed on one tiny black spot beneath a rock step
Speaker 2: in the ridge. The black spot moved. Another black spot
Speaker 2: became apparent and moved up the snow to join the
Speaker 2: other on the crest. The first then approached the great
Speaker 2: rock step and shortly emerged at the top. The second
Speaker 2: did likewise.
Speaker 1: So right after that, Chuck apparently the clouds came back,
Speaker 1: and those two black spots that were he took to
Speaker 1: be Irvine and Mallory disappeared from view. And that was,
Speaker 1: if that was Irvine and Mallory, the last time anybody
Speaker 1: saw them, and Odell would have been the last to
Speaker 1: see them, which will become a crucial thing later on,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. But Odell kind of waited for them
Speaker 1: to come back down to the camps. Remember he was
Speaker 1: in the high camps, and he waited and he waited
Speaker 1: and he waited, and then he started to get really worried.
Speaker 1: And here's where he became a hero, like you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Odell is again he's not down there at
Speaker 2: sea level. He is hanging out up there trying to
Speaker 2: do the trail magic thing. He's all of a sudden worried,
Speaker 2: and he basically from Camp six starts hiking around trying
Speaker 2: to find these guys and doesn't leave. He just keeps staying,
Speaker 2: and he keeps making these a cents, And I believe,
Speaker 2: like two days in a row, made an assent over
Speaker 2: what like twenty six thousand feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of them, and he'd go back to
Speaker 1: camp because he had to again to survive, but then
Speaker 1: he would strike out like as soon as he could
Speaker 1: the next day to look for them.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why he's one of the heroes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And like again, I don't even know if
Speaker 1: he had oxygen at that point. So he spent a
Speaker 1: couple of days way up there looking for them, and
Speaker 1: finally from the high camp he signaled back down to
Speaker 1: the lower camps, the base camp, and there was apparently
Speaker 1: a pre arranged signal that they had come up with
Speaker 1: for this third summit attempt, and Odell laid it out.
Speaker 1: It was six sleeping bags laid out in a cross,
Speaker 1: which meant death, that they had died, that they hadn't
Speaker 1: made it. And so in reply, the guy who led
Speaker 1: the expedition had a return signal saying like, give up, hope,
Speaker 1: come back down, and very sadly, Odell did as he
Speaker 1: was instructed and came back down without Irvine, without Mallory,
Speaker 1: who remained up on the mountain as far as anyone knew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at this point he had been up there
Speaker 2: for and this is over twenty three thousand feet. He
Speaker 2: had been up there for eleven days. And that's I mean,
Speaker 2: surely no, uh, I don't think that had been done before.
Speaker 1: Right, That's no picnic caught in a snowstorm. That's some
Speaker 1: serious stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's no way that these guys, I mean,
Speaker 2: they were up there for two nights and you're not
Speaker 2: going to survive one night. So it was pretty clear
Speaker 2: those sleeping bags had to come out at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they said, you know, they were really
Speaker 1: kind of unhappy on that way back down, which again
Speaker 1: I don't think we said if you're coming up a mountain,
Speaker 1: you have to acclimate over weeks, little by little, and
Speaker 1: I believe you have to do roughly the same thing
Speaker 1: coming back down. So these guys had to basically have
Speaker 1: this party where two people had been lost on their
Speaker 1: summit attempt, and they were glowmed but at the same time,
Speaker 1: they realized, like, you know, Mallory and Irvine had kind
Speaker 1: of embodied this spirit of adventure and just trying and
Speaker 1: even risking your life for you know, this this noble
Speaker 1: attempt that at something no one else had ever done.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of a bitter sweet thing. Their
Speaker 1: loss was. It wasn't entirely nothing but tragic. There was
Speaker 1: some silver lining to it in the way that Mallory
Speaker 1: was remembered and thought of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and from that moment forward there you know
Speaker 2: ed kind of makes it sound like the consensuses that
Speaker 2: they never reached the top, And after reading all this
Speaker 2: stuff and a lot of other opinions, I don't think
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true at all. I think there
Speaker 2: is still debate on whether or not they actually made
Speaker 2: it to the top. And there are a bunch of
Speaker 2: cool little clues that kind of lead you down one
Speaker 2: way or the other along the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of them, Chuck, was Odell and what he saw.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things you need to know
Speaker 1: about Odell. Number one, he was a geologist, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people say he just mistook some rocks for
Speaker 1: Irvine and Mallory. The little tiny dots he thought he
Speaker 1: saw moving. He's a geologist, making him very unlikely to
Speaker 1: mistake rocks for people. And then secondly, he was well
Speaker 1: known to have really good eyesight. Apparently he didn't need
Speaker 1: glass until he was in his nineties. So those two
Speaker 1: things combined make it seem like he was probably the
Speaker 1: best possible eyewitness around. And Odell went to his grave saying,
Speaker 1: I saw them. They were moving. It was them, But
Speaker 1: exactly where he saw them kind of came up for grabs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are these three cliffs sort of you know,
Speaker 2: if you go this route, there are three cliffs to
Speaker 2: get to the top, and they called them steps step one,
Speaker 2: step two, step three. They didn't know about these steps
Speaker 2: until they got there, obviously, because no one had done
Speaker 2: this yet. And from what he was talking about, he
Speaker 2: saw them on the second step, But there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people today that said no. I think he
Speaker 2: probably saw them on the first step. At one point
Speaker 2: in his life he said that it was the first step,
Speaker 2: but then he went back and said no. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if he was just sort of a victim
Speaker 2: of kind of listening to what other people had to say.
Speaker 2: But apparently later in life. He went back and was
Speaker 2: adamant that it was the second step that he saw
Speaker 2: them on.
Speaker 1: Oh really, okay, cool. So here's the thing. If you
Speaker 1: were in the climbing community and you believe that at
Speaker 1: the very least Mallory, if not Mallory and Irvine made
Speaker 1: it to the top of Everest on that nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: four expedition on that third attempt. The reason you think
Speaker 1: that is because you believe that Odell did see them
Speaker 1: climb up that second step, Because that second step was
Speaker 1: the last great obstacle to the top, and had they
Speaker 1: made it up the second step, nothing would have stopped
Speaker 1: Mallory from continuing on to hit the summit. Knowing that
Speaker 1: he probably would not ever make it down alive, he
Speaker 1: still would have kept going on. So that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of people think, and the people who think that
Speaker 1: he actually did make it kind of point to Odell's
Speaker 1: eyewitness statements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's in that interview when he was what
Speaker 2: he was ninety seven years old, Odell himself says that
Speaker 2: you know, there would have been nothing that would have
Speaker 2: stopped Mallory and Irvine. He believes even though dusk was
Speaker 2: approaching and they probably knew it was, I guess a
Speaker 2: suicide mission at that point. His feeling was that there's
Speaker 2: no way they would have stopped too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we didn't say when those clouds came around,
Speaker 1: they brought with them a blizzard too, so it was
Speaker 1: really terrible conditions. They were way late in the day.
Speaker 1: There was basically no chance if they submitted that they
Speaker 1: could get back to that highest camp in time for
Speaker 1: surviving the night. But that would not have stopped them,
Speaker 1: because they would They just would have kept going. That's
Speaker 1: just what Mallory would have done. Pretty much everybody agrees
Speaker 1: on that. The distinction is whether he was on the
Speaker 1: first step or the second step, because if he was
Speaker 1: just on the first step, he still had that second
Speaker 1: step ahead of him, he might not have made it.
Speaker 1: If he made the second step, he definitely summitted. That
Speaker 1: seems to be what the consensus is.
Speaker 2: All right, so you've got that. We can park that
Speaker 2: to the side. In the subsequent years, on different expeditions,
Speaker 2: there have been little bits and pieces of evidence found
Speaker 2: along the way. One in nineteen thirty three, when Irvine's acts,
Speaker 2: his ice axe was found, and you know you're not
Speaker 2: gonna just leave your ice ax behind r So basically
Speaker 2: they concluded that something happened that made Irvine drop this
Speaker 2: ice axe, but they recovered it in thirty three. And
Speaker 2: then in nineteen seventy five there were some Chinese Chinese
Speaker 2: climbers who made a successful summit all the way to
Speaker 2: the top, and they were the only ones that could
Speaker 2: have gone this way because, like we said earlier, the
Speaker 2: Chinese route was shut down basically to Americans, and so
Speaker 2: it's not like that people before the nineteen seventy five
Speaker 2: would have been taking this route. I think there was
Speaker 2: one American group that snuck in and did so illegally.
Speaker 2: But one of the Chinese climbers said I found an
Speaker 2: English dead to another climber. China has always denied this
Speaker 2: and said that that's not true and that it was
Speaker 2: a misunderstanding, and that climber, actually his name was Wang
Speaker 2: Hungboo died the next day in an avalanche, so there
Speaker 2: was never like any follow up with him.
Speaker 1: In a really interesting ironic twist, Chuck hungbo translate to
Speaker 1: so long staff in English. No, really, I thought I'd
Speaker 1: get a bigger laugh out of that.
Speaker 2: We'll just say that, well, it was believable enough to
Speaker 2: where I couldn't quite do it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so there's all this intrigue that's kind of
Speaker 1: gathering around this this idea that the Chinese had found
Speaker 1: at least one dead Englishman on their side of the mountain,
Speaker 1: the north side of the Tibetan side, where they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been, which means that, yeah, it had to have
Speaker 1: been Irvine or Mallory. So there was an expedition that
Speaker 1: came well, there's a nineteen ninety one expedition that found
Speaker 1: an old oxygen bottle that was almost certainly Mallory or Irvines,
Speaker 1: and then all of that information kind of came together
Speaker 1: to support a nineteen ninety nine GEO expedition to actually
Speaker 1: find Irvine or Mallory, and they actually did. They found
Speaker 1: one of them, and at first they thought it was Irvine.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, they did, But they found Mallory. He was frozen,
Speaker 2: he was sun bleached, his body was very well preserved,
Speaker 2: the items on him were very well preserved. They found
Speaker 2: him severely injured. Well, they found a couple of things.
Speaker 2: They found that he had a severely broken leg and
Speaker 2: some rope trauma like ligature stuff around his waist. But
Speaker 2: what they really found that was severe was the cause
Speaker 2: of death, which was a golf ball size hole in
Speaker 2: his forehead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they and it was a puncture wound. So they
Speaker 1: think it's possible as he was falling that his ice
Speaker 1: axe bounced off of a rock and into his head,
Speaker 1: which that'd be pretty merciful on the way down if
Speaker 1: you think about it, if that killed him instantly, Because
Speaker 1: they said that his foot was almost broken off. That
Speaker 1: break was so bad trauma too. Imagine a rope yanking
Speaker 1: on you, because they found the rope still tied around
Speaker 1: his waist.
Speaker 2: But I had that happen, Actually, I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's awful, right, It's like falling on your tailbone,
Speaker 1: but times a million. And the other end of the
Speaker 1: rope was snapped off, and I saw a climber say
Speaker 1: because of that snap, it must have been tied to
Speaker 1: something really immobile, like a rock, rather than Irvine. So
Speaker 1: that suggested that Mallory had sent Irvine back and tried
Speaker 1: to make the summit himself, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: kind of give to his credit that he wasn't willing
Speaker 1: to risk Irvine's life, only his own.
Speaker 2: I found it very strange that I said that that
Speaker 2: happened to me, and you didn't even ask what that
Speaker 2: was about.
Speaker 1: I was on a roll. It's very strange what happened.
Speaker 2: I'm not even gonna I'm not gonna tell you now
Speaker 2: what happened. No one gets to know, all right, that
Speaker 2: would be the great mystery of this episode. Okay, So
Speaker 2: the two big clues here as to whether or not
Speaker 2: he made it are well. One big clue was he
Speaker 2: didn't have that picture of his wife on him. This
Speaker 2: is the picture that he took with them everywhere that
Speaker 2: he vowed to place at the top of the mountain,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't on him. So a lot of people
Speaker 2: look at that and say, well, it's not on them,
Speaker 2: because he actually did, maybe by himself or maybe with Irvine,
Speaker 2: make it to the summit and place that picture there.
Speaker 2: And it's not like you would have necessarily found that
Speaker 2: picture years later. It very probably would have blown away
Speaker 2: or been destroyed by the elements over time. And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about that clue. I
Speaker 2: think it's considering everything was found really in good condition
Speaker 2: on him, and that he didn't have it is pretty
Speaker 2: interesting to think about.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that I like that clue too. There's
Speaker 1: also a missing camera. They took a camera with them
Speaker 1: for that third attempt, Kodak vest pocket camera VPK, and
Speaker 1: it's like one of those old cameras with the accordion
Speaker 1: that you pull out, but it is a really small,
Speaker 1: like pocket sized version. And had they made it to
Speaker 1: the summit, they absolutely would have taken a photograph from
Speaker 1: the summit. And if you could just find that camera,
Speaker 1: then you could conceivably, because it had been in deep
Speaker 1: freeze conditions for all these years, it's possible using modern
Speaker 1: techniques that you could develop that film and solve this
Speaker 1: mystery once and for all. But the problem is this Chuck.
Speaker 1: The camera's missing, and so is Irvine. Because there was
Speaker 1: an expedition not too long ago, a few years back
Speaker 1: that set out to look for Irvine, this other guy.
Speaker 1: Because where the Chinese expedition said that they found the
Speaker 1: dead English that is nowhere near where Mallory was found,
Speaker 1: so they figure that they found Irvine. But when they
Speaker 1: went when this expedition, I think a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: went back to find Irvine, there was nothing there. His
Speaker 1: body was not exactly where it should be. Nothing there,
Speaker 1: And so this rumor has kind of come up over
Speaker 1: the years that the Chinese actually found him and brought
Speaker 1: him back down the mountain without telling anybody.
Speaker 2: That's right, That is the rumor, and that they got
Speaker 2: that camera and they they kind of botched the film
Speaker 2: trying to get it developed and process those pictures, and
Speaker 2: that was a big embarrassment. And so they will take
Speaker 2: that secret to their graves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And another explanation is that the nineteen sixty Chinese
Speaker 1: expedition to the top of the North Face was the
Speaker 1: first to summit the North Face and that they were
Speaker 1: protecting national pride because they found evidence on that camera,
Speaker 1: on that film when they did develop it that Mallory
Speaker 1: had made it to the top. Who knows? The thing is,
Speaker 1: we'll never know right ever. The thing that we will know,
Speaker 1: I think eventually, though, Chuck, hopefully, is what happened with
Speaker 1: your rope trauma?
Speaker 2: Ah, that will go to the grave with me.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I really botched that, like the Chinese mountain
Speaker 1: climbers botched processing that film.
Speaker 2: Okay, long staff.
Speaker 1: Long wind, It's more like it you got anything else?
Speaker 2: I got nothing else?
Speaker 1: All right, everybody? Well, since Chuck refuses to tell us
Speaker 1: about his rope traumas story. I guess we have nothing
Speaker 1: left but listener mail.
Speaker 2: This is from the Silly String up. This is myth busted. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: just wanted to point out that Josh repeated a widely
Speaker 2: spread myth about telegrams in the Silly String episode that
Speaker 2: stop was used because punctuation cost extra. This myth has
Speaker 2: been busted. The real story is Morse code originally had
Speaker 2: only capital letters and no punctuation. It's generally not much
Speaker 2: of a problem, but during the First World War, when
Speaker 2: the telegrams were widely used in the military, a misunderstood
Speaker 2: Messa message could be disastrous, So the custom arose of
Speaker 2: using the word stop between sentences and military telegrams so
Speaker 2: that any ambiguous phrases could not be misinterpreted called on
Speaker 2: with the public. Even after punctuation was introduced, people continued
Speaker 2: fashionably using stop between sentences even though they didn't have to.
Speaker 2: I thought this was kind of interesting. Thanks for the
Speaker 2: great show. And that is from Dave.
Speaker 1: It is very interesting. I like both stories.
Speaker 2: Okay, they're both great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone wins. And also I'm going to posit that
Speaker 1: you have mentioned before that you've gone repelling as a
Speaker 1: boy scout and that it happened somewhere on Stone Mountain.
Speaker 2: Not true. The mystery continues.
Speaker 1: Whatever. If you want to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: like Dave did and maybe take a crack at what
Speaker 1: happened with Chuck in the Rope and the trauma, you
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.